Only in America... | Page 23 | Vital Football

Only in America...

hulloutpost said:
I don't know, I reckon the Mail amongst other non left papers do a pretty good job of highlighting unacceptable police behaviour.

Biden clearly introduced her as his son. We'll agree to disagree on that one.

Balance is missing when many posts on here have a left to extreme left bias. It would be boring if I left you to all congratulate yourselves on sharing the same world solutions and unchallenged views.
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Does it matter? Reagan was a doddery old fool who ended up with two terms.
 
Rasenimp said:
On the point of a recount being needed - it's pretty clearly not needed if the gap is that large? Which I think is the point. It varies state by state, but in Wisconsin, if the margin is closer the state deals with the cost of a recount (this seems to be pretty common, in some states its automatic for close margins, in others candidates can request it). Asking for a whole state wide recount when you're more than 20,000 votes behind - seems fair enough that the candidate fits the bill for that?

Re: postal votes - there have been some issues in the UK etc previously but the republicans haven't got one shred of evidence so far of issues in this election. It's been pretty nakedly a voter suppression tactic - there's nothing dodgy they've been able to show at all even with hundreds of lawyers and observers swarming vote counts..? It's just been shouting loudly about it being fraud in states where Trump is losing, having led initially, having told his own supporters not to vote via mail...
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Wisconsin rules are there can be no recount unless margin is less than 1%, but since recounts usually only end up being a less than 500 vote change and 1% represents a much larger value than that its a 3m dollar price, presumably to prevent precisely the sort of shenanigans Trump is up to. Certainly worked in this case it woild appear
 
On another note, it doesnt look likely but it would have been very fitting if Biden passed the 270 threshold by winning Arizona. I can imagine a single hand rising from John McCains grave, with a middle finger extended...
 
Main thing that is worrying really for next time around is that the Republicans in 2024 are going to be looking for more Trumpism as opposed to any sort of soul searching following a landslide defeat.

If it's someone with extreme views like Tom Cotton, who has the Trump politics but a fairly thin veneer of being an actual competent politician/not completely farcical, some of the people who can't bring themselves to vote for Trump (or at least openly say they'd support him) because of what he says and how he behaves will be able to justify it without such a blatant character blocker.
 
Rasenimp said:
Main thing that is worrying really for next time around is that the Republicans in 2024 are going to be looking for more Trumpism as opposed to any sort of soul searching following a landslide defeat.

If it's someone with extreme views like Tom Cotton, who has the Trump politics but a fairly thin veneer of being an actual competent politician/not completely farcical, some of the people who can't bring themselves to vote for Trump (or at least openly say they'd support him) because of what he says and how he behaves will be able to justify it without such a blatant character blocker.
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Yes this isn’t quite the repudiation of Trumpism that would/should have killed it, and it’ll have implications in other countries, including ours. I can see the likes of Farage and Johnson dog-whistling even more, as it clearly strikes a chord with the hard of thinking.
 
MaineRoad_96 said:
Yes this isn’t quite the repudiation of Trumpism that would/should have killed it, and it’ll have implications in other countries, including ours. I can see the likes of Farage and Johnson dog-whistling even more, as it clearly strikes a chord with the hard of thinking.
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Yeah I mean the clear tactic at the moment is to outright lie about things - for instance how an election works - and Farage is already on TV parroting it verbatim. If happy to do it for the US, sure he is for the UK.

Sort of like previous populist campaigns, but at least many of the claims etc were disputed but defensible in some way, or Hully could come on here and try and make a case for it. The ballot stuff isn't defensible and doesn't stand up to any scrutiny, but still takes hold and has legions of supporters.
 
It's a disgrace Farage gets the airtime. He qualifies how exactly?

Addressing Trumpism (or Farageism) will take years, but it has to be done by centrists/moderates/democrats/liberals (whatever we want to call them) and it has to be done empathetically, however hard that might seem, and with real policies not just populist gestures.

I said somewhere on one thread (UK democracy maybe) that we were quite fortunate that Trump is so incompetent and the real danger is if they continue down this road and get someone vaguely competent. However, one part of Trump's success and attraction (to at least 69 million people) is his undoubted charisma (yes, I know), which others will find hard to match.
 
NottyImp said:
Populism - at both ends of the political spectrum - is also built on misinformation, propaganda and lies.
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And in the age of social media it's field day for this stuff.

First thing(s) Biden needs to do when (if) he gets in is:
1. How to address/ regulate social media and non-mainstream information sources
2. (linked) how to address the age of rampant conspiracy theories
3. (linked again) How to get under the skin of Trumpism, understand it, and work out how to kill it at source

At the same time a more top-down, long term approach will be to develop policies to benefit these people who feel ignored, which will be difficult to do, and difficult to get through if they don't hold the Senate.
 
simes69 said:
It's a disgrace Farage gets the airtime. He qualifies how exactly?

Addressing Trumpism (or Farageism) will take years, but it has to be done by centrists/moderates/democrats/liberals (whatever we want to call them) and it has to be done empathetically, however hard that might seem, and with real policies not just populist gestures.

I said somewhere on one thread (UK democracy maybe) that we were quite fortunate that Trump is so incompetent and the real danger is if they continue down this road and get someone vaguely competent. However, one part of Trump's success and attraction (to at least 69 million people) is his undoubted charisma (yes, I know), which others will find hard to match.
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Tend to agree with a lot of this but at times like now, it's much harder to provide an empathetic view than pour scorn unfortunately. And the Dems genuinely seemed to try to campaign in those states Hilary neglected, listen to voices and come up with an offer that a moderate could vote for but have still struggled to pull away in states that were more traditionally democrat.

