Presidential predictions for 2024?

Seattle said:

At least I don't live in a tent.

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Yeah, because you put your last 80 bucks into a bet. You could have gotten a mediocre tent and had a few bucks left over for a meal. Now you've got no roof and no source of sustenance.

parmalee said:

Yeah, because you put your last 80 bucks into a bet. You could have gotten a mediocre tent and had a few bucks left over for a meal. Now you've got no roof and no source of sustenance.

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Yeah, I'm destitute. Oh well.

Seattle said:

Yeah, I'm destitute. Oh well.

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Don't worry--I'll pray for you, just like all the fine people do after a bunch of kids get murdered by some idiot who should never have been allowed anywhere near an assault rifle. Apparently, it makes everything better.

parmalee said:

Don't worry--I'll pray for you, just like all the fine people do after a bunch of kids get murdered by some idiot who should never have been allowed anywhere near an assault rifle. Apparently, it makes everything better.

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Thanks, I appreciate that. I'll send you a book on reading comprehension so that in the future you won't mistake "I'll lose $80" with "$80 is my entire net worth".

parmalee said:

Don't worry--I'll pray for you, just like all the fine people do after a bunch of kids get murdered by some idiot who should never have been allowed anywhere near an assault rifle. Apparently, it makes everything better.

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Yeah, you should see Fall City, this morning. It was terrible, but then they prayed, and now everything's okay, again.

Well, except for the dead.

And, y'know, we might want to check with out neighbor on that, because he might want to go yell at the corpses about taking responsibility for themselves.

Tiassa said:

Yeah, you should see Fall City, this morning. It was terrible, but then they prayed, and now everything's okay, again.

Well, except for the dead.

And, y'know, we might want to check with out neighbor on that, because he might want to go yell at the corpses about taking responsibility for themselves.

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Why would "he" want to do that? We both know that is a stupid comment. Are you stupid? I wouldn't have thought so.

Seattle said:

Who will win the Presidential election in 2024? Any predictions? This isn't who you would like to run/win. This is who do you think will actually be the winner. Give your reasoning as well.

Since it's so far out, I'll give a scenario and then prediction. If inflation is still an issue as it is today, the winner will be DeSantis. If it's not such an issue, Biden will win if he runs. If he doesn't run (regardless of what Democrat does run) the winner will be DeSantis.

Biden is old, isn't popular but he does have the advantage of the incumbent. DeSantis isn't very charismatic, isn't Trump in positive ways and is close enough to Trump for those in that camp.

Therefore, statistically, there are more ways for DeSantis to win. Biden could even die before then. The economy could not only still be bad but it could be even worse.

Biden's main chance would be if the economy turns around quickly. If Trump win's the nomination then Biden wins the Presidency for sure (IMO).

Biden's fatal flaw (IMO) was shutting down the economy and flooding the economy with easy money. That was as predictionable (for Laker's fans) as trading for Russell Westbrook was. It just couldn't turn out well.

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What is all this talk about inflation, it isn't inflation at all!! The U.S.A is funding what amounts to a World War on two fronts, supplying Israel with in excess of 12 billion dollars and the Ukraine with at the lowest estimate 75 billion dollars to fund the war against Russia. This is why there have since been multiple attempts on Ex-President's Trumps life. He is rabidly anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian. If the Democrats continue Biden's senile policy of funding and making superhumanly strong future potential enemies, Trump will win.

quant said:

What is all this talk about inflation, it isn't inflation at all!! The U.S.A is funding what amounts to a World War on two fronts, supplying Israel with in excess of 12 billion dollars and the Ukraine with at the lowest estimate 75 billion dollars to fund the war against Russia.

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Yep. Unfortunately for people like yourselves, people have learned from history. When we ignored the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, they had the same approach - "why waste American treasure and lives on something that's none of our business?"

But in retrospect, if they had spent the money to arm France against Hitler, they would have saved a LOT of our money and our lives. Unfortunately we entered the fray too late; by the time we started contributing to our allies (mainly Great Britain) much of Europe had already fallen.

We should not make the same mistake again.

billvon said:

Yep. Unfortunately for people like yourselves, people have learned from history. When we ignored the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, they had the same approach - "why waste American treasure and lives on something that's none of our business?"

But in retrospect, if they had spent the money to arm France against Hitler, they would have saved a LOT of our money and our lives. Unfortunately we entered the fray too late; by the time we started contributing to our allies (mainly Great Britain) much of Europe had already fallen.

We should not make the same mistake again.

