Joe Biden Formally Clinches Democratic Nomination (npr.org) 422
Joe Biden has had a clear path to the Democratic Party's presidential nomination ever since Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the 2020 race in early April. His path to the nomination reached another milestone tonight as the former Vice President officially secured the delegates needed to win. NPR reports: [T]he 78-year-old, who served as Delaware's U.S. Senator for decades before becoming vice president in 2009, will be his party's standard bearer against President Trump. Biden reached the benchmark as he has started to re-emerge on the campaign trial outside of his home, addressing twin crises that appear to be contributing to his lead over Trump in national polls, as well as in battleground states. The AP delegate estimate reached the magic number of 1,991 delegates for Biden as seven states and the District of Columbia continue counting votes from Tuesday's primaries. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who conceded and endorsed Biden in April while remaining on the ballot, failed to reach the 15% threshold to receive delegates in several contests, giving Biden more delegates than many political observers expected him to secure this week. NPR says Biden "wrapped up the nomination in practical terms faster than any Democrat since John Kerry in 2004."
My anus finally clinches it as well (Score:5, Insightful)
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Do you have a source for that comment? Like specifically the court case you mention?
Re:My anus finally clinches it as well (Score:4, Informative)
Re: My anus finally clinches it as well (Score:5, Insightful)
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What were they thinking?
DNC is perfectly happy with Trump, or they would have supported a winner, and Trump really is a democrat. The republican getup is a poor disguise, but he couldn't win any other way. The DNC/GOP partnership is working well, with full control and tons of money coming in. After all, it is a laundromat, you know, just another mob run casino. Everything is going according to plan.
Re: My anus finally clinches it as well (Score:2)
DNC is perfectly happy with Trump, or they would have supported a winner, and Trump really is a democrat
Interesting. Given what all the democrat politicians have been saying about trump ... that means "real democrats" are racist orange idiots who conspire with Russians to rig elections?
If that's the case, why the hell would anyone ever vote for a democrat?
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Given what all the democrat politicians have been saying about trump
The only time I trust what they say is when there is a hot mic [politico.com] close by that they are not aware of
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Re: My anus finally clinches it as well (Score:4, Funny)
I didn't realize that I was a negro, but thank you for informing me of this fact. It will undoubtedly give me greater standing when discussing racial issues with white boys on Slashdot.
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No, the story says that the VOTERS chose Biden.
Re: My anus finally clinches it as well (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the voters didn't choose Biden. The people that chose Biden are a subset of Democrat Party members, those that decided to take the time to show up for the primary and vote for him.
The question will now be how much of the subset of eligible voters bother to vote for Biden in the general election, compared to those that show up to vote for the others on the ballot.
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those that decided to take the time to show up
Yep, that's how all elections work. Thus, the voters haven't really chosen anyone yet. Not Obama, not Trump, not Bush, you name it.
Re: My anus finally clinches it as well (Score:2)
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Yeah exactly, it's totally normal for the person in second place to suddenly drop out and endorse the guy in fourth, who has fewer voters. The voters have spoken!
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democrats will ensure that a loser is picked
Biden was the "default" nothing-to-lose candidate because after a Trump's first term economy in good shape, Trump was very likely to win (and Biden was too old to qualify for 2024 anyway).
That was before the Covid-19... Now the Democrats realize a win is possible, and Biden will certainly fight body and soul, but he may not be ready for that unexpected turn of events.
Re: My anus finally clinches it as well (Score:4, Insightful)
That was before the Covid-19...
Covid is a triple-win for Democrats:
1. It is knocking the "Trump-economy" back on its heels.
2. It is giving Trump plenty of opportunities to display his incompetence.
3. Covid (and George Floyd) dominate the news cycle, giving Biden fewer chances to say stupid stuff.
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Found the problem, right here.
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Biden is a Republican straight out of the 70s or 80s. Tries to not be a creepy, sexist, racist old man, but can't help slipping up all of the time. Thinks the war on drugs is a good idea, doesn't support legalizing marijuana, tepid on LGBTQ issues, big on faith-based positions, fiscal conservative, bit of a war hawk.
I can't vote for the orange toddler, so what are my options? A vote for Republican Biden? Throw-away vote for someone else which helps Trump?
We really need to get rid of our first-past-the-post
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Hillary was a much better debater than Biden
That's true, she actually did do a really good job in the debates.
