On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Let's take a chart. The Y-axis is how far you are socially conservative from -100 (totally liberal) to 100 (totally conservative). Your X-axis is how economically liberal you are from -100 (communist) to 100 (total free marketer).
The core Republican voting base can now be defined as lying across the high end of the top-left / top right quadrants i.e. socially conservative but broadly neutral when it comes to being left or right when it comes to economics.
A leader that does not appeal to those sentiments is not going to win the Republican base. So, with all due respect, In a Trump-Republican party contest, it's more likely that Trump wins - not necessarily by doing a third party but by an internal revolt by the base against their leaders.
"We have already secured an amount of doses that we need to vaccinate 380 million Europeans, and this is more than 80% of the European population [of 450 million people]," Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said other vaccine authorisations were expected in the coming weeks and months, so "Europe will have more than enough vaccine within a reliable timeframe".
She said the commission had taken the right course of action on vaccines.
"I'm convinced that when we look back at this one day we'll see, well yes, at the beginning, there was a bumpy road [but] well, that's always the case."
It's just ridiculous. They got it wrong, they should just admit it.
In her 380 million doses is she counting vaccines like Sanofi that haven't completed PIII trials and may not even end up getting approval?
No, just the two they've approved, 600m Pfizer, 160m Moderna. But the delivery schedules are pretty tough, I think in H1 they expect 300m Pfizer and 75m from Moderna, the US will get more than double that from both in H1. For the UK its 107m of Pfizer, Moderna and AZ. Hopefully the EU approves the AZ vaccine soon because they have 200m of those due in H1 which will significantly decrease their expected supply shortage and ensure they have coverage for the whole population over the year.
"The Prime Minister knows that to lose Scotland would be a resigning matter. And there’s a chance he wouldn’t even be allowed to get that far: his party might not keep a leader who looked close to losing the union.
Rishi Sunak is viewed by Tory strategists as the cabinet minister with the best appeal in Scotland, outranking both Starmer and Gordon Brown among Scottish swing voters."
Can Rishi identify Scotland on a map? Serious question.
I met him on a CalMac ferry last summer so I hope so
A CalMac ferry is the only place I’ve been actively asked if I want whisky in my coffee at 8 o’clock in the morning.
Did everywhere else just assume it was fine?
Haha.
It is difficult to eat healthily in Scotland. Best chipshops in the Northern Hemisphere.
Do you think? Living here, I have no criticism of them (there are some minor menu differences like 'sauce' in Edinburgh), but I haven't noticed a difference in quality of food (if that's what you mean).
I have not done a comprehensive survey of British fish n chips. But in my relatively limited experience, Scotland tops the league.
Also, Scotland does those fried potato scallops which we also do in NZ but are depressingly absent in London.
True, those are delicious. One thing I slightly miss from England is those big pickled onions. Hopefully that isn't perversion on a level of pineapple topped pizza.
My local chippy does the big onions, 10p a pop from memory. If we’re in the world of Scottish fried food, I think you just have to embrace the perviness.
My local does pineapple pizza - and even this weird stuff called "large salad".
Call their bluff. I bet their salad is "off today...."
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Twenty years ago she would probably have ended up bankrupt. Today she will crowdfund it and make millions of dollars profit from losing her court case.
What a strange world it has become.
Interesting why this has taken so long. Dominion had plenty of grounds to sue over the past two months.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
"The Prime Minister knows that to lose Scotland would be a resigning matter. And there’s a chance he wouldn’t even be allowed to get that far: his party might not keep a leader who looked close to losing the union.
Rishi Sunak is viewed by Tory strategists as the cabinet minister with the best appeal in Scotland, outranking both Starmer and Gordon Brown among Scottish swing voters."
Can Rishi identify Scotland on a map? Serious question.
I met him on a CalMac ferry last summer so I hope so
A CalMac ferry is the only place I’ve been actively asked if I want whisky in my coffee at 8 o’clock in the morning.
Did everywhere else just assume it was fine?
Haha.
It is difficult to eat healthily in Scotland. Best chipshops in the Northern Hemisphere.
Do you think? Living here, I have no criticism of them (there are some minor menu differences like 'sauce' in Edinburgh), but I haven't noticed a difference in quality of food (if that's what you mean).
I have not done a comprehensive survey of British fish n chips. But in my relatively limited experience, Scotland tops the league.
Also, Scotland does those fried potato scallops which we also do in NZ but are depressingly absent in London.
True, those are delicious. One thing I slightly miss from England is those big pickled onions. Hopefully that isn't perversion on a level of pineapple topped pizza.
My local chippy does the big onions, 10p a pop from memory. If we’re in the world of Scottish fried food, I think you just have to embrace the perviness.
My local does pineapple pizza - and even this weird stuff called "large salad".
Call their bluff. I bet their salad is "off today...."
Heard of this thing called Brexit?
So it's not the joys of grated turnip then?
And there's always be Glasgow salad available, so long as there isn't a potato blight.
Twenty years ago she would probably have ended up bankrupt. Today she will crowdfund it and make millions of dollars profit from losing her court case.
What a strange world it has become.
Have you seen the amount Dominion are sueing for ?
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The trouble that any party has that embraces "The Solid South" has is that a ) it destabilises the rest of the party b ) the south isn't solid if black people get to vote.
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trump is a symptom not a cause, and the cause is still very much there, if not more so than previously.
Agreed. But I don;t know if anyone can harness it like Trump. I quite like Kristi Noem.
Noem is a homophobic religious bigot. What is it you like about her?
I like her videos promoting SD as a tourist destination. I had a great time there in 2019
Next, Hitler was a decentish bloke, as evidenced by him doing a promo to "come visit the pretty town of Berchtesgaden..."
FPT - nuclear weapons exist to level the playing field against those with massive conventional forces, that we couldn't hope to match, and to deter nuclear blackmail against us by nuclear armed powers.
I know others have equally strong views on this, but count me out from the unilateralists please. It's an ultimate insurance policy that I'm happy to have - and pay for - and helps me sleep soundly at night.
You could sleep soundly at night if you'd paid to be surrounded by a battalion of Grenadier Guards to keep burglars out. But if it meant your children went hungry....?
There is a huge amount of "whataboutery" supporting the UK having nuclear weapons. Would someone like to give me an actual, real life, certifiable example of when they have given me cause to sleep more soundly at night?
Where my slumbers are qualitatively better is the knowledge that some ISIS commander or some Al Qaeda financier is being lit up for delivery of a smart bomb by a special forces guy in the shadows, who has the use of the latest array of technology to call upon.
I'd be very happy for the UK to be known as providing those people the bad guys should lose sleep over. Be the go-to place for the brightest and best fighting men in the world. Hell, I'd pay top dollar to recruit some of the Foreign Legion special forces guys into the team. They were some of the best close protection I've used (and that includes having used a guy from the Bravo 2 Zero patrol).
The ability to insert these into any country - and then safely extract them - would be an ultimate expression of power. And a much more effective use of defence money than the umpteen billions spent having no more than one Trident submarine on patrol at any one time.
Well, our children aren't going hungry. The cost of a few billion a year is easily absorbable within our massive government budget of many hundreds of billions. So I don't think that's a real choice. And I think the safety payback we get for it (in terms of a safe and secure space for economic growth and trade) is worth it.
I can't speak for how you sleep at night but I certainly think they are deterring Russia from taking more serious action over the Baltic States (NATO members) and also China over Taiwan. They were also useful in the first Gulf War in convincing Saddam Hussein not to use chemical or biological weapons. Of course it's difficult to prove a counterfactual where they made *the* difference - the decisive difference - because they are a strategic deterrent, not a tactical one, and such confrontations are rare precisely because they do exist. When that fails they are part of a diplomatic and military deterrent toolkit of why things don't escalate as far as they could.
I agree with you on special forces and on smart weapons. They are essential too. But I wouldn't eliminate our strategic deterrent. I think that'd be dangerous.
I'm more in the @Casino_Royale camp here. I would not wanting to be relying on the "goodwill" of China and Russia not to use their nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear UK in the case of a dispute.
But here we enter the realms of whether we would be allowed to use Trident in that event, or whether we'd find that the system had been (wisely imho) disabled by a higher power.
If you were America, and Britain got itself into a nuclear conflict with a third party, and you had the ability to shut the system down, would you do it? Or would you just let them go ahead with it in case they asked for a refund? It isn't an independent deterrent. Everyone (including Russia and China) is aware of that fact.
I’ve read convincing arguments that the USA has ensured the UK nukes are genuinely independent in terms of use, because that gives America more leverage globally - if America’s closest ally is highly armed with nukes, then any foe of America has to factor that in to their military strategy, making any planned attack on the West/USA much more complex and unpredictable
Independent in terms of use is one factor. Over the medium term there is no independence as I understand it - if the US decided it no longer wanted the UK to have Trident I think it could take it away from us pretty easily as we rely on them to service the system. In my view it is inaccurate to say we have an independent nuclear deterrent.
The counter argument to that runs thus
- If they pulled the servicing agreement, it would take a considerable time before the missiles were actually inoperable. They would become less and less dependable, but it wouldn't shut the system down inside several years. - So useless for "turning the system off" in a crisis. - Pulling the service agreement would be ending the bilateral treaty involved. With a bump. At which point the bits in the treaty about not sharing tech etc would become moot. So the US would be looking at the UK looking for partners for a replacement system, complete with the Trident II technology for transfer*.
*A little known story - when Trident was first discussed, The French were asked about cooperation with their SLBM program. Their terms were - You can buy missiles from us. Made in France. They will be less capable than Trident. We won't transfer the technology. And we will want an example Polaris missile and all the stuff the Americans gave you.
This offer came complete with a price tag higher than Trident.
When the fact that the tech transfer they wanted was specifically banned under the treaty with the Americans, the French were incredulous that we wouldn't break it.
Mr. Eagles, I do rather miss earlier days of the internet when there were more forums on specific subjects and no social media giants. I know the former still exist, but still.
Worth adding that mainstream broadcast media has declined continuously, gradually, over the years (excepting at ITV where it fell off a cliff when they made Bradby anchor and Peston political editor).
I know, I miss the old message boards and (AOL) chatrooms of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
I remember the early days of the internet as very idealistic, before it had switched to mass use. There was a strong whiff of 1970's California in the air, and all sorts of hopeful predictions of how communities would organise and represent themselves in the future.
Unfortunately we ended up with a kind of monopolistic and giant-business, 1990's California instead, alternately capitalising on people's tastes and stoking their resentments, for clicks.
"The Prime Minister knows that to lose Scotland would be a resigning matter. And there’s a chance he wouldn’t even be allowed to get that far: his party might not keep a leader who looked close to losing the union.
Rishi Sunak is viewed by Tory strategists as the cabinet minister with the best appeal in Scotland, outranking both Starmer and Gordon Brown among Scottish swing voters."
Can Rishi identify Scotland on a map? Serious question.
I met him on a CalMac ferry last summer so I hope so
A CalMac ferry is the only place I’ve been actively asked if I want whisky in my coffee at 8 o’clock in the morning.
Did everywhere else just assume it was fine?
Haha.
It is difficult to eat healthily in Scotland. Best chipshops in the Northern Hemisphere.
Do you think? Living here, I have no criticism of them (there are some minor menu differences like 'sauce' in Edinburgh), but I haven't noticed a difference in quality of food (if that's what you mean).
I have not done a comprehensive survey of British fish n chips. But in my relatively limited experience, Scotland tops the league.
Also, Scotland does those fried potato scallops which we also do in NZ but are depressingly absent in London.
True, those are delicious. One thing I slightly miss from England is those big pickled onions. Hopefully that isn't perversion on a level of pineapple topped pizza.
My local chippy does the big onions, 10p a pop from memory. If we’re in the world of Scottish fried food, I think you just have to embrace the perviness.
My local does pineapple pizza - and even this weird stuff called "large salad".
Call their bluff. I bet their salad is "off today...."
Heard of this thing called Brexit?
So it's not the joys of grated turnip then?
Had turnip [var. swede], parsnip and carrot hot salad with mutton sauce and a potato dressing yesterday evening. Aka 'stew'.
