The 2024 US Presidential Election

[Gori the Grey]

No. I'm not selling any of you short. Nor myself (in constructing the joke). It's deadpan, but I planted carefully enough the word that gives it away.

 

[Narz]

Oh, that's their personal business. Biden can't do anything on that front. That's on them.

Yeah, I was young once too.

No. I'm not selling any of you short. Nor myself (in constructing the joke). It's deadpan, but I planted carefully enough the word that gives it away.

You're saying teenagers are horny?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Well aimed, of such a young one.

Now you respond back, "That wasn't the kind of hunger I was talking about."

 

[Sommerswerd]

Just a week back, we saw Greene's power when she is not in alignment with Trump. No. She won't do. Musk even less. He can't remotely carry off "voice of the common man." Wouldn't even want to try.

Her main problem (among several) in what you reference a week back, was that her target was someone Republican voters mostly don't give a **** about. Most voters don't even know who Mike Johnson is. You see more recently, how much press she is getting for fighting with AOC. She picked that fight on purpose in order to get her conservative rizz back...and I gather that it worked. A big difference between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Palin is that she's a quick study... She's figuring things out... testing her boundaries... and by the time Trump is off the stage, she will be ready to take up the mantle.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Her main problem (among several) in what you reference a week back, was that her target was someone Republican voters mostly don't give a **** about. Most voters don't even know who Mike Johnson is. You see more recently, how much press she is getting for fighting with AOC. She picked that fight on purpose in order to get her conservative rizz back...and I gather that it worked. A big difference between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Palin is that she's a quick study... She's figuring things out... testing her boundaries... and by the time Trump is off the stage, she will be ready to take up the mantle.

Couldn't disagree more strongly. First, not the least of Trump's skills is knowing how to pick targets. So a misstep there is telling: she lacks one key element of Trump's political acumen. Second (and this will apply to most of the wannabes), she didn't start off as a celebrity. Trump has a whole persona to draw on that none of the rest of them will have. In the run-up to 2016, I saw one of these "interviews with the common man" and he said "Everything Trump does goes up and up, and everything Hillary does goes down and down." Of course that is untethered to reality, but it is tightly tethered to reality TV. Third, she's a woman. Setting aside the just general misogyny of the right, a big part of Trump's appeal (in fact, the most crucial element, I think) is whining on behalf of his supporters; when women whine, they're just whiney. I could go on (and perhaps I will, but it won't change my conclusion: )

Whoever might manage to take up Trump's mantle, it will not be Greene.

Edit: Ok, I'm going to elaborate, just as I threatened I might do. My fullest exposition of my stance should probably take the form of a contrast between the whole list of things that make Trump politically successful and the (always more limited) things that various people think are what make Trump politically successful. Greene thinks that what makes Trump Trump is that he's crass, defiant and norm-busting. So she tries to duplicate that. And yes that is true. Those are elements of Trump. But think of another Trump appeal: how the better part of any rally is him acting essentially as a "what's the deal with that?" stand-up comedian. These new water-efficient toilets . . . what's the deal with that? It takes ten flushes to get anything to go down. [Exasperated face]. Now in there will be "that those liberals want to force on you," so that's the aggrieved, defiant part. But he's not always in that complaining-defying mode. He spends a ton of time just developing rapport with the audience. "Can you believe it?" Greene couldn't patiently develop rapport with a rally audience if her life depended on it.

He shifts easily between two tones of voice. One is strident and aggressive, yes, and has a rasp in it, a growl. But the other is rounded, mellow, quiet; he's confiding in you. He knows these things, intuitively by this stage, as a lifetime showman/conman. She's coming way too late to the game.

 

[Core Imposter]

The polls are just sitting there spinning with no movement. Trump is still leading in the popular vote, which is gravity defying for a Republican. The key point is that he is doing better with the three third parties in the race. And the key point to be made of that is we still aren't sure how much penetration Kennedy will get. He will miss the first debate and still have to complete the process of getting on ballots in the key states. If he fails at that he won't be a factor.

And so, then you have the battlegrounds. Trump is leading them all but really there are two groups. He has a solid lead in the south and west so the focus goes north to MI, WI, and PA. Trump's lead in these states averages about a point and he's behind at times by fractions.

So, there are two ways to look at the northern battlegrounds. You can say these three normally vote as a block and all Biden needs to do is move the polls a few points in his direction and he will sweep the block and win the election. Worse case, the three states are a coin flip, and you are at 50/50 to win.

But if you look at them as individual states and as individual coin flips Biden is in deep trouble. The odds on winning three consecutive coin flips are only one in eight.

It depends on how you look at it. Or when. Seems like quantum physics. Everything is in all states until you make an observation.

 

[amadeus]

Yup. It's not like I'm advocating for gold standards or anything, but I find it boggling that anyone can argue that a 100% fiat currency is anything other than politically allocated social clout. There's nothing else it could be.

A small tangent but I have come to the conclusion that a specie standard is also in a sense a kind of de facto fiat when the government is able to set the price and able to determine who is allowed to own specie.

But I would say the currency standard is more independent of how wealth actually ends up around in the economy.

 

[Gori the Grey]

The polls are just sitting there spinning with no movement.

The Goriam Webster Word for the Day (and indeed every day for the next 166 days) is "Fixity."