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"Super-delegates" and establishment democrats will ensure that a loser is picked.
The new DNC rules don't have super-delegates voting in the first round ( https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/25... [cnn.com] ). Basically, they now become relevant only if there's a deadlock between several candidates with a very close vote count.
Re: My anus finally clinches it as well (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine him debating trump who can change subjects and knows how to get a message across.
Trump is able to get a message across? What world do you live in? He changes his message every 5 minutes, translators actively struggle to translate what he says, and after every speech there's a press conference where the White House basically says everyone misunderstood Trump he actually meant something else.
Hillary was a much better debater than Biden, and she couldn't do it either. What were they thinking?
I'm curious as to why you think the debates matter. Hillary ran circles around Trump in the debates, it changed nothing. People have made up their minds before the debate even takes place.
Re: My anus finally clinches it as well (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but I agree. Trump knows how to play his crowds. He watches their reactions and in real-time focuses on whatever words trigger them as desired. This is not something that Biden can manage.
Trump may be one hundred and ten percent full of shit, but he can work a crowd, and Biden can't.
Re: My anus finally clinches it as well (Score:3)
Trump is a better circus ringmaster than Biden.
Now can we please stop pretending this a a desirable trait for a president? We're not really trying for the whole thunder dome / barter town thing in this country are we?
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"Working a crowd is actually pretty easy, when you're willing to be 110% full of shit."
But Biden is also massively full of shit, he keeps sharing anecdotes that never happened. If it's so easy, why can't he do it?
They didn't (Score:5, Interesting)
The DNC absolutely cheated. Exit polls were off 8-11% and poll waits hit 7 hours.
But even accounting for that Bernie barely cracked 30%. If all the progressive votes had gone his way, I gave him that 11% and a big more on top of that to account for the poll waits he still would've lost...
And it's not hard to see why. Turnout was up across the board, but the under 29 set only came out about 30% more. Meanwhile the over 45 was pushing 60%.
Basically, when it's actually time to vote the country is way, way more conservative (not right wing, conservative) than they probably should be. Yes, they'd like Medicare for All, but they don't really believe it's possible...
It sucks, but there's a silver lining. More turnout will shift the Overton window left (if you don't know, it's a measure of how left/right the country is).
The DNC is putting National Vote By Mail on the table, mostly to save their own skins from rampant voter suppression in the general. The way I see it is this. We leverage NVBM to get more voter reform: Automatic Voter Registration, Universal Suffrage, ending the Drug War (which is really Nixon's war on the left) and finally Ranked Choice voting.
Compared to that the Whitehouse is a bauble. Biden can have it.
Re:They didn't (Score:5, Insightful)
The mistake isn't believing in Bernie's ideas, it's believing that those ideas would be best served with Bernie as President. He'd make a terrible President and candidate in the main. It's a relief he was not nominated, even with Biden's flaws. Having Bernie in the senate is fine, having he reign over 4 years of gridlock just wastes valuable time and elects another Trump later.
As for the rest, the solution isn't getting your tribe's guy in the White House, it's getting good representation everywhere.
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Joe Biden (Score:2, Funny)
Does Joe Biden realize that he won the DNC primary? I mean at one point he thought he was running for the senate in a speech he gave on the presidential campaign trail. LOL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Joe Biden (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, do you really want to start counting out speech gaffes? Because your boy Trump won't fare all that well in comparison.
Anyway, keep dismissing Biden at your peril. Paul Ryan learned this lesson the hard way.
Re: Joe Biden (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw the speech Biden gave after the George Floyd killing and, as a foreigner, i was genuinely in awe. It was fantastic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The US really needs to decide whether it wants a grown up in the White House again or not.
Re: Joe Biden (Score:4, Interesting)
Debates are another story. That requires being alive and alert, thinking on your feet and having enough facts at hand to not come off as a fucking idiot. We'll see how they do. I expect a mediocre performance from both given past events and a high chance of Biden having a huge gaffe as he's been doing his entire career.
Anyway, all this stuff going on right now is nothing. Most of the US doesn't even know it's an election year until they wake up the morning of the first debate.
Re: Joe Biden (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Joe Biden (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah he made a bigly gaffe. If only Joe had the best words and knew more than all the generals he'd be strongly tremendous.