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trump is a symptom not a cause, and the cause is still very much there, if not more so than previously.
Agreed. But I don;t know if anyone can harness it like Trump. I quite like Kristi Noem.
Noem is a homophobic religious bigot. What is it you like about her?
I like her videos promoting SD as a tourist destination. I had a great time there in 2019
Next, Hitler was a decentish bloke, as evidenced by him doing a promo to "come visit the pretty town of Berchtesgaden..."
You can’t argue that it’s not located at a truly fine spot.
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trump is a symptom not a cause, and the cause is still very much there, if not more so than previously.
Agreed. But I don;t know if anyone can harness it like Trump. I quite like Kristi Noem.
Noem is a homophobic religious bigot. What is it you like about her?
I like her videos promoting SD as a tourist destination. I had a great time there in 2019
Next, Hitler was a decentish bloke, as evidenced by him doing a promo to "come visit the pretty town of Berchtesgaden..."
Loved his dogs. Cared for the Planet by not eating meat. Teetotal.
Twenty years ago she would probably have ended up bankrupt. Today she will crowdfund it and make millions of dollars profit from losing her court case.
What a strange world it has become.
Interesting why this has taken so long. Dominion had plenty of grounds to sue over the past two months.
Probably a massive conspiracy by lizards. Or they started the process in December and this is the next step. One of the two.
South Dakota might be safe enough to visit the rate covid is banging through the population there. I mean it's a way to go but they're on the path to herd immunity with or without a vaccine.
Twenty years ago she would probably have ended up bankrupt. Today she will crowdfund it and make millions of dollars profit from losing her court case.
What a strange world it has become.
Have you seen the amount Dominion are sueing for ?
"We have already secured an amount of doses that we need to vaccinate 380 million Europeans, and this is more than 80% of the European population [of 450 million people]," Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said other vaccine authorisations were expected in the coming weeks and months, so "Europe will have more than enough vaccine within a reliable timeframe".
She said the commission had taken the right course of action on vaccines.
"I'm convinced that when we look back at this one day we'll see, well yes, at the beginning, there was a bumpy road [but] well, that's always the case."
It's just ridiculous. They got it wrong, they should just admit it.
In her 380 million doses is she counting vaccines like Sanofi that haven't completed PIII trials and may not even end up getting approval?
No, just the two they've approved, 600m Pfizer, 160m Moderna. But the delivery schedules are pretty tough, I think in H1 they expect 300m Pfizer and 75m from Moderna, the US will get more than double that from both in H1. For the UK its 107m of Pfizer, Moderna and AZ. Hopefully the EU approves the AZ vaccine soon because they have 200m of those due in H1 which will significantly decrease their expected supply shortage and ensure they have coverage for the whole population over the year.
Max sorry not to have come back to you on China on the other thread - a long bike ride called just then. Don't want to hijack this thread or go over old ground but at some point, when it is relevant I look forward to picking it up again.
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trump is a symptom not a cause, and the cause is still very much there, if not more so than previously.
Agreed. But I don;t know if anyone can harness it like Trump. I quite like Kristi Noem.
Noem is a homophobic religious bigot. What is it you like about her?
I like her videos promoting SD as a tourist destination. I had a great time there in 2019
Next, Hitler was a decentish bloke, as evidenced by him doing a promo to "come visit the pretty town of Berchtesgaden..."
Loved his dogs. Cared for the Planet by not eating meat. Teetotal.
As opposed to the fat, drunk, rich, arrogant, war loving, serial political chameleon & mountebank who opposed him....
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
Am I right in thinking we don't have any for enough months that there shouldn't in fact be any great demand for it?
Do you want the Oxford (Russell Group) vaccine or the Moderna (Poly) one?
Let the snobbery commence.
There are reports of oldies asking for “the English” vaccine....
Yes, I saw that. I see that as slightly misguided patriotism rather than nationalism.
My mother (who is almost 80) hails from Oxford, as do her side of the family, and she is very very proud of the Oxford vaccine. Of course, she wants that one.
I've told her that the vaccine is so lethal and risky she should take the first one she gets but, if she has a choice, sure, why shouldn't she pick the Oxford one?
There's nothing wrong with pride in a home-grown success.
If the question you're asking is "which country does this therapy come from?", you're asking the wrong question. If it's the only question asked, it's elevated to good old fashioned stupidity.
Indeed, but I don't think there's anything wrong with having pride in a home-grown success (with a lot of international scientists and networking involved too, of course) as well. People want to feel part of it. Those who sneer at that tend to have a problem with patriotism more broadly.
Personally, I will take the first jab I can get. But, I'm also proud of our pharmaceutical industry so would probably feel some pride if I got the Oxford one too.
The Oxford vaccine is the product of the UK's world class university-based R&D sector. We should be very proud of it. Outside of the US, it is the best there is. We also need to make sure it is looked after and further nurtured. It is absolutely not something we should take for granted. The traditional UK brain drain came to an end as the result of deliberate policy. For me, if we are serious about levelling-up, universities would be ideal to build around as they are in all parts of the country. Give investment in university R&D substantial tax breaks, enable patent creation and tech transfer, create spin-outs, build hubs.
A rare point of agreement. We're great at research, crap at actually monetising it.
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trump is a symptom not a cause, and the cause is still very much there, if not more so than previously.
Agreed. But I don;t know if anyone can harness it like Trump. I quite like Kristi Noem.
Noem is a homophobic religious bigot. What is it you like about her?
I like her videos promoting SD as a tourist destination. I had a great time there in 2019
Next, Hitler was a decentish bloke, as evidenced by him doing a promo to "come visit the pretty town of Berchtesgaden..."
Loved his dogs. Cared for the Planet by not eating meat. Teetotal.
MInd, he tried out drugs for human use on his hound first. Minus 5 for that.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Let's take a chart. The Y-axis is how far you are socially conservative from -100 (totally liberal) to 100 (totally conservative). Your X-axis is how economically liberal you are from -100 (communist) to 100 (total free marketer).
The core Republican voting base can now be defined as lying across the high end of the top-left / top right quadrants i.e. socially conservative but broadly neutral when it comes to being left or right when it comes to economics.
A leader that does not appeal to those sentiments is not going to win the Republican base. So, with all due respect, In a Trump-Republican party contest, it's more likely that Trump wins - not necessarily by doing a third party but by an internal revolt by the base against their leaders.
Kahan did a similar plot in the Hilary Trump election, plotting voters on a chart with an individualist (left of chart)/communitarian (right of chart) axis versus an egalitarian (bottom)/authoritarian (top) axis.
Trump's voters are the top left quadrant. The Establishment is the bottom left. Trump's quadrant is fair empty, the bottom left is full of GOP wannabe contenders. Trumpsters win the primaries in that model.
Am I right in thinking we don't have any for enough months that there shouldn't in fact be any great demand for it?
Newspaper stories circulating that Drinkaware says one shouldn't have any alcohol for two days before vaccination and two weeks afterwards. I can't find any serious scientific posts which confirm this. The Russians say don't drink too much before and after theirs but that's about it.
Edit; New Scientist says no problem with Pfizer vaccine.
I've tested it. Sample of one. I had the Pfizer jab on 30 Dec and 12 units of alcohol on New Years Eve. Not a problem.
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trump is a symptom not a cause, and the cause is still very much there, if not more so than previously.
Agreed. But I don;t know if anyone can harness it like Trump. I quite like Kristi Noem.
Noem is a homophobic religious bigot. What is it you like about her?
I like her videos promoting SD as a tourist destination. I had a great time there in 2019
Next, Hitler was a decentish bloke, as evidenced by him doing a promo to "come visit the pretty town of Berchtesgaden..."
You can’t argue that it’s not located at a truly fine spot.
One of the benefits of being Fuhrer was not being troubled by nimby's.....for long.
Mr. Eagles, I do rather miss earlier days of the internet when there were more forums on specific subjects and no social media giants. I know the former still exist, but still.
Worth adding that mainstream broadcast media has declined continuously, gradually, over the years (excepting at ITV where it fell off a cliff when they made Bradby anchor and Peston political editor).
I know, I miss the old message boards and (AOL) chatrooms of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
I remember the early days of the internet as very idealistic, before it had switched to mass use. There was a strong whiff of 1970's California in the air, and all sorts of hopeful predictions for how communities would organise and represent themselves in the future.
Unfortunately we ended up with a kind of monopolistic and big-business, 1990s California instead.
It's a subject I know nothing about, but was the 4Chan tendency evident at that point?
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
If you abandon the cities and the suburbs, you cannot take the House. Period.
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
I thought a number of EU countries had done their own deals? Yes they have,
Poland has bought over 60 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from six producers, the prime minister said on Tuesday, as the country gears up for a vaccination programme early next year.
Am I right in thinking we don't have any for enough months that there shouldn't in fact be any great demand for it?
Do you want the Oxford (Russell Group) vaccine or the Moderna (Poly) one?
Let the snobbery commence.
There are reports of oldies asking for “the English” vaccine....
Yes, I saw that. I see that as slightly misguided patriotism rather than nationalism.
My mother (who is almost 80) hails from Oxford, as do her side of the family, and she is very very proud of the Oxford vaccine. Of course, she wants that one.
I've told her that the vaccine is so lethal and risky she should take the first one she gets but, if she has a choice, sure, why shouldn't she pick the Oxford one?
There's nothing wrong with pride in a home-grown success.
If the question you're asking is "which country does this therapy come from?", you're asking the wrong question. If it's the only question asked, it's elevated to good old fashioned stupidity.
Indeed, but I don't think there's anything wrong with having pride in a home-grown success (with a lot of international scientists and networking involved too, of course) as well. People want to feel part of it. Those who sneer at that tend to have a problem with patriotism more broadly.
Personally, I will take the first jab I can get. But, I'm also proud of our pharmaceutical industry so would probably feel some pride if I got the Oxford one too.
The Oxford vaccine is the product of the UK's world class university-based R&D sector. We should be very proud of it. Outside of the US, it is the best there is. We also need to make sure it is looked after and further nurtured. It is absolutely not something we should take for granted. The traditional UK brain drain came to an end as the result of deliberate policy. For me, if we are serious about levelling-up, universities would be ideal to build around as they are in all parts of the country. Give investment in university R&D substantial tax breaks, enable patent creation and tech transfer, create spin-outs, build hubs.
A rare point of agreement. We're great at research, crap at actually monetising it.
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trouble is, their "zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions" is based on delusion. How to cleanse this?
Making the left-behind feel "welcome and valuable citizens". Absolutely.
"A glimpse of an America they were comfortable with". A lot to unpack in that statement. What America was that exactly. Because judging by the comments of Trump and many of his supporters it was an America where blacks could be shot or killed by the police with impunity or denied the vote or where demonstrators could go on marches shouting anti-Semitic slogans and be praised as "fine people".
That sort of America is a horrible one and if that is the vision that these people want then we absolutely should not be pandering to them. There are limits. There are boundaries of decent behaviour. And we don't accept behaviour which breaches those boundaries just because it's the left-behind or the white working-class doing the demanding. They don't get excused from complying with decent civilised behaviour just because they're poor or uneducated or unemployed.
Trump appealed to peoples' basest instincts. The best thing we can do for people who feel ignored is make life better for them not act on their worst instincts.
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
Not before they did their deals, no. Must have slipped her German mind.....
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trump is a symptom not a cause, and the cause is still very much there, if not more so than previously.
Agreed. But I don;t know if anyone can harness it like Trump. I quite like Kristi Noem.
Noem is a homophobic religious bigot. What is it you like about her?
I like her videos promoting SD as a tourist destination. I had a great time there in 2019
Next, Hitler was a decentish bloke, as evidenced by him doing a promo to "come visit the pretty town of Berchtesgaden..."
You can’t argue that it’s not located at a truly fine spot.
One of the benefits of being Fuhrer was not being troubled by nimby's.....for long.
One of Philip Kerr's rather good Dritten Reich noir novels is based in part on exactly that theme - nimbys at Berchtesgaden.
Twenty years ago she would probably have ended up bankrupt. Today she will crowdfund it and make millions of dollars profit from losing her court case.
What a strange world it has become.
Have you seen the amount Dominion are sueing for ?