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But as an Indian - and very likely a supporter of Modi, and thus of authoritarian nationalists more generally - he may not see it this way.

One of the things about Rick Hasen's↱ warning—


—is that I actually do remember the "Blue Shift" he refers to; the reason I remember is because I addressed the issue in 2020↗, and the episode is a quiet but effective reminder of just how low the bar is set for certain politics and crackpottery.


So, for internationals and Americans alike: Election Day involves many electoral systems working together. When, for instance, conservatives complain that some results will not be available on Election Night, we ought to take a moment to reflect on the ignorance they pretend. The first simple reality is that the states run elections differently, with different rules and procedures; there is not a singular federal election procedure that every state abides in determining their voting and counting processes. Thus: Historically, we have never had any reason to expect all the results on Election Night.

Furthermore, in recent years, most of the adjustment to how votes are counted has been undertaken by Republicans.

Amid the murmur, for instance, is a question about why it's only in swing states that the counting takes so long, but it's not really only in swing states; nonetheless, to answer the point, consider that Michigan, Pennsylvania, Geogia, and Arizona all, when under Republican governance, delayed counting mail-in ballots until Election Day.

Contrast: I dropped my vote in a mail-in ballot box, yesterday. I can actually check with the state office and see when my ballot is received, processed, and logged. My vote will be counted and official before Election Day. In those other states, those votes won't be processed and counted until Election Day.

This is one of two reasons for the so-called "blue shift": Mail ballots have long tended liberal; in a strong blue year, the report of a massive mail-in vote can push returns dramatically toward the blue.

The other is something that is, actually, kind of normal. And, again, this question of ignorance: That is to say, ¿Really?

For instance, I live in a mail-in county. All these Republican voter-ID laws and tinkering with the voter rolls in other states don't make sense to people in places where mail ballots work just fine.

Now, are you ready? Here's the tricky part: In states with polling sites, counting votes takes longer. Furthermore, because ballots are machine-counted, the totals from smaller jurisdictions will be known earlier. Thus, it is possible to perceive a close election, in the early hours of returns, only to see the results transform dramatically when a metropolitan county reports. Indeed, this is part of what people complained about in Georgia, in 2020. The "blue shift" of this circumstance is a perpetual factor that stands out in years when Democrats run strong. While metropolitan regions tend to favor liberals, most years, a strong metropolitan return in a particularly polarized cycle can show a dramatic "blue shift" with numbers sufficient to shape the outcome.



It's one thing if maybe our international neighbors aren't familiar with these sorts of details; then again, my encounter was with disinformation from abroad.

But it's also true, a lot of Americans do not seem to think about these details.

Indeed, it would seem some Republicans depend on a certain degree of ignorance among voters. Somewhere along the way, it's hard to establish the cutoff: Should a celebrity social-media influencer, for instance, know better? A pastor? Keep an eye out for people like lawyers or actual Republican officials who are willing to pitch the line; those would be confessing either turpitude or ignorance, because they really should know better.

It's kind of like an old bit of commentary about sheep being surprised at the sunrise. The degree to which people are supposed to be surprised by the known, expected, and even obvious, is itself suspect.
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Notes:

Hasen, Richard L. "Why the 'Blue Shift' Everyone Seems to Have Forgotten Might Be More Dangerous This Time". Slate. 24 October 2024. Slate.com. 24 October 2024. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/10/election-2024-trump-win-speech-danger.html

Notes from Last Week


A financial-markets newsletter author observes↱, "Two years ago, Bloomberg economists predicted a 100% chance of a recession within 12 months. The recession never came."

And it's true, the actual headline from Bloomberg reads, "Forecast for US Recession Within Year Hits 100%".

I thought to double-check, since I was looking at an image, and the headline for the 17 October 2022 story was, in fact, changed at some point; it now reads↱, "Forecast for US Recession Within Year Hits 100% in Blow to Biden".

More recently, of course, such as two weeks ago, per CNBC↱, "Fed close to pulling off the elusive economic soft landing in 2024 after great September jobs report":


Anyway, flashback:


Some of the things we've learned along the way are that theft shrinkage wasn't as bad as retailers pretended, wage theft is massive, the demand for exploitable workers is so high we're sending children to the line, and price fixing and price gouging are significant contributors to people's perceptions of inflation.

But don't take my word for it; while superficial politics gasp at something about donuts, it's also true that Harris Faulkner, of FOX News, in a room custom-tailored to the Republican presidential candidate, pressed Donald Trump in what turns out to be a substantial way:


And that's the convenient excerpt↱ from activists, and before anyone complains about where it stops, remember how easy it would be to fill in the blanks with an even better answer than he gave.