But he misspoke a word so clearly he could never be president because, after all, his only experience is being Vice President for 8 years. Far better to have a failed reality TV show host as president. (I mean, 'cuz it's been working out great well so far, right?)
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https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/05... [cnn.com]
I hope they keep attacking his gaffes, it just helps to tell his story.
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Biden's in better shape than Trump? Really? Biden is physically feeble and mentally senile. He'll probably be drooling come November, unless somebody finds him a doctor to jack him up on stimulants whenever he appears in public. Trump is strong, active, and alert.
Even though the media has chosen Trump as the enemy, Trump's success as President far outweighs Biden's vice-presidency in a failed administration.
Re:He's a lot better off than you think (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why are we nominating presidential candidates who are so old? This seems at odds with practical policy. 50s to early 60s? Sure.
There should be a forced retirement age for practical purposes. We have a minimum beyond merely being an adult, theoretically for experience, so why would an age limit based on health concerns be a bad choice?
One gets the feeling the President isn't running the show, and that it's deliberate.
Re:He's a lot better off than you think (Score:5, Funny)
Biden is physically feeble and mentally senile.
And Trump is held together by burger grease, and is unable to form a coherent sentence or in some cases even make it through an entire word. But honestly this is beside the point. Obama seems to have been some curious outlier in my adult life of presidents who weren't rambling morons escaped from a loonie bin. There were dark times when I had to get a Dilbert quote calendar to replace my daily dose of "Bushism", but fortunately Trump managed bring some sanity back into my office space with my Trump quote of the day calendar. I have high hopes for Biden.
Re: He's a lot better off than you think (Score:3)
Answer, he's a chi town politician. Every successful politician out of Chicago is corrupt. No ifs, ands, or buts.
The two questions that matter (Score:2)
1) Who is going to be his VP?
2) Is he going to win?
Re:The two questions that matter (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Who is going to be his VP?
At this point, we can pretty much guarantee it will be a black woman.
He already promised it would be a woman.
The other presidential candidates that are not-black women don't have a lot to add to the ticket that Harris or someone like Abrams would bring. And recent events are going to push Team Biden towards them.
2) Is he going to win?
All current polling says yes. Including leaked polling from the Trump campaign.
But he is as exciting as warm mayonnaise. So he's got plenty of room to pull a Clinton.
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Wow, such great insight. You chat with Hillary regularly?
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The issue was (1) accuracy is of limited help if either side winning is within the margin of error and (2) the analysis was awful from basically everyone except FiveThirtyEight.
It's not clear that FiveThirtyEight was correct, either. At a minimum they were clearly surprised when Trump won.
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The issue was (1) accuracy is of limited help if either side winning is within the margin of error and (2) the analysis was awful from basically everyone except FiveThirtyEight.
It's not clear that FiveThirtyEight was correct, either. At a minimum they were clearly surprised when Trump won.
It's necessary to first gain an understanding of probabilities if you want to reference 538. They gave Trump a 1/3 chance of winning...the same probabilities the Cubs had for the world series, which they won.
Re: The two questions that matter (Score:3)
Re:The two questions that matter (Score:5, Informative)
Morons have been derping like in that comments over at 538 for years.
You don't comprehend statistics. You don't comprehend that statisticians expect a 70% prediction of A vs B to happen only 70% of the time, and that if the event only happens once, and B happens, then yes it is mildly surprising. That is the correct reaction.
Do you even math, Bro?
If you go to flip a coin to demonstrate random chance and get heads twice in a row, you might roll your eyes. But only a moron changes their understanding of the odds.
Re: The two questions that matter (Score:2)
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538 gave Trump a final ~30% chance of winning the election. That's 1 in 3 odds - hardly an unlikely outcome.
Did Trump really only have a 30% chance of winning? We don't know. The people at 538 were clearly surprised when Trump won.
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But he is as exciting as warm mayonnaise. So he's got plenty of room to pull a Clinton.
Maybe boring is good, this time round. Last time, voters on the fence had a choice between the devil they knew, and the devil they didn't know. Clinton, the very embodiment of Trump's "swamp". Or Trump himself, a well known name but with no history in politics. Given that choice, I can understand why swing voters decided to give Trump a shot.
But this time, those people know what Trump is about, and they might well prefer a boring candidate who is not going to upset the apple cart too much.