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
Not before they did their deals, no. Must have slipped her German mind.....
Like the amount of copy and pasta in her PhD thesis.....
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
MAGA and Trump are interchangeable, a distinction without a difference.
I would say:
Republican 63 million MAGA/Trump 9 million Economy 1 million
Shrewd post, highlighting an important fact. Many people vote for partisan reasons but aren't honest about the reasons. They'll give reasons like "the economy", "fairness", "sensible governance", "because change is needed", etc. But when that party clearly turns away from that value, they still vote for them. They just find a different rationalisation. There are more than a few on here with that mindset, "my party right or wrong", no better than robots or zombies.
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
I would wager this doesn't extend to *existing* contracts.
Twenty years ago she would probably have ended up bankrupt. Today she will crowdfund it and make millions of dollars profit from losing her court case.
What a strange world it has become.
Interesting why this has taken so long. Dominion had plenty of grounds to sue over the past two months.
Probably a massive conspiracy by lizards. Or they started the process in December and this is the next step. One of the two.
CNN - FBI confirm reports that they are "actively investigating" the role of Trump and Giuliani in the mob violence that has resulted in five deaths including a police officer.
FPT - nuclear weapons exist to level the playing field against those with massive conventional forces, that we couldn't hope to match, and to deter nuclear blackmail against us by nuclear armed powers.
I know others have equally strong views on this, but count me out from the unilateralists please. It's an ultimate insurance policy that I'm happy to have - and pay for - and helps me sleep soundly at night.
You could sleep soundly at night if you'd paid to be surrounded by a battalion of Grenadier Guards to keep burglars out. But if it meant your children went hungry....?
There is a huge amount of "whataboutery" supporting the UK having nuclear weapons. Would someone like to give me an actual, real life, certifiable example of when they have given me cause to sleep more soundly at night?
Where my slumbers are qualitatively better is the knowledge that some ISIS commander or some Al Qaeda financier is being lit up for delivery of a smart bomb by a special forces guy in the shadows, who has the use of the latest array of technology to call upon.
I'd be very happy for the UK to be known as providing those people the bad guys should lose sleep over. Be the go-to place for the brightest and best fighting men in the world. Hell, I'd pay top dollar to recruit some of the Foreign Legion special forces guys into the team. They were some of the best close protection I've used (and that includes having used a guy from the Bravo 2 Zero patrol).
The ability to insert these into any country - and then safely extract them - would be an ultimate expression of power. And a much more effective use of defence money than the umpteen billions spent having no more than one Trident submarine on patrol at any one time.
Well, our children aren't going hungry. The cost of a few billion a year is easily absorbable within our massive government budget of many hundreds of billions. So I don't think that's a real choice. And I think the safety payback we get for it (in terms of a safe and secure space for economic growth and trade) is worth it.
I can't speak for how you sleep at night but I certainly think they are deterring Russia from taking more serious action over the Baltic States (NATO members) and also China over Taiwan. They were also useful in the first Gulf War in convincing Saddam Hussein not to use chemical or biological weapons. Of course it's difficult to prove a counterfactual where they made *the* difference - the decisive difference - because they are a strategic deterrent, not a tactical one, and such confrontations are rare precisely because they do exist. When that fails they are part of a diplomatic and military deterrent toolkit of why things don't escalate as far as they could.
I agree with you on special forces and on smart weapons. They are essential too. But I wouldn't eliminate our strategic deterrent. I think that'd be dangerous.
I'm more in the @Casino_Royale camp here. I would not wanting to be relying on the "goodwill" of China and Russia not to use their nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear UK in the case of a dispute.
But here we enter the realms of whether we would be allowed to use Trident in that event, or whether we'd find that the system had been (wisely imho) disabled by a higher power.
If you were America, and Britain got itself into a nuclear conflict with a third party, and you had the ability to shut the system down, would you do it? Or would you just let them go ahead with it in case they asked for a refund? It isn't an independent deterrent. Everyone (including Russia and China) is aware of that fact.
I’ve read convincing arguments that the USA has ensured the UK nukes are genuinely independent in terms of use, because that gives America more leverage globally - if America’s closest ally is highly armed with nukes, then any foe of America has to factor that in to their military strategy, making any planned attack on the West/USA much more complex and unpredictable
Independent in terms of use is one factor. Over the medium term there is no independence as I understand it - if the US decided it no longer wanted the UK to have Trident I think it could take it away from us pretty easily as we rely on them to service the system. In my view it is inaccurate to say we have an independent nuclear deterrent.
The counter argument to that runs thus
- If they pulled the servicing agreement, it would take a considerable time before the missiles were actually inoperable. They would become less and less dependable, but it wouldn't shut the system down inside several years. - So useless for "turning the system off" in a crisis. - Pulling the service agreement would be ending the bilateral treaty involved. With a bump. At which point the bits in the treaty about not sharing tech etc would become moot. So the US would be looking at the UK looking for partners for a replacement system, complete with the Trident II technology for transfer*.
*A little known story - when Trident was first discussed, The French were asked about cooperation with their SLBM program. Their terms were - You can buy missiles from us. Made in France. They will be less capable than Trident. We won't transfer the technology. And we will want an example Polaris missile and all the stuff the Americans gave you.
This offer came complete with a price tag higher than Trident.
When the fact that the tech transfer they wanted was specifically banned under the treaty with the Americans, the French were incredulous that we wouldn't break it.
Interesting detail, thanks. I'm still not convinced that we have a genuinely independent deterrent. I'm not sure I would want to rely on an inadequately serviced nuclear missile system, sounds like a recipe for disaster. I am kind of on the fence on Trident to be honest, I can see arguments on both sides. I think the US nuclear umbrella is a far more important determinant of our safety. The big problem with nukes is that eventually one will go off by accident. Ultimately human civilisation will require us to get rid of them, but the safest path for that to happen is unclear. To be honest I would be surprised if human civilisation survives another few hundred years, we have come up with way too many ways to destroy it.
Mr. Eagles, I do rather miss earlier days of the internet when there were more forums on specific subjects and no social media giants. I know the former still exist, but still.
Worth adding that mainstream broadcast media has declined continuously, gradually, over the years (excepting at ITV where it fell off a cliff when they made Bradby anchor and Peston political editor).
I know, I miss the old message boards and (AOL) chatrooms of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
I remember the early days of the internet as very idealistic, before it had switched to mass use. There was a strong whiff of 1970's California in the air, and all sorts of hopeful predictions for how communities would organise and represent themselves in the future.
Unfortunately we ended up with a kind of monopolistic and big-business, 1990s California instead.
It's a subject I know nothing about, but was the 4Chan tendency evident at that point?
As far as I know, 4chan and other sites like it started quite apolitically, in that earlier more idealistic phase of the internet about 20 years ago.
Some of the promise of all this networking was fulfilled, and all sorts of communities have better access to each other ; but a lot wasn't.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Let's take a chart. The Y-axis is how far you are socially conservative from -100 (totally liberal) to 100 (totally conservative). Your X-axis is how economically liberal you are from -100 (communist) to 100 (total free marketer).
The core Republican voting base can now be defined as lying across the high end of the top-left / top right quadrants i.e. socially conservative but broadly neutral when it comes to being left or right when it comes to economics.
A leader that does not appeal to those sentiments is not going to win the Republican base. So, with all due respect, In a Trump-Republican party contest, it's more likely that Trump wins - not necessarily by doing a third party but by an internal revolt by the base against their leaders.
They can stay socially conservative. Course they can. It's a USP and a vote winner. But Trump MAGA is not that. Trump MAGA is Hard Right National Populism delivered by the Charismatic Big Orange. It can't win with him - this is clear - and it certainly can't win without him.
So the problem for the party is that as things stand the primaries will throw up a surefire losing contender. This is what they must resolve. They must ensure MAGA does not prevail in the primaries. And imo they will manage this - they'll find a way - because they are about winning power not perennial fringe opposition.
Hey, but can I have your numbers please? Yours are a key input given your niche thinking on here.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
If you abandon the cities and the suburbs, you cannot take the House. Period.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Let's take a chart. The Y-axis is how far you are socially conservative from -100 (totally liberal) to 100 (totally conservative). Your X-axis is how economically liberal you are from -100 (communist) to 100 (total free marketer).
The core Republican voting base can now be defined as lying across the high end of the top-left / top right quadrants i.e. socially conservative but broadly neutral when it comes to being left or right when it comes to economics.
A leader that does not appeal to those sentiments is not going to win the Republican base. So, with all due respect, In a Trump-Republican party contest, it's more likely that Trump wins - not necessarily by doing a third party but by an internal revolt by the base against their leaders.
Do you know what your analysis misses out? Those people when confronted by researchers with a blinded policy idea who respond to it differently than when they know whose idea it is.
The gulf in opinion on Obamacare versus the Affordable Care Act is a salient example.
FPT - nuclear weapons exist to level the playing field against those with massive conventional forces, that we couldn't hope to match, and to deter nuclear blackmail against us by nuclear armed powers.
I know others have equally strong views on this, but count me out from the unilateralists please. It's an ultimate insurance policy that I'm happy to have - and pay for - and helps me sleep soundly at night.
You could sleep soundly at night if you'd paid to be surrounded by a battalion of Grenadier Guards to keep burglars out. But if it meant your children went hungry....?
There is a huge amount of "whataboutery" supporting the UK having nuclear weapons. Would someone like to give me an actual, real life, certifiable example of when they have given me cause to sleep more soundly at night?
Where my slumbers are qualitatively better is the knowledge that some ISIS commander or some Al Qaeda financier is being lit up for delivery of a smart bomb by a special forces guy in the shadows, who has the use of the latest array of technology to call upon.
I'd be very happy for the UK to be known as providing those people the bad guys should lose sleep over. Be the go-to place for the brightest and best fighting men in the world. Hell, I'd pay top dollar to recruit some of the Foreign Legion special forces guys into the team. They were some of the best close protection I've used (and that includes having used a guy from the Bravo 2 Zero patrol).
The ability to insert these into any country - and then safely extract them - would be an ultimate expression of power. And a much more effective use of defence money than the umpteen billions spent having no more than one Trident submarine on patrol at any one time.
Well, our children aren't going hungry. The cost of a few billion a year is easily absorbable within our massive government budget of many hundreds of billions. So I don't think that's a real choice. And I think the safety payback we get for it (in terms of a safe and secure space for economic growth and trade) is worth it.
I can't speak for how you sleep at night but I certainly think they are deterring Russia from taking more serious action over the Baltic States (NATO members) and also China over Taiwan. They were also useful in the first Gulf War in convincing Saddam Hussein not to use chemical or biological weapons. Of course it's difficult to prove a counterfactual where they made *the* difference - the decisive difference - because they are a strategic deterrent, not a tactical one, and such confrontations are rare precisely because they do exist. When that fails they are part of a diplomatic and military deterrent toolkit of why things don't escalate as far as they could.
I agree with you on special forces and on smart weapons. They are essential too. But I wouldn't eliminate our strategic deterrent. I think that'd be dangerous.
I'm more in the @Casino_Royale camp here. I would not wanting to be relying on the "goodwill" of China and Russia not to use their nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear UK in the case of a dispute.
But here we enter the realms of whether we would be allowed to use Trident in that event, or whether we'd find that the system had been (wisely imho) disabled by a higher power.
If you were America, and Britain got itself into a nuclear conflict with a third party, and you had the ability to shut the system down, would you do it? Or would you just let them go ahead with it in case they asked for a refund? It isn't an independent deterrent. Everyone (including Russia and China) is aware of that fact.
It'sd not as if they were Blue Streak missiles launched from North Norfolk silos which could be traced back to the perpetrators. A SLBM is by definition untraceable and launchable from any wet bit on the map within range, and what's a chap to think if Trident-type trajectories come at him?
There is no US "off switch" for Trident. The claims that there are seem to be of the "but there must be" variety.
US policy on nuclear weapons and allies is interesting. Essentially, it is better to have them inside the tent pissing out, rather than the reverse. Hence the current comedy about Typhoon and it's ability (or not) to carry US nuclear weapons. Which is actually required.....