Do we think Starmer for instance in the UK would be any better placed to actually do that if you swapped say the rust belt for the 'red wall'? The polling isn't good at the moment - a government presiding over unneccessary deaths and dogged by incompetence and bad news stories (Cummings etc) still about neck and neck. You can tell they're trying to use Northern voices like Nandy etc to appeal to people with concerns around immigration etc, but banging a drum and doing a big billboard about how you're about to be overrun by people on dinghies from Calais seems immediately more popular (and louder) than policies about improving integration, for example... even if in reality, you're not actually fixing anything with the banging the drum approach.
 
Rasenimp said:
Tend to agree with a lot of this but at times like now, it's much harder to provide an empathetic view than pour scorn unfortunately. And the Dems genuinely seemed to try to campaign in those states Hilary neglected, listen to voices and come up with an offer that a moderate could vote for but have still struggled to pull away in states that were more traditionally democrat.

Do we think Starmer for instance in the UK would be any better placed to actually do that if you swapped say the rust belt for the 'red wall'? The polling isn't good at the moment - a government presiding over unneccessary deaths and dogged by incompetence and bad news stories (Cummings etc) still about neck and neck. You can tell they're trying to use Northern voices like Nandy etc to appeal to people with concerns around immigration etc, but banging a drum and doing a big billboard about how you're about to be overrun by people on dinghies from Calais seems immediately more popular (and louder) than policies about improving integration, for example... even if in reality, you're not actually fixing anything with the banging the drum approach.
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Good points all. I would say the red wall is almost synonymous with the US rust belt. Some very similar issues mostly rooted in structural changes to the economy 30 years ago. Misunderstood and neglected since by all sides. If I was Starmer I would be doing some very in depth research about the red wall and what makes it tick (same as Biden should do with the Trump supporters in the US).

Labour has a lot of genuine northern voices (Nandy was a leadership contender so it's not surprising she gets wheeled out a lot) unlike the Tories who if they are northern tend to be 'landed' northern (I only knew Gove was a Scot from watching Spitting Image!).

Covid has thrown a total curveball into politics and people's perceptions of politics, and it will remain that way for the foreseeable future. It's the only real issue for now. Once it's over or in control, all bets are off and we will hopefully start to find a new political equilibrium. For instance, how will the Tories plans to level up go when they need to pay for Covid? They've got off to a bad start with the whole Manchester thing. How will Starmer adapt to leadership when Labour has to actually start formulating its policy platform? We still don't know what sort of Brexit we are getting and how that will impact. Luckily Labour has 4 more years to think about these things and how to address them and Starmer is an infinitely more capable pair of hands than Jezza was! There is also some ability in his shadow cabinet.

Of course, it may be that Starmer ends up being the Neil Kinnock, rooting out or assimilating the left, dealing with bigotry, and someone like Burnham comes back in a few years to be the Smith/Blair.
 
The real danger is someone who is as populist as Trump but considerably smarter coming to the fore in the GOP
 
simes69 said:
At the same time a more top-down, long term approach will be to develop policies to benefit these people who feel ignored, which will be difficult to do, and difficult to get through if they don't hold the Senate.
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I wonder about that "top down" approach. It's one of the complaints people seem to have that politics is too "top down" and run by technocrats and bureaucrats, whilst having little connection with "ordinary people's" lives. It's arguably what gives populism its lustre, regardless of how illusory that may turn out to be.

My own view is that politics needs to change a lot more than that. It needs root-and-branch reform - from electoral mechanisms - to how elected representatives answer to the people that elect them and, crucially, how power (aka wealth) is distributed in society as a whole.

As the newly elected Pol Pot of Lincolnshire, I strongly recommend you listen to me. I really don't want to have to send you all to a re-education camp in Boston.
 
simes69 said:
Good points all. I would say the red wall is almost synonymous with the US rust belt. Some very similar issues mostly rooted in structural changes to the economy 30 years ago. Misunderstood and neglected since by all sides. If I was Starmer I would be doing some very in depth research about the red wall and what makes it tick (same as Biden should do with the Trump supporters in the US).

Labour has a lot of genuine northern voices (Nandy was a leadership contender so it's not surprising she gets wheeled out a lot) unlike the Tories who if they are northern tend to be 'landed' northern (I only knew Gove was a Scot from watching Spitting Image!).

Covid has thrown a total curveball into politics and people's perceptions of politics, and it will remain that way for the foreseeable future. It's the only real issue for now. Once it's over or in control, all bets are off and we will hopefully start to find a new political equilibrium. For instance, how will the Tories plans to level up go when they need to pay for Covid? They've got off to a bad start with the whole Manchester thing. How will Starmer adapt to leadership when Labour has to actually start formulating its policy platform? We still don't know what sort of Brexit we are getting and how that will impact. Luckily Labour has 4 more years to think about these things and how to address them and Starmer is an infinitely more capable pair of hands than Jezza was! There is also some ability in his shadow cabinet.

Of course, it may be that Starmer ends up being the Neil Kinnock, rooting out or assimilating the left, dealing with bigotry, and someone like Burnham comes back in a few years to be the Smith/Blair.
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You make some really good observations there simes. Taking it one step further is in the event of somebody in Labour very sensibly getting to understand the red wall issues; what happens next to satisfy the very different factions within Labour.

There are strong Metropolitan areas within the Labour movement who are highly likely to hold very different views on many core issues to those of the working class heartlands. Quite how a Labour leader comes up with policies that keep both ends of that equation happy is very tricky and the danger of bland fudges on policy that satisfy nobody can be the result.
 
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