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That argument gets flipped on its head all the time, if a fringe candidate is not elected he's too radical, too controversial, too willing to raze a flawed system to the ground and throw the baby out with the bathwater. While the delegate count for Trump was flattering converting 5000 votes in Michigan (16 delegates), 22000 votes in Pennsylvania (20 delegates) and 6000 votes in Wisconsin (10 delegates) would have put Hillary in office so it's not like she lost by a landslide. Would that have been proof peop
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"The other presidential candidates that are not-black women don't have a lot to add to the ticket that Harris or someone like Abrams would bring."
Sounds like insight, but it's not. What "other candidates"? What do Harris or Abrams "bring"?
I suppose if you mean blackness then that's true, otherwise it's meaningless. Not saying it won't be one of those two or that they aren't good choices, but there's a lot of time left.
Considering that the choice is to pick someone actually qualified to be President, ther
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2. Nobody knows. The reason the protests are so huge is that unemployment's around 20%. The economy's still in free fall over COVID and the GOP is actively trying to stop giving help to the lower working class as they're worried those people will get accustom to a better lifestyle. Voter Registrat
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Frankly, Elizabeth Warren - who turns 71 on June 22 - is too old to be on the same ticket with 78-year-old Biden. They need to pick a younger running mate.
I think Kamala Harris would be a great choice, but then she didn't get any significant traction during the primaries so she's probably out. Not to mention that my picking a candidate is generally the kiss of death for that person's campaign, no matter what level of government we're talking about.
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Re:The two questions that matter (Score:5, Interesting)
Lol, Harris just makes that a 100% Republican ticket. Conservative senator and former prosecutor. That's a ticket that I would definitely not vote for. A guy who doesn't want to legalize marijuana and supports the war on drugs combined with someone who spent a decade or two jailing people for drug crimes?
How on earth does anyone consider that a legitimate Democratic ticket?
Harris is a racist who put a bunch of black (Score:2)
Harris is a racist who put a bunch of black people in jail though. Just like Biden himself. I'm not sure picking her would be a super wise idea. My guess: someone nobody has ever heard of with a past nobody will care about. And then hide in the basement until election day.
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That is the feeling of some in CA, but you have to realize that politics is primarily the domain of attorneys, you know, people with a background in "law". Putting a bunch of people in jail, many of whom were unsurprisingly black, is a sign that she was good at the job. DA's are not friends of the common man.
Would you elect an ex-prosecutor that couldn't convict anyone? Do you think ex-prosecutors are disqualified from public office? Like Harris or don't. but holding being good at her job against her is
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Any "police brutality" vulnerability that would rule Klobachar out would also be effective against Harris. They have similar problems in that regard, just in different states. The optics are bad and that matters, but it's just optics. Klobachar is not to blame for police brutality. Having a candidate with some compassion AND a background in prosecution might actually be an advantage.
Biden could win Texas though that would be uphill. You can't possibly know that talking about it signals an intent to "wa
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1. 2 women with typical Democrat experience at ruining things are governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and governor Janet Mills of Maine. They've only begun to make asses of themselves at a national level, so they have a chance. It's moot because
2. Biden hasn't a chance. Democrats' best bet for winning the Presidency in 2020 is for Biden to croak a week before the election and a massive sympathy vote lets the electors choose whoever bribes them the most.
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No one cares who the VP is. Ever. In any election. Or after.
No one? Ever? You don't think I can find a someone, a single person, in all of history, who has cared who the VP is? I'm pretty sure the VP himself is.
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This is not true, of course, but look who's posting it. Pure troll.
People care more about the VP choice this time for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Biden's age and the possibility he would not seek a second term. Also, the opportunity to put a strong candidate, particular of color and/or a woman, up against a backward, religious bigot should not be underestimated, and the VP may need to do heavy lifting considering Biden is not the national campaigner.
You should probably get out of your b
News for Nerds... (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Joe got the nomination because he's expendable.
Precisely. Nobody wants to run against an incumbent POTUS unless they can afford to lose. Those that are younger can just wait it out another 4 or 8 years to try against someone that isn't already in the White House. What makes the odds even tougher is that President Trump is fairly popular yet. While COVID-19 put the economy in the dumps this is not something that can be pinned on Trump so easily. There's also the possibility of a quick recovery that can make Trump even more popular by election day.
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What? Were you asleep when the Democratic primary had like 720 candidates running?
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" There's also the possibility of a quick recovery that can make Trump even more popular by election day. "
As if by magic, I can predict the DOW will be touching 35k by November.