Yet how can the opposition know it is facing the British deterrent or a limited US one, just by looking at the incoming Tridents? Which is in some ways dangerous for the USA.
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
Not before they did their deals, no. Must have slipped her German mind.....
Like the amount of copy and pasta in her PhD thesis.....
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative.
It's the black voters in the Democrats that keep them electable. If the Democrats only had white liberals they'd be continually putting forward the likes of Sanders and wondering why they were getting shellacked in the General
Mr. Eagles, I do rather miss earlier days of the internet when there were more forums on specific subjects and no social media giants. I know the former still exist, but still.
Worth adding that mainstream broadcast media has declined continuously, gradually, over the years (excepting at ITV where it fell off a cliff when they made Bradby anchor and Peston political editor).
I know, I miss the old message boards and (AOL) chatrooms of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
I remember the early days of the internet as very idealistic, before it had switched to mass use. There was a strong whiff of 1970's California in the air, and all sorts of hopeful predictions for how communities would organise and represent themselves in the future.
Unfortunately we ended up with a kind of monopolistic and big-business, 1990s California instead.
It's a subject I know nothing about, but was the 4Chan tendency evident at that point?
Yes. Some McKinsey consultants wrote a book in the mid-90s about what sort of thing the internet would enable. It is in a box in my garage somewhere ... They identified the bringing together of small, geographically separated, like-minded communities and the power and self-affirmation it would give them. While they focused on this as a force for good, IIRC, they did also hint that it might not be just for good.
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
Not before they did their deals, no. Must have slipped her German mind.....
Like the amount of copy and pasta in her PhD thesis.....
To be fair, she didn't have the time to macaroni.....
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
If you abandon the cities and the suburbs, you cannot take the House. Period.
Well, the Republicans nearly did.
And they would have done against some other Democrat candidates. Blanket rules rarely work in a two party system, what your opponent is doing has as much impact as what the party does itself.
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
Not before they did their deals, no. Must have slipped her German mind.....
Like the amount of copy and pasta in her PhD thesis.....
To be fair, she didn't have the time to macaroni.....
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Trump running as an independent at the next election could make 1984 look close though.
Yep. That's wet dream scenario both for Trumpsters and the Dems. But my model has a working core assumption that Trump & Clan are going to disappear as serious politicos. Not dropping that because it's my firm view and also it's key to the model's utility. ATM many people are finding it impossible to imagine such a thing and this helps me generate betting and punditry value.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Let's take a chart. The Y-axis is how far you are socially conservative from -100 (totally liberal) to 100 (totally conservative). Your X-axis is how economically liberal you are from -100 (communist) to 100 (total free marketer).
The core Republican voting base can now be defined as lying across the high end of the top-left / top right quadrants i.e. socially conservative but broadly neutral when it comes to being left or right when it comes to economics.
A leader that does not appeal to those sentiments is not going to win the Republican base. So, with all due respect, In a Trump-Republican party contest, it's more likely that Trump wins - not necessarily by doing a third party but by an internal revolt by the base against their leaders.
Kahan did a similar plot in the Hilary Trump election, plotting voters on a chart with an individualist (left of chart)/communitarian (right of chart) axis versus an egalitarian (bottom)/authoritarian (top) axis.
Trump's voters are the top left quadrant. The Establishment is the bottom left. Trump's quadrant is fair empty, the bottom left is full of GOP wannabe contenders. Trumpsters win the primaries in that model.
Yes, Trump got his timing and positioning absolutely right in 2016. The Republican voting base has moved more into that top left quadrant. Now, it may be you get a reversal of things where the contenders overcrowd the top left and leave the bottom right free for one who breaks through but I doubt it.
Both parties though face a problem, this is not just a Republican issue. Look at the Democrats. Why did Biden and Harris need to make the remarks yesterday about, if this was a BLM riot, matters would have been handled differently? Tactically, it risked diverting the headlines from focusing on the Republicans rioting to BLM as well as raising the obvious retort of "well, would you have condemned it if it was a BLM riot?". It's because the activist base is pressurising them to (plus it probably diverted attention away from the fact that the AG post went to Merrick Garland, and not to a Black person, as many groups were demanding).
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
Not before they did their deals, no. Must have slipped her German mind.....
Like the amount of copy and pasta in her PhD thesis.....
To be fair, she didn't have the time to macaroni.....
Is that pronounced make-her-own-ee?
Best I could do in the limited time before he changed it!
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
Not before they did their deals, no. Must have slipped her German mind.....
Like the amount of copy and pasta in her PhD thesis.....
Pasta in her PhD thesis? That's food for thought.
Blair apparently advised the Commission they needed more expertise in rigatoni.
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trump is a symptom not a cause, and the cause is still very much there, if not more so than previously.
Agreed. But I don;t know if anyone can harness it like Trump. I quite like Kristi Noem.
Noem is a homophobic religious bigot. What is it you like about her?
I like her videos promoting SD as a tourist destination. I had a great time there in 2019
Next, Hitler was a decentish bloke, as evidenced by him doing a promo to "come visit the pretty town of Berchtesgaden..."
You can’t argue that it’s not located at a truly fine spot.
One of the benefits of being Fuhrer was not being troubled by nimby's.....for long.
One of Philip Kerr's rather good Dritten Reich noir novels is based in part on exactly that theme - nimbys at Berchtesgaden.
I liked them from the start (much more than his more airporty thrillers) but it's gratifying to see how the whole series has grown in stature, particularly since Kerr's death. They've even earned the ultimate accolade of having (fairly mediocre) copyists.
The Berlin Noir books & sequels must be ripe for a film or televisualisation - I'm thinking Philip Glenister for Bernie might be good casting?
Edit: just did a check & apparently there is an HBO movie proposal floating about. Kerr himself liked Michael Fassbinder for the role, also not a bad choice.
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
If you abandon the cities and the suburbs, you cannot take the House. Period.
Well, the Republicans nearly did.
The tragedy is that the 'rebels' were so exercised at the growing inequalities in income and wealth - and the growing distance between politicians and the people they are supposed to represent - that they turned to a brand of extreme Republicanism that was never likely to want to deliver them any sort of relief.
The big question of our era is why centre-left politicians have proved so unable to put forward a comprehensive platform to rectify the egregious distortions of 21st century society in a way that can carry a majority of sensibly minded voters in the centre of political opinion?
Within our lifetimes, if the centre-left doesn't rise to the challenge of our times, then the future will be left to the extremes.
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trouble is, their "zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions" is based on delusion. How to cleanse this?
Making the left-behind feel "welcome and valuable citizens". Absolutely.
"A glimpse of an America they were comfortable with". A lot to unpack in that statement. What America was that exactly. Because judging by the comments of Trump and many of his supporters it was an America where blacks could be shot or killed by the police with impunity or denied the vote or where demonstrators could go on marches shouting anti-Semitic slogans and be praised as "fine people".
That sort of America is a horrible one and if that is the vision that these people want then we absolutely should not be pandering to them. There are limits. There are boundaries of decent behaviour. And we don't accept behaviour which breaches those boundaries just because it's the left-behind or the white working-class doing the demanding. They don't get excused from complying with decent civilised behaviour just because they're poor or uneducated or unemployed.
Trump appealed to peoples' basest instincts. The best thing we can do for people who feel ignored is make life better for them not act on their worst instincts.
He didn't only appeal to that, though. Ethnic tension was one of his calling-cards, but he also appealed to the fact that America is probably the most socio-economically dysfunctional country in the West. Vast inequalities, grotesque and unchallenged levels of corporate influence in politics, and widening metropolitan-rural divides of culture.
America has huge potential as a society, but it's not fulfilling vast chunks of it.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative.
It's the black voters in the Democrats that keep them electable. If the Democrats only had white liberals they'd be continually putting forward the likes of Sanders and wondering why they were getting shellacked in the General
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
Not before they did their deals, no. Must have slipped her German mind.....
Like the amount of copy and pasta in her PhD thesis.....
To be fair, she didn't have the time to macaroni.....
Is that pronounced make-her-own-ee?
Best I could do in the limited time before he changed it!
Mark her own ee might me the more concerning option in an academic context.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
Citation required.
I didn't know you were such a disciple of citation, @Anabobazina, I must have missed that in your posts.
FPT - nuclear weapons exist to level the playing field against those with massive conventional forces, that we couldn't hope to match, and to deter nuclear blackmail against us by nuclear armed powers.
I know others have equally strong views on this, but count me out from the unilateralists please. It's an ultimate insurance policy that I'm happy to have - and pay for - and helps me sleep soundly at night.
You could sleep soundly at night if you'd paid to be surrounded by a battalion of Grenadier Guards to keep burglars out. But if it meant your children went hungry....?
There is a huge amount of "whataboutery" supporting the UK having nuclear weapons. Would someone like to give me an actual, real life, certifiable example of when they have given me cause to sleep more soundly at night?
Where my slumbers are qualitatively better is the knowledge that some ISIS commander or some Al Qaeda financier is being lit up for delivery of a smart bomb by a special forces guy in the shadows, who has the use of the latest array of technology to call upon.
I'd be very happy for the UK to be known as providing those people the bad guys should lose sleep over. Be the go-to place for the brightest and best fighting men in the world. Hell, I'd pay top dollar to recruit some of the Foreign Legion special forces guys into the team. They were some of the best close protection I've used (and that includes having used a guy from the Bravo 2 Zero patrol).
The ability to insert these into any country - and then safely extract them - would be an ultimate expression of power. And a much more effective use of defence money than the umpteen billions spent having no more than one Trident submarine on patrol at any one time.
Well, our children aren't going hungry. The cost of a few billion a year is easily absorbable within our massive government budget of many hundreds of billions. So I don't think that's a real choice. And I think the safety payback we get for it (in terms of a safe and secure space for economic growth and trade) is worth it.
I can't speak for how you sleep at night but I certainly think they are deterring Russia from taking more serious action over the Baltic States (NATO members) and also China over Taiwan. They were also useful in the first Gulf War in convincing Saddam Hussein not to use chemical or biological weapons. Of course it's difficult to prove a counterfactual where they made *the* difference - the decisive difference - because they are a strategic deterrent, not a tactical one, and such confrontations are rare precisely because they do exist. When that fails they are part of a diplomatic and military deterrent toolkit of why things don't escalate as far as they could.
I agree with you on special forces and on smart weapons. They are essential too. But I wouldn't eliminate our strategic deterrent. I think that'd be dangerous.
I'm more in the @Casino_Royale camp here. I would not wanting to be relying on the "goodwill" of China and Russia not to use their nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear UK in the case of a dispute.
But here we enter the realms of whether we would be allowed to use Trident in that event, or whether we'd find that the system had been (wisely imho) disabled by a higher power.
If you were America, and Britain got itself into a nuclear conflict with a third party, and you had the ability to shut the system down, would you do it? Or would you just let them go ahead with it in case they asked for a refund? It isn't an independent deterrent. Everyone (including Russia and China) is aware of that fact.
It'sd not as if they were Blue Streak missiles launched from North Norfolk silos which could be traced back to the perpetrators. A SLBM is by definition untraceable and launchable from any wet bit on the map within range, and what's a chap to think if Trident-type trajectories come at him?
There is no US "off switch" for Trident. The claims that there are seem to be of the "but there must be" variety.
And claims that there is no 'off switch' are of the 'but there couldn't be' variety. I respect your experience in various fields, but by definition, being party to US nuclear secrets isn't one of them. So logic is really all we have to go on.
Which ally of Britain would you sell independent strategic nukes to by the way? Which country would you happily sell the ability to use British technology to wipe out other countries at will? - Exactly.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Let's take a chart. The Y-axis is how far you are socially conservative from -100 (totally liberal) to 100 (totally conservative). Your X-axis is how economically liberal you are from -100 (communist) to 100 (total free marketer).
The core Republican voting base can now be defined as lying across the high end of the top-left / top right quadrants i.e. socially conservative but broadly neutral when it comes to being left or right when it comes to economics.
A leader that does not appeal to those sentiments is not going to win the Republican base. So, with all due respect, In a Trump-Republican party contest, it's more likely that Trump wins - not necessarily by doing a third party but by an internal revolt by the base against their leaders.