Definiton: The state of being unchanging

Example of Usage: "In a highly polarized electorate, the polling between two well-known candidates is likely to be marked by fixity"

 

[Lexicus]

Yup. It's not like I'm advocating for gold standards or anything, but I find it boggling that anyone can argue that a 100% fiat currency is anything other than politically allocated social clout. There's nothing else it could be.

@Hygro and I have been pushing this view consistently for years. Of course, you will be truly enlightened when you realize commodity money is also 100% politically allocated social clout. Except the allocation with commodity money tends to be a lot more regressive.

 

[Farm Boy]

There are different calculus to follow, yadda yadda all the way down to naked murder, yes. But yes, it's about how many hoops the system has to jump through in order to reprice through coercion. The fruits of people's time being the stuff thier life is literally made of.

When I argue with hygro about this it's because I say there is a trust spending limit. Hit over the limit and people start considering the money deal broken. Inflationary pressure, yes the opposite of the dreaded deflation, does stress the deal. High inflation helps reallocate the property of the elderly faster, for example. But it also dispossesses voters, depending on the hungers one is choosing to listen to.

Consistent high inflation requires constant tinkering and makes the real economy start functioning less like the placid paced courts and more like the House of Representatives.

 

[Cutlass]

Yup. It's not like I'm advocating for gold standards or anything, but I find it boggling that anyone can argue that a 100% fiat currency is anything other than politically allocated social clout. There's nothing else it could be.

It's called sound economic practice.

 

[Hygro]

I just haven't found a single "solution". Like getting rid of the gold standard was both inevitable and "good" except that the very things they warned of manifested, except in the exact opposite way of the warning. Kind of like the electoral college functioning in reverse (it gave us the fakers and demagogues), the gold standard didn't hold back the masses from printing themselves lots of money, it turned out it held back the very elites it was serving. Just, apparently, serving less.

Nothing in the economy can be held constant without making other elements move adjust to maintain the constant. And that's already assuming the stability of consistent democratic participation and popular buy-in to the system itself.

But there better and worse combinations. All of which are inherently game-able, it's literally socially assigned numbers with formally designated positions.

Things get strained with things get bad. It's going to show up somewhere, and I see no reason to fetishize one form over another. A poverty shock will manifest as pain no matter how it gets distributed. But some distributions will then feedback into their own problems. Everyone hates paying more for stuff. But losing your job is worse, and lending your unemployed family money you'll never get back while prices stay the same isn't cheaper.

 

[Crezth]

Yup. It's not like I'm advocating for gold standards or anything, but I find it boggling that anyone can argue that a 100% fiat currency is anything other than politically allocated social clout. There's nothing else it could be.

It’s a voucher of sublimated violence. That confers clout. In ancient times, there was no barter but debts were recorded on tablets. It was literally purely social clout and the breaking of the tablets (“Jubilee”) broke the spell. But even gold actually comes from the sublimation of either blood money, slave trading, and melting down the spoils of war. And indeed all political clout is ultimately derived from sublimated violence.

 

[Core Imposter]

The Goriam Webster Word for the Day (and indeed every day for the next 166 days) is "Fixity."

Definiton: The state of being unchanging

Example of Usage: "In a highly polarized electorate, the polling between two well-known candidates is likely to be marked by fixity"

I was thinking of your predictions as I was writing that. Events will move the needle in my telling.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Even though I think it'll be kind of like watching paint dry, it'll be fun watching along with you, however it goes.

Unless Trump wins, of course.

 

[Farm Boy]

I just haven't found a single "solution". Like getting rid of the gold standard was both inevitable and "good" except that the very things they warned of manifested, except in the exact opposite way of the warning. Kind of like the electoral college functioning in reverse (it gave us the fakers and demagogues), the gold standard didn't hold back the masses from printing themselves lots of money, it turned out it held back the very elites it was serving. Just, apparently, serving less.

Nothing in the economy can be held constant without making other elements move adjust to maintain the constant. And that's already assuming the stability of consistent democratic participation and popular buy-in to the system itself.

But there better and worse combinations. All of which are inherently game-able, it's literally socially assigned numbers with formally designated positions.

Things get strained with things get bad. It's going to show up somewhere, and I see no reason to fetishize one form over another. A poverty shock will manifest as pain no matter how it gets distributed. But some distributions will then feedback into their own problems. Everyone hates paying more for stuff. But losing your job is worse, and lending your unemployed family money you'll never get back while prices stay the same isn't cheaper.

It only has done the demagogue thing once. The democrats have run afoul of it for decades now. They're too narrow.

and BTW, when you are retired, the state coming for your horsehocky and rendering your stipend worth less is the same as losing your job. But you're old, and the young, oh so clever, and oh so hungry sort of don't look at you as a human to interact with anyways. They'd rather you were not.

 

[Hygro]

Bush Jr was deeply the same problem.

 

[Farm Boy]

Heh. Sure.

They broke the deal in 2008. Definitely no populist.

 

[Lexicus]

is the same as losing your job.

No it isnt, in the same way that having your hours cut isn't the same as losing your job.

 

[Lexicus]

and BTW, when you are retired, the state coming for your horsehocky and rendering your stipend worth less is the same as losing your job. But you're old, and the young, oh so clever, and oh so hungry sort of don't look at you as a human to interact with anyways. They'd rather you were not.

This is also a bit of a weird point to make given that government spending on retirees is one of the most inflationary kinds of spending there is given that retirees are unproductive by definition. It's just a little odd to imply we must take care of the old and then complain about a core consequence of doing so.