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Money Printer go Brrr?
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Dream on, Trump troll. The suggestion that he's the choice because the DNC is conceding is the most absurd thing anyone will post here.
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Fan-F*cking-Tastic (Score:2)
I can't believe we're here yet again.
Choice A: Shit
Choice B: Shit
Tell me again why voting is so important when our choices are limited to A and B above ?
The absolute best people we have lack the ego and power-trip mindset to even want
the position in the first place. Those that do strive to attain it, do so for all the wrong
reasons.
Hence, the reason we end up with this dumpster fire, three-ring shit-show every four :|
years.
How the hell the United States has survived as a country for as long as it has is a
Re:Fan-F*cking-Tastic (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither choice is appealing, but one is a regular politician and the other is a wannabe dictator.
Re:Fan-F*cking-Tastic (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that you have to ask this question after one of them just had a peaceful protest teargassed so that he could cross the street and take a photo with a borrowed bible in front of a church, something even the priest of said church denounced speaks volumes.
Stick to the nuclear shilling. You are at least good at that.
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There are other candidates in other parties; the reason they don't get traction is than they're even worse.
If you can't figure the unique property of the U.S. that has allowed it to survive so long, you're too ignorant to choose well and thus shouldn't vote.
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Biden is NOT "terrible for liberals and reformists on the left". It is the worst kind of lie to suggest that moderates and centrists are "terrible" for everyone else.
We need a government OF moderates and centrists, not a government devoid of them.
This Joe Biden? (Score:2)
This one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Good luck with that. :-)
Biden clearly unable to do the job (Score:5, Insightful)
He can barely remember his own name. He does not know where he is half the time. He forgets his train of thoughts halfway through a sentence and just rambles incoherently.
Dems made a huge fuss over age when Reagan was elected at 69 years old. Also made a big deal of Bob Dole being too old to run at 73 years old. Dems ade a big deal of McCain's age when McCain ran at 72 years old.
But hypercritical dems see no problems with a 78 year old Biden running the country. Nevermind that Biden already shows clear signs of dementia, and he's not getting any better.
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Uh, that's completely backwards. Go back and watch the 2012 VP debates - Biden manhandled Ryan without breaking a sweat. Biden's gaffes don't change the fact that he used to be alert, on point, and able to deliver a punchline. He single-handedly took out Rudi Giuliani with his quip "a noun, a verb, and 911".
Now, Biden confuses his sister with his freaking wife. Trump is the same idiot he was ten years ago, but he's a genius next to Zombie Biden.
I object to this ... (Score:4)
... article on the grounds that it is not "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters."
Stop it.
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* Trump will claim mail-in voting will invalidate election results
Which is really silly given that he's voted by mail for the past couple of decades. But then he tried (and failed) to register in Florida while having his official residence in Washington DC, which was attempted voter fraud.
* Trump may actually cancel the election.
He can't. Congress can, but that's split between the two parties.
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But then he tried (and failed) to register in Florida while having his official residence in Washington DC, which was attempted voter fraud.
That supports his claim about how wide-spread voter fraud is. Even he's doing it!
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This may be a joke, but it is literally the core truth and what immediately comes to my mind on the topic. When Trump says voter fraud, he is saying what comes to his mind, IOW what he would do (and does). More generally, this drives many of his thoughts. He accuses others of criminality because that's who he is. He's not complicated or sophisticated man.
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Elections as reliable as South America, statistics from (CDC/BLS) as reliable as China.
Well, that didn't take long.
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If I were putting money on it, I'd go for Trump winning the college, but losing the popular vote. Perhaps by a wider margin than his last election. Then we'd see another round of columns by Republican-favoring writers explaining how the college system is essential for real democracy, because if all voters were actually equal than something something unfair.
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You should further explain this argument, we could all use a good laugh. We won't be West China until Javanka ascends to the throne, everyone knows that.
It is not at all clear why the President should be directly chosen by the people and the EC was put in place so that it would not be. The EC, though, has been completely corrupted and does not serve its intended purpose so it should either be fixed, bypassed or eliminated. There's a simple solution that states can enact without federal interference, they
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Actually Lincold did deply miliaty troops to combat rioters. We hear that all the time, it's different this time.
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Change my mind.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Do your own homework.
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Change my mind.
Then why did they choose Obama?