Kahan did a similar plot in the Hilary Trump election, plotting voters on a chart with an individualist (left of chart)/communitarian (right of chart) axis versus an egalitarian (bottom)/authoritarian (top) axis.
Trump's voters are the top left quadrant. The Establishment is the bottom left. Trump's quadrant is fair empty, the bottom left is full of GOP wannabe contenders. Trumpsters win the primaries in that model.
Yes, Trump got his timing and positioning absolutely right in 2016. The Republican voting base has moved more into that top left quadrant. Now, it may be you get a reversal of things where the contenders overcrowd the top left and leave the bottom right free for one who breaks through but I doubt it.
Both parties though face a problem, this is not just a Republican issue. Look at the Democrats. Why did Biden and Harris need to make the remarks yesterday about, if this was a BLM riot, matters would have been handled differently? Tactically, it risked diverting the headlines from focusing on the Republicans rioting to BLM as well as raising the obvious retort of "well, would you have condemned it if it was a BLM riot?". It's because the activist base is pressurising them to (plus it probably diverted attention away from the fact that the AG post went to Merrick Garland, and not to a Black person, as many groups were demanding).
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trouble is, their "zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions" is based on delusion. How to cleanse this?
Exactly. How do you begin to reason with people who believe the Q-Anon crap? Trying to accommodate them would be like banging your head against a brick wall. They are beyond the pail and just have to be ignored I'm afraid
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
Citation required.
As a random example - on Sam Sex marriage Hispanic and Asian Americans consistently poll lower support than Whites. Until Obama came out in favour African Americans also polled lower. Once Obama supported it AA support shot up.
The president of the European Commission warned EU member states they would break the law if they tried to negotiate their own side deals to secure coronavirus vaccines.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
Not before they did their deals, no. Must have slipped her German mind.....
Like the amount of copy and pasta in her PhD thesis.....
To be fair, she didn't have the time to macaroni.....
Is that pronounced make-her-own-ee?
Best I could do in the limited time before he changed it!
Don't have to worry about me changing it....was no typo....
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
If you abandon the cities and the suburbs, you cannot take the House. Period.
Well, the Republicans nearly did.
The tragedy is that the 'rebels' were so exercised at the growing inequalities in income and wealth - and the growing distance between politicians and the people they are supposed to represent - that they turned to a brand of extreme Republicanism that was never likely to want to deliver them any sort of relief.
The big question of our era is why centre-left politicians have proved so unable to put forward a comprehensive platform to rectify the egregious distortions of 21st century society in a way that can carry a majority of sensibly minded voters in the centre of political opinion?
Within our lifetimes, if the centre-left doesn't rise to the challenge of our times, then the future will be left to the extremes.
Indeed, one of the most powerful pieces of evidence available to the GOP in elections is the abject failure of cities that have been in the hands of Democratic politicians for decades. Now, it may be that the GOP would have failed equally, because the issues have to do with the concept of cities themselves, rather than with who is in power. But it is still a very strong selling point for the GOP.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
Citation required.
I didn't know you were such a disciple of citation, @Anabobazina, I must have missed that in your posts.
Mr. Eagles, I do rather miss earlier days of the internet when there were more forums on specific subjects and no social media giants. I know the former still exist, but still.
Worth adding that mainstream broadcast media has declined continuously, gradually, over the years (excepting at ITV where it fell off a cliff when they made Bradby anchor and Peston political editor).
I know, I miss the old message boards and (AOL) chatrooms of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
I remember the early days of the internet as very idealistic, before it had switched to mass use. There was a strong whiff of 1970's California in the air, and all sorts of hopeful predictions for how communities would organise and represent themselves in the future.
Unfortunately we ended up with a kind of monopolistic and big-business, 1990s California instead.
It's a subject I know nothing about, but was the 4Chan tendency evident at that point?
Yes, parts of the alt.* hierarchy of Usenet were a cess pit. There was a reason many ISPs didn't carry the alt hierarchy.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
If you abandon the cities and the suburbs, you cannot take the House. Period.
Well, the Republicans nearly did.
The tragedy is that the 'rebels' were so exercised at the growing inequalities in income and wealth - and the growing distance between politicians and the people they are supposed to represent - that they turned to a brand of extreme Republicanism that was never likely to want to deliver them any sort of relief.
The big question of our era is why centre-left politicians have proved so unable to put forward a comprehensive platform to rectify the egregious distortions of 21st century society in a way that can carry a majority of sensibly minded voters in the centre of political opinion?
Within our lifetimes, if the centre-left doesn't rise to the challenge of our times, then the future will be left to the extremes.
The simple explanation is that centre-left politicians now spend most of their energy and efforts prioritising culturally liberal stances than the economic concerns that concern most people. I've pointed out here to those that scream racist at Trump voters that a good chunk of them would have voted for Obama in 2008. They didn't care he was Black but they did care about their economic conditions. However, the Democrat party became so embroiled in cultural issues that it dropped the ball on the economic front.
It's the same in the UK with Labour, which is why I am not a great believe in thinking Labour will win the Red Wall seats any time soon.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
Citation required.
I didn't know you were such a disciple of citation, @Anabobazina, I must have missed that in your posts.
A quick scan of that shows it seems to be talking about immigrants, when your original claim was about Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people. That conflation may raise an eyebrow. Is it worth me reading the page more closely, or have you sent the wrong link?
Yes, Trump got his timing and positioning absolutely right in 2016. The Republican voting base has moved more into that top left quadrant. Now, it may be you get a reversal of things where the contenders overcrowd the top left and leave the bottom right free for one who breaks through but I doubt it.
Both parties though face a problem, this is not just a Republican issue. Look at the Democrats. Why did Biden and Harris need to make the remarks yesterday about, if this was a BLM riot, matters would have been handled differently? Tactically, it risked diverting the headlines from focusing on the Republicans rioting to BLM as well as raising the obvious retort of "well, would you have condemned it if it was a BLM riot?".
Surely that statement is right though - the BLM protests in Washington were policed in a very different way to Wednesday's protest.
Wednesday's protestors wouldn't have gone anywhere near the Capitol if it had been guarded the way it had been in the summer.
FPT - nuclear weapons exist to level the playing field against those with massive conventional forces, that we couldn't hope to match, and to deter nuclear blackmail against us by nuclear armed powers.
I know others have equally strong views on this, but count me out from the unilateralists please. It's an ultimate insurance policy that I'm happy to have - and pay for - and helps me sleep soundly at night.
You could sleep soundly at night if you'd paid to be surrounded by a battalion of Grenadier Guards to keep burglars out. But if it meant your children went hungry....?
There is a huge amount of "whataboutery" supporting the UK having nuclear weapons. Would someone like to give me an actual, real life, certifiable example of when they have given me cause to sleep more soundly at night?
Where my slumbers are qualitatively better is the knowledge that some ISIS commander or some Al Qaeda financier is being lit up for delivery of a smart bomb by a special forces guy in the shadows, who has the use of the latest array of technology to call upon.
I'd be very happy for the UK to be known as providing those people the bad guys should lose sleep over. Be the go-to place for the brightest and best fighting men in the world. Hell, I'd pay top dollar to recruit some of the Foreign Legion special forces guys into the team. They were some of the best close protection I've used (and that includes having used a guy from the Bravo 2 Zero patrol).
The ability to insert these into any country - and then safely extract them - would be an ultimate expression of power. And a much more effective use of defence money than the umpteen billions spent having no more than one Trident submarine on patrol at any one time.
Well, our children aren't going hungry. The cost of a few billion a year is easily absorbable within our massive government budget of many hundreds of billions. So I don't think that's a real choice. And I think the safety payback we get for it (in terms of a safe and secure space for economic growth and trade) is worth it.
I can't speak for how you sleep at night but I certainly think they are deterring Russia from taking more serious action over the Baltic States (NATO members) and also China over Taiwan. They were also useful in the first Gulf War in convincing Saddam Hussein not to use chemical or biological weapons. Of course it's difficult to prove a counterfactual where they made *the* difference - the decisive difference - because they are a strategic deterrent, not a tactical one, and such confrontations are rare precisely because they do exist. When that fails they are part of a diplomatic and military deterrent toolkit of why things don't escalate as far as they could.
I agree with you on special forces and on smart weapons. They are essential too. But I wouldn't eliminate our strategic deterrent. I think that'd be dangerous.
I'm more in the @Casino_Royale camp here. I would not wanting to be relying on the "goodwill" of China and Russia not to use their nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear UK in the case of a dispute.
But here we enter the realms of whether we would be allowed to use Trident in that event, or whether we'd find that the system had been (wisely imho) disabled by a higher power.
If you were America, and Britain got itself into a nuclear conflict with a third party, and you had the ability to shut the system down, would you do it? Or would you just let them go ahead with it in case they asked for a refund? It isn't an independent deterrent. Everyone (including Russia and China) is aware of that fact.
It'sd not as if they were Blue Streak missiles launched from North Norfolk silos which could be traced back to the perpetrators. A SLBM is by definition untraceable and launchable from any wet bit on the map within range, and what's a chap to think if Trident-type trajectories come at him?
There is no US "off switch" for Trident. The claims that there are seem to be of the "but there must be" variety.
And claims that there is no 'off switch' are of the 'but there couldn't be' variety. I respect your experience in various fields, but by definition, being party to US nuclear secrets isn't one of them. So logic is really all we have to go on.
Which ally of Britain would you sell independent strategic nukes to by the way? Which country would you happily sell the ability to use British technology to wipe out other countries at will? - Exactly.
Is your point that - certainly at the time Trident was set up - the answer was "the United States of America"?
FPT - nuclear weapons exist to level the playing field against those with massive conventional forces, that we couldn't hope to match, and to deter nuclear blackmail against us by nuclear armed powers.
I know others have equally strong views on this, but count me out from the unilateralists please. It's an ultimate insurance policy that I'm happy to have - and pay for - and helps me sleep soundly at night.
You could sleep soundly at night if you'd paid to be surrounded by a battalion of Grenadier Guards to keep burglars out. But if it meant your children went hungry....?
There is a huge amount of "whataboutery" supporting the UK having nuclear weapons. Would someone like to give me an actual, real life, certifiable example of when they have given me cause to sleep more soundly at night?
Where my slumbers are qualitatively better is the knowledge that some ISIS commander or some Al Qaeda financier is being lit up for delivery of a smart bomb by a special forces guy in the shadows, who has the use of the latest array of technology to call upon.
I'd be very happy for the UK to be known as providing those people the bad guys should lose sleep over. Be the go-to place for the brightest and best fighting men in the world. Hell, I'd pay top dollar to recruit some of the Foreign Legion special forces guys into the team. They were some of the best close protection I've used (and that includes having used a guy from the Bravo 2 Zero patrol).
The ability to insert these into any country - and then safely extract them - would be an ultimate expression of power. And a much more effective use of defence money than the umpteen billions spent having no more than one Trident submarine on patrol at any one time.
Well, our children aren't going hungry. The cost of a few billion a year is easily absorbable within our massive government budget of many hundreds of billions. So I don't think that's a real choice. And I think the safety payback we get for it (in terms of a safe and secure space for economic growth and trade) is worth it.
I can't speak for how you sleep at night but I certainly think they are deterring Russia from taking more serious action over the Baltic States (NATO members) and also China over Taiwan. They were also useful in the first Gulf War in convincing Saddam Hussein not to use chemical or biological weapons. Of course it's difficult to prove a counterfactual where they made *the* difference - the decisive difference - because they are a strategic deterrent, not a tactical one, and such confrontations are rare precisely because they do exist. When that fails they are part of a diplomatic and military deterrent toolkit of why things don't escalate as far as they could.
I agree with you on special forces and on smart weapons. They are essential too. But I wouldn't eliminate our strategic deterrent. I think that'd be dangerous.
I'm more in the @Casino_Royale camp here. I would not wanting to be relying on the "goodwill" of China and Russia not to use their nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear UK in the case of a dispute.
But here we enter the realms of whether we would be allowed to use Trident in that event, or whether we'd find that the system had been (wisely imho) disabled by a higher power.
