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Mail in voting and the election day train wreck

Would probably have been better off forming two countries, really.
 
They'd have fought. The north would have been an industrial competitor, and the south would have been the trade ally of the empires in an external conflict rather than a civil one. Could have gone a lot of ways. Not sure "better" is the likely path.
 
It's because we've gotten off the message that Trump was borrowing faster than growth during the peak of the business cycle, and shoveling the money up words.

All of the drama that surrounds him is stuff that is easily sorted into partisan bins, where you either care zero amount or care 100%. And the people in the middle just see noise


Every Republican does that.
 
They did form two counties... and they did fight... and it settled some things... other things, we're still dealing with.
It's in how a whole set of things hang together: rule of law, no man is above the law, separation of powers, checks and balances, amendments, 2/3.
Donald J. Trump: "Hold my beer..."
 
Yeah, that's what's made living through this era so interesting. He's stress-tested all of the fundamental principles. We've had to sit and watch whether they'll hold.

You can bold "amendments," too, since he's been eyeing the 22nd lately.
 
Interesting example last weekend in Germany: The local elections in Nordrhein-Westfalen, the biggest Bundesland of Germany. Due to Corona, many more voted by mail, and for the in-person voting the queue took longer due to social distancing and more space allocated. This made the Exit-Polling more difficult which is used for the 6pm forecast resulting in the fact that they were off by 2,5% for the voting share of the CDU, relevant for whether Laschet kann stay on as „Governor“, as reported in the official result which came some hours later.

Keep in mind: That is in a benevolent environment. One that wanted to foster vote-by-mail and made sure that the in-person voting was safe and took as long as needed. The pollsters knew that they were expecting a higher share of mail-in voting and adjusted their models accordingly. But they underestimated the effect, they were not prepared for the impact of Corona because how could they?

And since the US is a tiny bit more polarized and the election fight is also fought over how the elections are handled and not only about the votes themselves, yes, this is going to be a trainwreck on election day and the following week.
 
Every (R) that is voting by mail needs to tell their Social Circle, to start building the expectation of delay
 
They did form two counties... and they did fight... and it settled some things... other things, we're still dealing with.

I'm shifting to a theory that the civil war never really ended. The central conflicts it revealed in the US are no closer to being solved now than they were in 1865. Perhaps if the Union had taken off the gloves during its occupation of the former Confederacy, and really massacred the whites at the South until not many were left (edit: I should specify, not many who supported the Confederacy and later supported Jim Crow - the former Confederacy actually contained plenty of white people who supported the Republicans during the brief interlude between 1865 and the counterrevolution of the 1870s when most of the southern states become single-party states), things would have turned out better...but maybe not, too. It's not like the North lacked its own problems with racism and class inequality.

But yeah...the Civil War never ended. The same fights are still going on. They were suppressed for a while before re-emerging as obvious issues in the 1950s and 1960s...and those issues, as the election of Obama and then Trump showed, are still at the heart of our politics today.
 
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Would probably have been better off forming two countries, really.

Back when the revolt against Britain began and independence was decided on as the goal, the original plan was for each of the thirteen colonies to then go their separate ways as independent nations should they actually win the war. Of course that plan didn't last very long once victory was actually achieved.
 
I'm shifting to a theory that the civil war never really ended. The central conflicts it revealed in the US are no closer to being solved now than they were in 1865. Perhaps if the Union had taken off the gloves during its occupation of the former Confederacy, and really massacred the whites at the South until not many were left, things would have turned out better...but maybe not, too. It's not like the North lacked its own problems with racism and class inequality.

But yeah...the Civil War never ended. The same fights are still going on. They were suppressed for a while before re-emerging as obvious issues in the 1950s and 1960s...and those issues, as the election of Obama and then Trump showed, are still at the heart of our politics today.
The Union won the war, but the slavers won the peace. Tilden vs. Hayes guaranteed the end of Reconstruction, which the Republican Party was not too keen on anyway.

In many ways, most of America's political insanity can be traced to slavery. And as history shows, such levels of insanity, like Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy, have only ever been defeated, inasmuch as they were really defeated and not just handed setbacks, by a combination of military destruction and occupation followed by decades of cultural shifts and enforced democracy. The Civil War and Reconstruction handled the first two, but the latter two were never really completed, and we're paying the price for it.
 