But even the energy argument points back to Faulkner's question: How does the pricing actually happen?

The role of inflation hawk, in American political discourse, pretends a certain catbird seat. Like life coaching, motivational speaking, and other Boomer-era business arts, the inflation hawk need only a mythopoeic crumb of reality, e.g., stuff costs money.

The sum effect of such superstitious doomsaying is, of course, that people have far worse perceptions of the economy than the actual numbers indicate. To the other, it's also easy for people to feel as if the numbers don't reflect a better economy. As Faulkner put it, "the interest rates have come down, and inflation rate has come down but it's like we are goin' uphill, constantly, with these prices".

And with all the evidence of price-fixing, the price of eggs↗, wage theft↗, surge pricing↑, and the ongoing tacitry of price gouging—i.e., price reductions at major retailers who could always afford it—people still blame the government.

It's easy to be an inflation hawk.
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Notes

@brewmarkets. "Two years ago, Bloomberg economists predicted a 100% chance of a recession within 12 months. The recession never came." X. 17 October 2024. X.com. 17 October 2024. status/1846913632732389863

@harris_wins. "BREAKING: In a stunningly stupid rant, Donald Trump just said the way to lower prices is to make donuts and having a stove. This is not a serious candidate for President." X. 16 October 2024. X.com. 17 October 2024. status/1846574893212836080

Cox, Jeff. "Fed close to pulling off the elusive economic soft landing in 2024 after great September jobs report". CNBC. 4 October 2024. CNBC.com. 17 October 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/04/fed...n-2024-after-great-september-jobs-report.html

Wingrove, Josh. "Forecast for US Recession Within Year Hits 100% in Blow to Biden". Bloomberg. 17 October 2022. Bloomberg.com. 17 October 2024. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...cession-within-year-hits-100-in-blow-to-biden

Tiassa said:

And with all the evidence of price-fixing, the price of eggs↗, wage theft↗, surge pricing↑, and the ongoing tacitry of price gouging—i.e., price reductions at major retailers who could always afford it—people still blame the government.

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LOL, who else you gonna call, Ghostbusters?

LaurieAG said:

LOL, who else you gonna call, Ghostbusters?

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Welll, we could always try blaming the people responsible, and holding them accountable.

But I can understand why that might not occur to you.

We could also envisage more than one point of view.

Tiassa said:

Welll, we could always try blaming the people responsible, and holding them accountable.

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Like the people who regulate the system?

Maybe we can devise a system where we elect people to do this for us on our behalf?

We are each responsible for our own actions. Governments can only regulate as far as telling us what is to be considered illegal, not what is unethical or immoral (although in most societies there is considerable overlap). One can "blame" a government for not making something illegal, but ultimately the blame for our actions falls upon the individual. One can only really blame governments for our unethical but not-illegal behaviour when we abdicate our sense of morality to the government. Greed itself is not illegal, so when and how we choose to be greedy is upon us as individuals, not government. So, yeah, the individuals/corporations are to blame for price-gouging, not government.
But if you would prefer a government that determines your morality, that dictates everything about your society, including the price of eggs, then sure, blame government. Otherwise, it doesn't seem a particularly useful position to take.

True. Of course there has to be evidence of "price gouging" in the first place.

Don't think I'll be able to catch up and read the 900 plus posts, some of them extended essays, so I'll just drop this in FWIW:

I think a big thank you is due Tony Hinchcliffe. In a couple paragraphs of standup routine at a Trump rally he has possibly pared off several hundred thousand Latino and other POC votes from Trump in key states. After reading the quotes I almost wonder if he's a Harris mole. Here are the main bits:

There's a lot going on. Like, I don't know if you know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think its called Puerto Rico...

...Latinos love making babies. They do. There's no pulling out. They don't do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country...

My hope is that the information-poor can be reached with this sort of "we are showing you who we really are" campaign gaffes, i.e. that media outlets besides the old urban dailies and webzines like The Hill are covering such moments.

LaurieAG said:

Like the people who regulate the system?

Maybe we can devise a system where we elect people to do this for us on our behalf?

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Wait, wait: Did you just say something stupid ("LOL, who else you gonna call, Ghostbusters?") so you could run around in a circle ("Maybe we can devise a system where we elect people to do this for us on our behalf?")?

Can you answer a logical question, then: What good does it to to vote for people to behave for others?