If you were America, and Britain got itself into a nuclear conflict with a third party, and you had the ability to shut the system down, would you do it? Or would you just let them go ahead with it in case they asked for a refund? It isn't an independent deterrent. Everyone (including Russia and China) is aware of that fact.
It'sd not as if they were Blue Streak missiles launched from North Norfolk silos which could be traced back to the perpetrators. A SLBM is by definition untraceable and launchable from any wet bit on the map within range, and what's a chap to think if Trident-type trajectories come at him?
There is no US "off switch" for Trident. The claims that there are seem to be of the "but there must be" variety.
And claims that there is no 'off switch' are of the 'but there couldn't be' variety. I respect your experience in various fields, but by definition, being party to US nuclear secrets isn't one of them. So logic is really all we have to go on.
Which ally of Britain would you sell independent strategic nukes to by the way? Which country would you happily sell the ability to use British technology to wipe out other countries at will? - Exactly.
In order for there to be an off switch, the off signal has to be communicated to the missile. The rest of the system spends its operational life underwater.
The missile itself is carefully designed *not* to allow radio waves in or out* - that is what EMP hardening is about.
*apart from an ability to use GPS for position. And not, a GPS signal is not required for the system to work.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
Citation required.
As a random example - on Sam Sex marriage Hispanic and Asian Americans consistently poll lower support than Whites. Until Obama came out in favour African Americans also polled lower. Once Obama supported it AA support shot up.
There might be some evidence they are more socially conservative relative to whites – but that isn't what he wrote.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
This is my view too. Except I think it will not be quite such a long and difficult process. Once Trump is not POTUS, my strong sense is he'll fade quicker than most people think. And given MAGA is so wrapped up with HIM, I think that will too. I see a vibrant young Republican emerging in time for the 24 election and running on a small state, libertarian, socially "trad" ticket. He or she will have the challenge of picking up the deplorables without being deplorable. If they can, they have a decent shot.
Yes, Trump got his timing and positioning absolutely right in 2016. The Republican voting base has moved more into that top left quadrant. Now, it may be you get a reversal of things where the contenders overcrowd the top left and leave the bottom right free for one who breaks through but I doubt it.
Both parties though face a problem, this is not just a Republican issue. Look at the Democrats. Why did Biden and Harris need to make the remarks yesterday about, if this was a BLM riot, matters would have been handled differently? Tactically, it risked diverting the headlines from focusing on the Republicans rioting to BLM as well as raising the obvious retort of "well, would you have condemned it if it was a BLM riot?".
Surely that statement is right though - the BLM protests in Washington were policed in a very different way to Wednesday's protest.
It is correct and, as SSI and I pointed out last night, is very relevant in a US-specific context - more so than those on here who think it's stupid or laughable. It is not laughable - it goes to the very heart of one of the several major societal fractures in the US.
Rather than being about 'equal rights rioting' as some on here would frame it, it is about one system of justice for all, AND about equal protections of bodily security for all. Neither of those is a laughable matter, and it is offensive to reframe them in such a trite manner.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
If you abandon the cities and the suburbs, you cannot take the House. Period.
Well, the Republicans nearly did.
The tragedy is that the 'rebels' were so exercised at the growing inequalities in income and wealth - and the growing distance between politicians and the people they are supposed to represent - that they turned to a brand of extreme Republicanism that was never likely to want to deliver them any sort of relief.
The big question of our era is why centre-left politicians have proved so unable to put forward a comprehensive platform to rectify the egregious distortions of 21st century society in a way that can carry a majority of sensibly minded voters in the centre of political opinion?
Within our lifetimes, if the centre-left doesn't rise to the challenge of our times, then the future will be left to the extremes.
Indeed, one of the most powerful pieces of evidence available to the GOP in elections is the abject failure of cities that have been in the hands of Democratic politicians for decades. Now, it may be that the GOP would have failed equally, because the issues have to do with the concept of cities themselves, rather than with who is in power. But it is still a very strong selling point for the GOP.
By what metric are you measuring "failure"? Cities tend to be much more economically successful than rural areas, for reasons that are quite beyond which party is in control of either.
Maybe you meant something different to the economy, though.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
If you abandon the cities and the suburbs, you cannot take the House. Period.
Well, the Republicans nearly did.
The tragedy is that the 'rebels' were so exercised at the growing inequalities in income and wealth - and the growing distance between politicians and the people they are supposed to represent - that they turned to a brand of extreme Republicanism that was never likely to want to deliver them any sort of relief.
The big question of our era is why centre-left politicians have proved so unable to put forward a comprehensive platform to rectify the egregious distortions of 21st century society in a way that can carry a majority of sensibly minded voters in the centre of political opinion?
Within our lifetimes, if the centre-left doesn't rise to the challenge of our times, then the future will be left to the extremes.
The simple explanation is that centre-left politicians now spend most of their energy and efforts prioritising culturally liberal stances than the economic concerns that concern most people. I've pointed out here to those that scream racist at Trump voters that a good chunk of them would have voted for Obama in 2008. They didn't care he was Black but they did care about their economic conditions. However, the Democrat party became so embroiled in cultural issues that it dropped the ball on the economic front.
This line of attack might have worked in the past, but it has lost much of its potency given the Democrats' clean sweep in the world's second-largest democracy. And your boy, a poster child for the opposite approach, getting his backside handed to him.
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trouble is, their "zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions" is based on delusion. How to cleanse this?
Making the left-behind feel "welcome and valuable citizens". Absolutely.
"A glimpse of an America they were comfortable with". A lot to unpack in that statement. What America was that exactly. Because judging by the comments of Trump and many of his supporters it was an America where blacks could be shot or killed by the police with impunity or denied the vote or where demonstrators could go on marches shouting anti-Semitic slogans and be praised as "fine people".
That sort of America is a horrible one and if that is the vision that these people want then we absolutely should not be pandering to them. There are limits. There are boundaries of decent behaviour. And we don't accept behaviour which breaches those boundaries just because it's the left-behind or the white working-class doing the demanding. They don't get excused from complying with decent civilised behaviour just because they're poor or uneducated or unemployed.
Trump appealed to peoples' basest instincts. The best thing we can do for people who feel ignored is make life better for them not act on their worst instincts.
Cyclefree likes an evidence free moral high horse rant sometimes.
Black employment was at a record high under Trump. Lets see how Biden does. The early signs aren't good. Look at the democrat dominated states already.
Examples where blacks could be shot or killing with impunity? Last I looked the killers of Floyd and others were subject to due process. Did Trump try to interrupt that process or change the laws of due process?
And as for making life better for any American, well, the democrats were already out of ideas for that before the election. Again look at the states and the cities where they have held sway for decades. If this election was fought on the pre-covid economy, Trump won hands down.
Mothballed Nightingale at London's ExCeL centre is prepped to take recovering Covid patients from overwhelmed hospitals while doubling as mass- vaccination hub
Yes, Trump got his timing and positioning absolutely right in 2016. The Republican voting base has moved more into that top left quadrant. Now, it may be you get a reversal of things where the contenders overcrowd the top left and leave the bottom right free for one who breaks through but I doubt it.
Both parties though face a problem, this is not just a Republican issue. Look at the Democrats. Why did Biden and Harris need to make the remarks yesterday about, if this was a BLM riot, matters would have been handled differently? Tactically, it risked diverting the headlines from focusing on the Republicans rioting to BLM as well as raising the obvious retort of "well, would you have condemned it if it was a BLM riot?".
Surely that statement is right though - the BLM protests in Washington were policed in a very different way to Wednesday's protest.
Wednesday's protestors wouldn't have gone anywhere near the Capitol if it had been guarded the way it had been in the summer.
Yes, it is right. Lots of wishful thinking going on in MrEd's head I'm afraid.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
Citation required.
I didn't know you were such a disciple of citation, @Anabobazina, I must have missed that in your posts.
A quick scan of that shows it seems to be talking about immigrants, when your original claim was about Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people. That conflation may raise an eyebrow. Is it worth me reading the page more closely, or have you sent the wrong link?
I haven't send the wrong link and the article is about Hispanic voters, a significant chunk of whom would be immigrants. The report references 18.6m immigrant Hispanic citizens, and that was for 2014. The US Census data for 2014 shows 53.2m Hispanics in the US, of which 20m were under 19. It's unclear whether their definition of citizen includes or excludes minors. If it does, that's well over half the Hispanic population in the US, if not, it is well over a third.
But please, I am interested in any facts and figures you have to the opposite.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
This is my view too. Except I think it will not be quite such a long and difficult process. Once Trump is not POTUS, my strong sense is he'll fade quicker than most people think. And given MAGA is so wrapped up with HIM, I think that will too. I see a vibrant young Republican emerging in time for the 24 election and running on a small state, libertarian, socially "trad" ticket. He or she will have the challenge of picking up the deplorables without being deplorable. If they can, they have a decent shot.
Spot on, the Trump balloon begins to rapidly deflate at precisely 1200hrs EST on 20 January. Trump becomes a has-been schmuck and his power and potency desert him.
FPT - nuclear weapons exist to level the playing field against those with massive conventional forces, that we couldn't hope to match, and to deter nuclear blackmail against us by nuclear armed powers.
I know others have equally strong views on this, but count me out from the unilateralists please. It's an ultimate insurance policy that I'm happy to have - and pay for - and helps me sleep soundly at night.
You could sleep soundly at night if you'd paid to be surrounded by a battalion of Grenadier Guards to keep burglars out. But if it meant your children went hungry....?
There is a huge amount of "whataboutery" supporting the UK having nuclear weapons. Would someone like to give me an actual, real life, certifiable example of when they have given me cause to sleep more soundly at night?
Where my slumbers are qualitatively better is the knowledge that some ISIS commander or some Al Qaeda financier is being lit up for delivery of a smart bomb by a special forces guy in the shadows, who has the use of the latest array of technology to call upon.
I'd be very happy for the UK to be known as providing those people the bad guys should lose sleep over. Be the go-to place for the brightest and best fighting men in the world. Hell, I'd pay top dollar to recruit some of the Foreign Legion special forces guys into the team. They were some of the best close protection I've used (and that includes having used a guy from the Bravo 2 Zero patrol).
The ability to insert these into any country - and then safely extract them - would be an ultimate expression of power. And a much more effective use of defence money than the umpteen billions spent having no more than one Trident submarine on patrol at any one time.
Well, our children aren't going hungry. The cost of a few billion a year is easily absorbable within our massive government budget of many hundreds of billions. So I don't think that's a real choice. And I think the safety payback we get for it (in terms of a safe and secure space for economic growth and trade) is worth it.
I can't speak for how you sleep at night but I certainly think they are deterring Russia from taking more serious action over the Baltic States (NATO members) and also China over Taiwan. They were also useful in the first Gulf War in convincing Saddam Hussein not to use chemical or biological weapons. Of course it's difficult to prove a counterfactual where they made *the* difference - the decisive difference - because they are a strategic deterrent, not a tactical one, and such confrontations are rare precisely because they do exist. When that fails they are part of a diplomatic and military deterrent toolkit of why things don't escalate as far as they could.
I agree with you on special forces and on smart weapons. They are essential too. But I wouldn't eliminate our strategic deterrent. I think that'd be dangerous.
I'm more in the @Casino_Royale camp here. I would not wanting to be relying on the "goodwill" of China and Russia not to use their nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear UK in the case of a dispute.
But here we enter the realms of whether we would be allowed to use Trident in that event, or whether we'd find that the system had been (wisely imho) disabled by a higher power.
If you were America, and Britain got itself into a nuclear conflict with a third party, and you had the ability to shut the system down, would you do it? Or would you just let them go ahead with it in case they asked for a refund? It isn't an independent deterrent. Everyone (including Russia and China) is aware of that fact.
It'sd not as if they were Blue Streak missiles launched from North Norfolk silos which could be traced back to the perpetrators. A SLBM is by definition untraceable and launchable from any wet bit on the map within range, and what's a chap to think if Trident-type trajectories come at him?
There is no US "off switch" for Trident. The claims that there are seem to be of the "but there must be" variety.
And claims that there is no 'off switch' are of the 'but there couldn't be' variety. I respect your experience in various fields, but by definition, being party to US nuclear secrets isn't one of them. So logic is really all we have to go on.