Back when the revolt against Britain began and independence was decided on as the goal, the original plan was for each of the thirteen colonies to then go their separate ways as independent nations should they actually win the war. Of course that plan didn't last very long once victory was actually achieved.

This is actually false. The colonies were never considered truly independent states. Even in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence it was the Continental Congress, not any individual colony, that held the major powers of sovereignty.

The Union won the war, but the slavers won the peace. Tilden vs. Hayes guaranteed the end of Reconstruction, which the Republican Party was not too keen on anyway.

In many ways, most of America's political insanity can be traced to slavery. And as history shows, such levels of insanity, like Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy, have only ever been defeated, inasmuch as they were really defeated and not just handed setbacks, by a combination of military destruction and occupation followed by decades of cultural shifts and enforced democracy. The Civil War and Reconstruction handled the first two, but the latter two were never really completed, and we're paying the price for it.

Yes - to steal an idea from Noam Chomsky, I think it is pretty clear we need to think about fixing the US in terms of denazification.
 
Every (R) that is voting by mail needs to tell their Social Circle, to start building the expectation of delay
Unlikely. Like mask-wearing/taking COVID seriously... the mail-in voting has been politicized to the point where many Republicans are going to feel like its a loyalty test. So if they are voting by mail they'll want to keep it to themselves lest they be seen as siding with the liberals.
 
This is actually false. The colonies were never considered truly independent states. Even in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence it was the Continental Congress, not any individual colony, that held the major powers of sovereignty

I know they were never actually independent of each other. I'm just saying they were planning on doing that if they won the war. Then once the war was actually won, they decided against that plan. Although hints of it can still be seen in the Articles of Confederation which allowed each state to print its own currency, make its own diplomatic agreements with foreign nations and raise its own army.
 
Yes - to steal an idea from Noam Chomsky, I think it is pretty clear we need to think about fixing the US in terms of denazification.
That can sadly only be achieved by winning power massively, securing the loyalty of the CIA, the FBI, the military, and the courts to the idea of rule of law, and having a massive national militia of heavily armed, well trained, and highly organized citizens several million strong.

Germany had the pillars of the Nazi Party destroyed, and its country occupied, by the Allies. America has no such benefits - it also has a heavily entrenched centrist bloc of voters and citizens who are morally opposed to opposing conservatism too much no matter how extreme it gets. Even worse, we have very little time to bring America back from the brink before a combination of climate change, nuclear weapons, and capitalist-controlled AI ends the human race, which will happen in a few decades at the most.

Really, the fate of the human race was probably decided a few decades ago and we're just trying to go down with a fight.
 
That can sadly only be achieved by winning power massively, securing the loyalty of the CIA, the FBI, the military, and the courts to the idea of rule of law, and having a massive national militia of heavily armed, well trained, and highly organized citizens several million strong.

Germany had the pillars of the Nazi Party destroyed, and its country occupied, by the Allies. America has no such benefits - it also has a heavily entrenched centrist bloc of voters and citizens who are morally opposed to opposing conservatism too much no matter how extreme it gets. Even worse, we have very little time to bring America back from the brink before a combination of climate change, nuclear weapons, and capitalist-controlled AI ends the human race, which will happen in a few decades at the most.

Really, the fate of the human race was probably decided a few decades ago and we're just trying to go down with a fight.

Samurai Champloo said:
Only hope can give rise to
the emotion we call despair.

But it is difficult for man to
live completely without hope.

In other words, man has no choice but
to live with despair as his companion.
 

I try to have a mindset more based on a desire to go down fighting without any belief in the possibility of success, just because it's right. Life without hope is difficult, but it's only rational.

But anyway.
 
Unlikely. Like mask-wearing/taking COVID seriously... the mail-in voting has been politicized to the point where many Republicans are going to feel like its a loyalty test. So if they are voting by mail they'll want to keep it to themselves lest they be seen as siding with the liberals.

Yes, which is why we need to appeal to our (R) friends, invoking sheer patriotism
 
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