Because, again: With all the evidence of price-fixing, the price of eggs, wage theft, surge pricing, and the ongoing tacitry of price gouging—i.e., price reductions at major retailers who could always afford it—people still blame the government.

Now, then, what do you want the people we elect to actually do about the actual, real problem?

Didn't think that part through, did you?

Seriously, start arresting executives?

And how do you think that works?

Seattle said:

We could also envisage more than one point of view.

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This, from the guy who gets how angry↗ over different points of view↗?

This time, though, the difference about a certain point of view is that it is fallacious and, in its application, circular:


In this case, the fallacy is intended to avoid the evidence of private-sector, i.e., non-governmental, behavior and influence. It's not that one cannot envisage a certain point of view, but that the view and its point are fallacious.

Now, with someone like you, Seattle, we can recall your discussion of definitions of "freedom"↗, which is laden with your disdain for discussion of price-gouging, price-fixing, child labor, and other private-sector behavior contributing to results you otherwise pretend to loathe.

And remember, giving monied interests the rope to hang other people with is how a government helps create these problems. So, should we start arresting the executives who gouge and fix prices? Or, is this like yelling at homeless people to grow up, that the point is just to have someone to holler at?

Thus, to consider her point of view: "Maybe we can devise a system where we elect people to do this for us on our behalf?" She's welcome to explain it. You and I, Seattle, already know this doesn't just involve winning the White House, but a reliable sixty-seat majority in the Senate as well as a House majority.

Because if we're going to start arresting the executives, we're probably going to need some new legislation. If we're going to pursue a civil-litigation course, it needs to be a lot tougher; again, that's probably going to need some legislation.

And the whole time that's going on, we're still going to need to find an answer to a particular problem: And with all the evidence of price-fixing, people still blame the government.


General note: Consider the part we're overlooking. An allegedly reputable, world-class news agency uttered a definitive headline ("Forecast for US Recession Within Year Hits 100%"), and if for whatever reason we want to pretend that wasn't a political decision, they went on to revise the headline in order to increase its political weight ("Forecast for US Recession Within Year Hits 100% in Blow to Biden").

The news agency was utterly wrong; informing people was not its purpose in that episode, but frightening them for the sake of politics.

Despite the numbers being as good as we could hope for, and better than pretty much anyone expected, i.e., a soft landing that is the envy of the recovering world economy, people still blame the government for inflation. The Reuters recession headline is an example of why.

Despite reports of food manufacturers settling price-fixing claims, and a grocery conglomerate acknowledging price-fixing under oath, people still blame the government for high prices.

Even Harris Faulkner of FOX News asked the question: "How does it trickle down?" she asked Donald Trump, setting him up beyond softballing: "Does it work that the energy is also cheaper for the companies, and so the distribution, how does the pricing actually happen …?" And then she spoke truth to Donald Trump:

"Because the interest rates have come down, and inflation rate has come down," she explained to him, "but it's like we are goin' uphill, constantly, with these prices."

And it comes back to a question, buried in between: "How does the pricing actually happen?"

That's part of what the people we elect can do about price fixing and gouging. As we see, the elected technocrats can pull the economy back into shape, but that uphill feeling Faulkner describes remains in private-sector purview.

Meanwhile, it's like Target being the latest major retailer to announce a price reduction; they're not falling into the red in order to do this, but simply acknowledging the sustainability of slightly lower profit margins compared to more severe prospects such as statutory price controls.

Again↑: It's easy to be an inflation hawk. It's kind of like that old Dixie song, "Look away! Look away!"

Maybe we can call it a blind spot↗.

TheVat said:

Don't think I'll be able to catch up and read the 900 plus posts, some of them extended essays, so I'll just drop this in FWIW:

I think a big thank you is due Tony Hinchcliffe. In a couple paragraphs of standup routine at a Trump rally he has possibly pared off several hundred thousand Latino and other POC votes from Trump in key states. After reading the quotes I almost wonder if he's a Harris mole. Here are the main bits:

There's a lot going on. Like, I don't know if you know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think its called Puerto Rico...

...Latinos love making babies. They do. There's no pulling out. They don't do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country...

My hope is that the information-poor can be reached with this sort of "we are showing you who we really are" campaign gaffes, i.e. that media outlets besides the old urban dailies and webzines like The Hill are covering such moments.

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Not terribly relevant and perhaps a bit removed from the Joe Rogan Mothership universe, but Janet L Porter, anti-abortion activist and all-around idiot, actually has a sitcom--a family-friendly, Trump-friendly sitcom--that is every bit as good as you might imagine:

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