Which ally of Britain would you sell independent strategic nukes to by the way? Which country would you happily sell the ability to use British technology to wipe out other countries at will? - Exactly.
Is your point that - certainly at the time Trident was set up - the answer was "the United States of America"?
The level of US-UK nuclear cooperation is actually quite starting. UK scientists worked (and work) in the labs where American nuclear weapons were developed.
To the point where Chuck Hansen (and other experts) have suggested that a number of American nuclear weapon designs are actually a collaboration with some UK design input. The UK warheads are actually from these joint designs.
Yes, Trump got his timing and positioning absolutely right in 2016. The Republican voting base has moved more into that top left quadrant. Now, it may be you get a reversal of things where the contenders overcrowd the top left and leave the bottom right free for one who breaks through but I doubt it.
Both parties though face a problem, this is not just a Republican issue. Look at the Democrats. Why did Biden and Harris need to make the remarks yesterday about, if this was a BLM riot, matters would have been handled differently? Tactically, it risked diverting the headlines from focusing on the Republicans rioting to BLM as well as raising the obvious retort of "well, would you have condemned it if it was a BLM riot?".
Surely that statement is right though - the BLM protests in Washington were policed in a very different way to Wednesday's protest.
"In Washington" is a pretty important qualifier, and the differences in approach there can perhaps be partially attributed to who is currently in control of the levers of political power.
However, every single one of the Trump 2020 voters I know cited Democrat failure to properly police BLM rioters in Democrat-run places like Portland as their primary reason for not voting for Biden. The logic seems to be simply that if the Democrat party aren't interested in keeping law and order in the parts of the country they already ran, they would have similarly little interest in retaining order nationwide if they ran that.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
If you abandon the cities and the suburbs, you cannot take the House. Period.
Well, the Republicans nearly did.
The tragedy is that the 'rebels' were so exercised at the growing inequalities in income and wealth - and the growing distance between politicians and the people they are supposed to represent - that they turned to a brand of extreme Republicanism that was never likely to want to deliver them any sort of relief.
The big question of our era is why centre-left politicians have proved so unable to put forward a comprehensive platform to rectify the egregious distortions of 21st century society in a way that can carry a majority of sensibly minded voters in the centre of political opinion?
Within our lifetimes, if the centre-left doesn't rise to the challenge of our times, then the future will be left to the extremes.
The simple explanation is that centre-left politicians now spend most of their energy and efforts prioritising culturally liberal stances than the economic concerns that concern most people. I've pointed out here to those that scream racist at Trump voters that a good chunk of them would have voted for Obama in 2008. They didn't care he was Black but they did care about their economic conditions. However, the Democrat party became so embroiled in cultural issues that it dropped the ball on the economic front.
It's the same in the UK with Labour, which is why I am not a great believe in thinking Labour will win the Red Wall seats any time soon.
You can see it in the early stages of the new regime. Racial grievance and identity are all. The democrats have little or nothing to say on most other issues.
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trouble is, their "zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions" is based on delusion. How to cleanse this?
Making the left-behind feel "welcome and valuable citizens". Absolutely.
"A glimpse of an America they were comfortable with". A lot to unpack in that statement. What America was that exactly. Because judging by the comments of Trump and many of his supporters it was an America where blacks could be shot or killed by the police with impunity or denied the vote or where demonstrators could go on marches shouting anti-Semitic slogans and be praised as "fine people".
That sort of America is a horrible one and if that is the vision that these people want then we absolutely should not be pandering to them. There are limits. There are boundaries of decent behaviour. And we don't accept behaviour which breaches those boundaries just because it's the left-behind or the white working-class doing the demanding. They don't get excused from complying with decent civilised behaviour just because they're poor or uneducated or unemployed.
Trump appealed to peoples' basest instincts. The best thing we can do for people who feel ignored is make life better for them not act on their worst instincts.
Cyclefree likes an evidence free moral high horse rant sometimes.
Black employment was at a record high under Trump. Lets see how Biden does. The early signs aren't good. Look at the democrat dominated states already.
Examples where blacks could be shot or killing with impunity? Last I looked the killers of Floyd and others were subject to due process. Did Trump try to interrupt that process or change the laws of due process?
And as for making life better for any American, well, the democrats were already out of ideas for that before the election. Again look at the states and the cities where they have held sway for decades. If this election was fought on the pre-covid economy, Trump won hands down.
I'm guessing everyone looks like they're on a moral high horse, when you're lying in the moral gutter.
FWIW, opposing antisemitism isn't moralising, it's a basic entry requirement for being a civilised human. Try it.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
This is my view too. Except I think it will not be quite such a long and difficult process. Once Trump is not POTUS, my strong sense is he'll fade quicker than most people think. And given MAGA is so wrapped up with HIM, I think that will too. I see a vibrant young Republican emerging in time for the 24 election and running on a small state, libertarian, socially "trad" ticket. He or she will have the challenge of picking up the deplorables without being deplorable. If they can, they have a decent shot.
Spot on, the Trump balloon begins to rapidly deflate at precisely 1200hrs EST on 20 January. Trump becomes a has-been schmuck and his power and potency desert him.
Nothing from you but evidence free lazy slurring, as usual.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
If you abandon the cities and the suburbs, you cannot take the House. Period.
Well, the Republicans nearly did.
The tragedy is that the 'rebels' were so exercised at the growing inequalities in income and wealth - and the growing distance between politicians and the people they are supposed to represent - that they turned to a brand of extreme Republicanism that was never likely to want to deliver them any sort of relief.
The big question of our era is why centre-left politicians have proved so unable to put forward a comprehensive platform to rectify the egregious distortions of 21st century society in a way that can carry a majority of sensibly minded voters in the centre of political opinion?
Within our lifetimes, if the centre-left doesn't rise to the challenge of our times, then the future will be left to the extremes.
The simple explanation is that centre-left politicians now spend most of their energy and efforts prioritising culturally liberal stances than the economic concerns that concern most people. I've pointed out here to those that scream racist at Trump voters that a good chunk of them would have voted for Obama in 2008. They didn't care he was Black but they did care about their economic conditions. However, the Democrat party became so embroiled in cultural issues that it dropped the ball on the economic front.
This line of attack might have worked in the past, but it has lost much of its potency given the Democrats' clean sweep in the world's second-largest democracy. And your boy, a poster child for the opposite approach, getting his backside handed to him.
I don't think the Democrats have built any durable electoral coalition as yet, though. A huge amount of these votes were anyone-but-Trump votes, which will subside as he disappears from the scene. One more hopeful sign of the Democrats reconnecting with a working-class base looks to be Biden's choice of Labour Secretary, who I think Bernie Sanders endorses.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
Citation required.
I didn't know you were such a disciple of citation, @Anabobazina, I must have missed that in your posts.
A quick scan of that shows it seems to be talking about immigrants, when your original claim was about Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people. That conflation may raise an eyebrow. Is it worth me reading the page more closely, or have you sent the wrong link?
I haven't send the wrong link and the article is about Hispanic voters, a significant chunk of whom would be immigrants. The report references 18.6m immigrant Hispanic citizens, and that was for 2014. The US Census data for 2014 shows 53.2m Hispanics in the US, of which 20m were under 19. It's unclear whether their definition of citizen includes or excludes minors. If it does, that's well over half the Hispanic population in the US, if not, it is well over a third.
But please, I am interested in any facts and figures you have to the opposite.
Er, what percentage of African Americans are immigrants, do you think?
Yes, Trump got his timing and positioning absolutely right in 2016. The Republican voting base has moved more into that top left quadrant. Now, it may be you get a reversal of things where the contenders overcrowd the top left and leave the bottom right free for one who breaks through but I doubt it.
Both parties though face a problem, this is not just a Republican issue. Look at the Democrats. Why did Biden and Harris need to make the remarks yesterday about, if this was a BLM riot, matters would have been handled differently? Tactically, it risked diverting the headlines from focusing on the Republicans rioting to BLM as well as raising the obvious retort of "well, would you have condemned it if it was a BLM riot?".
Surely that statement is right though - the BLM protests in Washington were policed in a very different way to Wednesday's protest.
"In Washington" is a pretty important qualifier, and the differences in approach there can perhaps be partially attributed to who is currently in control of the levers of political power.
However, every single one of the Trump 2020 voters I know cited Democrat failure to properly police BLM rioters in Democrat-run places like Portland as their primary reason for not voting for Biden. The logic seems to be simply that if the Democrat party aren't interested in keeping law and order in the parts of the country they already ran, they would have similarly little interest in retaining order nationwide if they ran that.
Do those people actually live in Portland or do they live elsewhere and so voted on the basis of media reporting?
I love it when people who are implacably opposed to the Republican Party try to give it lessons. Presumably to maintain the notion that everything is alright in the West and its business as usual, and what you are seeing is not a hologram.
But here's the thing. It really isn't all right.
The right is completely split in America. The party elite and the Trumpist base despise each other totally. The latter will not turn out for the former, as Georgia showed, and what follows is a hugely bitter primaries battle between the two factions ahead of 2022. When millions will not turn out again and the democrat hegemony intensifies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats will be deliberating just how much of a Jihad they want to declare on the many millions of Americans who turned out for Trump and now have zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions.
Trump showed his millions of supporters a glimpse of an America they were comfortable with and where they were welcome and valuable citizens.
They are not going back to the likes of Romney. Not now. Not ever.
Trouble is, their "zero faith in their country, its electoral system and its institutions" is based on delusion. How to cleanse this?
Making the left-behind feel "welcome and valuable citizens". Absolutely.
"A glimpse of an America they were comfortable with". A lot to unpack in that statement. What America was that exactly. Because judging by the comments of Trump and many of his supporters it was an America where blacks could be shot or killed by the police with impunity or denied the vote or where demonstrators could go on marches shouting anti-Semitic slogans and be praised as "fine people".
That sort of America is a horrible one and if that is the vision that these people want then we absolutely should not be pandering to them. There are limits. There are boundaries of decent behaviour. And we don't accept behaviour which breaches those boundaries just because it's the left-behind or the white working-class doing the demanding. They don't get excused from complying with decent civilised behaviour just because they're poor or uneducated or unemployed.
Trump appealed to peoples' basest instincts. The best thing we can do for people who feel ignored is make life better for them not act on their worst instincts.
Cyclefree likes an evidence free moral high horse rant sometimes.
Black employment was at a record high under Trump. Lets see how Biden does. The early signs aren't good. Look at the democrat dominated states already.
Examples where blacks could be shot or killing with impunity? Last I looked the killers of Floyd and others were subject to due process. Did Trump try to interrupt that process or change the laws of due process?
And as for making life better for any American, well, the democrats were already out of ideas for that before the election. Again look at the states and the cities where they have held sway for decades. If this election was fought on the pre-covid economy, Trump won hands down.
That Trump did not have the fancy footwork to see what Covid could do to his chances has spared us four more years.
But I also think Biden will disappoint those who voted for him. Nor will he carry those who didn't. Not a great time ahead for the USA, I fear.
FPT - nuclear weapons exist to level the playing field against those with massive conventional forces, that we couldn't hope to match, and to deter nuclear blackmail against us by nuclear armed powers.
I know others have equally strong views on this, but count me out from the unilateralists please. It's an ultimate insurance policy that I'm happy to have - and pay for - and helps me sleep soundly at night.
You could sleep soundly at night if you'd paid to be surrounded by a battalion of Grenadier Guards to keep burglars out. But if it meant your children went hungry....?
There is a huge amount of "whataboutery" supporting the UK having nuclear weapons. Would someone like to give me an actual, real life, certifiable example of when they have given me cause to sleep more soundly at night?
Where my slumbers are qualitatively better is the knowledge that some ISIS commander or some Al Qaeda financier is being lit up for delivery of a smart bomb by a special forces guy in the shadows, who has the use of the latest array of technology to call upon.
I'd be very happy for the UK to be known as providing those people the bad guys should lose sleep over. Be the go-to place for the brightest and best fighting men in the world. Hell, I'd pay top dollar to recruit some of the Foreign Legion special forces guys into the team. They were some of the best close protection I've used (and that includes having used a guy from the Bravo 2 Zero patrol).
The ability to insert these into any country - and then safely extract them - would be an ultimate expression of power. And a much more effective use of defence money than the umpteen billions spent having no more than one Trident submarine on patrol at any one time.
Well, our children aren't going hungry. The cost of a few billion a year is easily absorbable within our massive government budget of many hundreds of billions. So I don't think that's a real choice. And I think the safety payback we get for it (in terms of a safe and secure space for economic growth and trade) is worth it.
I can't speak for how you sleep at night but I certainly think they are deterring Russia from taking more serious action over the Baltic States (NATO members) and also China over Taiwan. They were also useful in the first Gulf War in convincing Saddam Hussein not to use chemical or biological weapons. Of course it's difficult to prove a counterfactual where they made *the* difference - the decisive difference - because they are a strategic deterrent, not a tactical one, and such confrontations are rare precisely because they do exist. When that fails they are part of a diplomatic and military deterrent toolkit of why things don't escalate as far as they could.
I agree with you on special forces and on smart weapons. They are essential too. But I wouldn't eliminate our strategic deterrent. I think that'd be dangerous.
I'm more in the @Casino_Royale camp here. I would not wanting to be relying on the "goodwill" of China and Russia not to use their nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear UK in the case of a dispute.
But here we enter the realms of whether we would be allowed to use Trident in that event, or whether we'd find that the system had been (wisely imho) disabled by a higher power.
If you were America, and Britain got itself into a nuclear conflict with a third party, and you had the ability to shut the system down, would you do it? Or would you just let them go ahead with it in case they asked for a refund? It isn't an independent deterrent. Everyone (including Russia and China) is aware of that fact.
It'sd not as if they were Blue Streak missiles launched from North Norfolk silos which could be traced back to the perpetrators. A SLBM is by definition untraceable and launchable from any wet bit on the map within range, and what's a chap to think if Trident-type trajectories come at him?
There is no US "off switch" for Trident. The claims that there are seem to be of the "but there must be" variety.
And claims that there is no 'off switch' are of the 'but there couldn't be' variety. I respect your experience in various fields, but by definition, being party to US nuclear secrets isn't one of them. So logic is really all we have to go on.
Which ally of Britain would you sell independent strategic nukes to by the way? Which country would you happily sell the ability to use British technology to wipe out other countries at will? - Exactly.
Is your point that - certainly at the time Trident was set up - the answer was "the United States of America"?
No. My point is that there is no other country, however loyal, however much a staunch ally, to which one Government could sensibly give/sell/or rent the ability to destroy other countries at a button press, on 'free-for-all' basis. You would need appropriate checks and balances.
It is a matter of public record that without American support, Trident would be out of commission within weeks. I also believe that we could not use it independently in the immediate term without America's express permission. The fact that the last time we tried to hit a target 'off the West coast of Africa', the missile veered off course and went in the direction of America, if it doesn't provide corroboration for this, at least indicates that once a target is identified and put in by UK forces firing it, the missile has the ability to change its course and follow an alternative route.
Comments
That sounds suspiciously like the words of a man volunteering to assist with the space cannon's development.
The core Republican voting base can now be defined as lying across the high end of the top-left / top right quadrants i.e. socially conservative but broadly neutral when it comes to being left or right when it comes to economics.
A leader that does not appeal to those sentiments is not going to win the Republican base. So, with all due respect, In a Trump-Republican party contest, it's more likely that Trump wins - not necessarily by doing a third party but by an internal revolt by the base against their leaders.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
a ) it destabilises the rest of the party
b ) the south isn't solid if black people get to vote.
- If they pulled the servicing agreement, it would take a considerable time before the missiles were actually inoperable. They would become less and less dependable, but it wouldn't shut the system down inside several years.
- So useless for "turning the system off" in a crisis.
- Pulling the service agreement would be ending the bilateral treaty involved. With a bump. At which point the bits in the treaty about not sharing tech etc would become moot. So the US would be looking at the UK looking for partners for a replacement system, complete with the Trident II technology for transfer*.
*A little known story - when Trident was first discussed, The French were asked about cooperation with their SLBM program. Their terms were - You can buy missiles from us. Made in France. They will be less capable than Trident. We won't transfer the technology. And we will want an example Polaris missile and all the stuff the Americans gave you.
This offer came complete with a price tag higher than Trident.
When the fact that the tech transfer they wanted was specifically banned under the treaty with the Americans, the French were incredulous that we wouldn't break it.
Unfortunately we ended up with a kind of monopolistic and giant-business, 1990's California instead, alternately capitalising on people's tastes and stoking their resentments, for clicks.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
Trump's voters are the top left quadrant. The Establishment is the bottom left. Trump's quadrant is fair empty, the bottom left is full of GOP wannabe contenders. Trumpsters win the primaries in that model.
Ursula von der Leyen said the EU had agreed a "legally binding framework" that would prevent individual countries from cutting their own vaccination deals, after Brussels came under increasing criticism over the slow pace of the vaccination roll-out.
The Commission has negotiated with pharmaceutical companies on the behalf of the EU member states. Negotiating as a bloc had driven down the price of the vaccines, Mrs von der Leyen said.
She said: "The only framework is, we do this together, and no member state on this legal binding basis is allowed to negotiate in parallel, or to have a contract in parallel."
"The path that we have taken together in Europe is the right one. We want to proceed together," she said, ""I'm very much convinced that this European course of action was the right one. And I think that will be proven in hindsight."
Mrs von der Leyen announced that the commission had agreed to buy a total of up to another 300 million doses of the Biotech Pfizer vaccine, potentially doubling the 300 million already secured by the bloc. Mrs von der Leyen said 75 million doses were available from quarter two of this year, with the rest being delivered in the third and fourth quarter.
Has she mentioned this to Germany?
Poland has bought over 60 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from six producers, the prime minister said on Tuesday, as the country gears up for a vaccination programme early next year.
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-poland/poland-has-bought-over-60-million-covid-19-vaccine-doses-pm-says-idUKKBN28I17A?edition-redirect=uk
"A glimpse of an America they were comfortable with". A lot to unpack in that statement. What America was that exactly. Because judging by the comments of Trump and many of his supporters it was an America where blacks could be shot or killed by the police with impunity or denied the vote or where demonstrators could go on marches shouting anti-Semitic slogans and be praised as "fine people".
That sort of America is a horrible one and if that is the vision that these people want then we absolutely should not be pandering to them. There are limits. There are boundaries of decent behaviour. And we don't accept behaviour which breaches those boundaries just because it's the left-behind or the white working-class doing the demanding. They don't get excused from complying with decent civilised behaviour just because they're poor or uneducated or unemployed.
Trump appealed to peoples' basest instincts. The best thing we can do for people who feel ignored is make life better for them not act on their worst instincts.
There are more than a few on here with that mindset, "my party right or wrong", no better than robots or zombies.
I am kind of on the fence on Trident to be honest, I can see arguments on both sides. I think the US nuclear umbrella is a far more important determinant of our safety.
The big problem with nukes is that eventually one will go off by accident. Ultimately human civilisation will require us to get rid of them, but the safest path for that to happen is unclear. To be honest I would be surprised if human civilisation survives another few hundred years, we have come up with way too many ways to destroy it.
Some of the promise of all this networking was fulfilled, and all sorts of communities have better access to each other ; but a lot wasn't.
So the problem for the party is that as things stand the primaries will throw up a surefire losing contender. This is what they must resolve. They must ensure MAGA does not prevail in the primaries. And imo they will manage this - they'll find a way - because they are about winning power not perennial fringe opposition.
Hey, but can I have your numbers please? Yours are a key input given your niche thinking on here.
Those people when confronted by researchers with a blinded policy idea who respond to it differently than when they know whose idea it is.
The gulf in opinion on Obamacare versus the Affordable Care Act is a salient example.
If the Democrats only had white liberals they'd be continually putting forward the likes of Sanders and wondering why they were getting shellacked in the General
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_South_Carolina_Democratic_presidential_primary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Carolina_Democratic_presidential_primary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_South_Carolina_Democratic_presidential_primary
Both parties though face a problem, this is not just a Republican issue. Look at the Democrats. Why did Biden and Harris need to make the remarks yesterday about, if this was a BLM riot, matters would have been handled differently? Tactically, it risked diverting the headlines from focusing on the Republicans rioting to BLM as well as raising the obvious retort of "well, would you have condemned it if it was a BLM riot?". It's because the activist base is pressurising them to (plus it probably diverted attention away from the fact that the AG post went to Merrick Garland, and not to a Black person, as many groups were demanding).
The Berlin Noir books & sequels must be ripe for a film or televisualisation - I'm thinking Philip Glenister for Bernie might be good casting?
Edit: just did a check & apparently there is an HBO movie proposal floating about. Kerr himself liked Michael Fassbinder for the role, also not a bad choice.
The big question of our era is why centre-left politicians have proved so unable to put forward a comprehensive platform to rectify the egregious distortions of 21st century society in a way that can carry a majority of sensibly minded voters in the centre of political opinion?
Within our lifetimes, if the centre-left doesn't rise to the challenge of our times, then the future will be left to the extremes.
America has huge potential as a society, but it's not fulfilling vast chunks of it.
Here is one anyway: https://www.newamericaneconomy.org/news/updates/press-release-new-report-shows-foreign-born-citizens-socially-conservative-native-born-counterparts-less-likely-identify-either-political-party/
Which ally of Britain would you sell independent strategic nukes to by the way? Which country would you happily sell the ability to use British technology to wipe out other countries at will? - Exactly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/5gxj9v/what_is_copypasta/
It's the same in the UK with Labour, which is why I am not a great believe in thinking Labour will win the Red Wall seats any time soon.
Wednesday's protestors wouldn't have gone anywhere near the Capitol if it had been guarded the way it had been in the summer.
The missile itself is carefully designed *not* to allow radio waves in or out* - that is what EMP hardening is about.
*apart from an ability to use GPS for position. And not, a GPS signal is not required for the system to work.
Rather than being about 'equal rights rioting' as some on here would frame it, it is about one system of justice for all, AND about equal protections of bodily security for all. Neither of those is a laughable matter, and it is offensive to reframe them in such a trite manner.
Cities tend to be much more economically successful than rural areas, for reasons that are quite beyond which party is in control of either.
Maybe you meant something different to the economy, though.
Black employment was at a record high under Trump. Lets see how Biden does. The early signs aren't good. Look at the democrat dominated states already.
Examples where blacks could be shot or killing with impunity? Last I looked the killers of Floyd and others were subject to due process. Did Trump try to interrupt that process or change the laws of due process?
And as for making life better for any American, well, the democrats were already out of ideas for that before the election. Again look at the states and the cities where they have held sway for decades. If this election was fought on the pre-covid economy, Trump won hands down.
Mothballed Nightingale at London's ExCeL centre is prepped to take recovering Covid patients from overwhelmed hospitals while doubling as mass- vaccination hub
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9126279/Mothballed-Nightingale-Londons-ExCel-centre-prepared.html
But please, I am interested in any facts and figures you have to the opposite.
To the point where Chuck Hansen (and other experts) have suggested that a number of American nuclear weapon designs are actually a collaboration with some UK design input. The UK warheads are actually from these joint designs.
However, every single one of the Trump 2020 voters I know cited Democrat failure to properly police BLM rioters in Democrat-run places like Portland as their primary reason for not voting for Biden. The logic seems to be simply that if the Democrat party aren't interested in keeping law and order in the parts of the country they already ran, they would have similarly little interest in retaining order nationwide if they ran that.
FWIW, opposing antisemitism isn't moralising, it's a basic entry requirement for being a civilised human. Try it.
But I also think Biden will disappoint those who voted for him. Nor will he carry those who didn't. Not a great time ahead for the USA, I fear.
It is a matter of public record that without American support, Trident would be out of commission within weeks. I also believe that we could not use it independently in the immediate term without America's express permission. The fact that the last time we tried to hit a target 'off the West coast of Africa', the missile veered off course and went in the direction of America, if it doesn't provide corroboration for this, at least indicates that once a target is identified and put in by UK forces firing it, the missile has the ability to change its course and follow an alternative route.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38708823