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Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
- myroon5 6y agoWhich News Outlets Have Called the Presidential Race: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/upshot/network-race-call-tracker.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/upshot/networ...
- granzymes 6y agoCNN projects Biden has won PA, and thus the presidency. It has also been called by AP, NBC, and ABC.
- mmastrac 6y agoThe media was way too cautious in making the call here, but it's easy to understand why when the Republicans made it so difficult to count absentee ballots before election night, likely to benefit their candidate through the confusion of swinging red and then blue. If you don't want this to happen again, pressure your red representatives to stop demonizing mail-in/advance voting, and stop destroying the postal system.
- Trasmatta 6y agoThere was some interesting game theory stuff going on there, where AP and Fox called Arizona early, but other networks didn't feel it was safe. And then Nevada has obviously been won for days, but nobody was calling it because that would have put Fox and AP over 270. So all the networks just started waiting for PA rather than calling the obvious for Nevada.
- masklinn 6y ago> but other networks didn't feel it was safe. And might have been right, Biden's lead in AZ keeps shrinking, 3 days ago his lead was 25% of the ballots left to count, now it's 15. > And then Nevada has obviously been won for days, but nobody was calling it because that would have put Fox and AP over 270. Although Biden's lead has only grown there saying that it's "obviously won" is a touch optimistic.
- Trasmatta 6y ago> Although Biden's lead has only grown there saying that it's "obviously won" is a touch optimistic. No, if you follow the election analysts like Nate Cohn, Nate Silver, Dave Wasserman, and especially Jon Ralston (who is "the guy" for Nevada elections), Biden has been the clear winner for nearly two days. And also AP almost immediately called Nevada after the Pennsylvania drop, so they were definitely waiting on that.
- Retric 6y agoAnalysis is more complex than just what percentage of ballots remain. It was widely expected for Pennsylvania to have a decisive swap when Trump had a seemingly huge lead and Georgia a very red state was predicted as being a vastly closer race. North Carolina could have also been called as leaning Trump much sooner, but overall it was a fairly close race. Voting by people in large groups are predictable and people spend a lot of effort getting this right. Out of 50 states exactly one was significantly different from predictions based on a significant shift in a specific group which is easy to miss in statewide polls.
- nojito 6y agoAP and Fox have access to proprietary survey data for AZ.
- briandear 6y agoAt the time, Nevada had a 8000 vote margin with over 100,000 votes outstanding. The real question is why swing states paused counting.
- prh8 6y agoIt was not obvious for Nevada, because the outstanding votes were the last 2 days of drop-off, which has skewed red, and there has been uncertainty about how Vegas would react considering Covid's effect on their economy.
- granzymes 6y agoLooks like they were waiting for Biden to cross the PA recount threshold. He just did (0.51% > 0.5%).
- masklinn 6y ago> when the Republicans made it so difficult to count absentee ballots before election night That really can't be noted enough. That the count took so long is specifically because several legislatures decided to not allow any preprocessing of mail ballots, and to count mail ballots last.
- barumi 6y ago> That really can't be noted enough. That the count took so long is specifically because several legislatures decided to not allow any preprocessing of mail ballots, and to count mail ballots last. Indeed this bears repeating. The whole process mounting to the election day was engineered to sabotage and outright throw out votes from the opposition, even if that comes at the expense of the core principles of the whole political system.
- slg 6y agoI really wonder how good faith conservatives can view these actions positively. One side tries to make it easier, safer, and quicker to vote. One side is trying the opposite. The only explanation they can come up with is voter fraud which has not been found to be a widescale problem by nearly every group that has looked into it.
- Master_Odin 6y agoThey and their base are not operating in good faith. Trump and other high level GOP very publicly stated that doing these sorts of things to improve voting would only help Democrats and that's why they're opposed. The Us vs Them mentality that increasingly and openly permeates through politics is a cancer to the US' future.
- slg 6y ago>They and their base are not operating in good faith. There are certainly some people and perhaps even most people in that group, however there are also still millions of people who do actually believe in small government. Do these people think that winning elections is more important than democracy or is there some reason that they have used to convince themselves that it is okay to make it harder to vote?
- barumi 6y ago> The media was way too cautious in making the call here, It's my understanding that it had zero to do with caution and all to do with the fact that the election was not decided. If there are still votes that were not counted and the slim margin between both candidates is smaller than the number of unaccounted votes then the election results are yet to be determined. Thus it would make zero sense to claim that one candidate was the winner when the votes that are yet to be counted are enough to sway the results.
- stu2b50 6y agoNot really. Once the models project that it's basically impossible, the DD's call it. They call states like California or Arkansas once they get the exit poll data, before any votes are in. Fox News called Virginia for Biden when there were like 50% votes in and Trump led with 10%. They were uber cautious this time and waited for a >0.5% lead.
- barumi 6y ago> Not really. Once the models project that it's basically impossible (...) It's only "basically impossible" if the amount of votes to be counted are still enough to sway an election. You should think things through and pay attention to the unwanted consequences of these sort of claims. We're living a development where half the US population is complaining about voter fraud and conspiracies to withheld their candidate from their rightful place in the US's regime. It makes no sense to argue in favor of taking shortcuts in the election process citing arcane arguments and models, each of which unverifiable and impenetrable to the common man, and expect it to simply accept an outcome that is dictated by you and not verifiable by them. If you want a country to accept election results, the results need to be obvious and above any scrutiny. In the case of elections, you only get there if all votes are counted and any shred of doubt is rendered an impossibility. Otherwise all you get is conspiracy theories, dissent and erosion of any faith on the democratic nature of a system.
- esoterica 6y ago> You should think things through and pay attention to the unwanted consequences of these sort of claims. Who is "you" here? The media organizations are the one making the calls and defining the processes for doing so, not some random on HN. > It makes no sense to argue in favor of taking shortcuts in the election process citing arcane arguments and models, The media calling the election is not part of the formal election process. If the media calls the election wrongly they just get humiliated when the final results come in and they are proven wrong. The media doesn't decide the election result.
- notatoad 6y agoOnce it became clear that the election wouldn't be called on election night, was there really any benefit to making an early call? Whether it was called on Thursday or Saturday seems kind of irrelevant when inauguration isn't until January. It's much better to be certain that wrong.
- scrollaway 6y agoThere's an argument to be made that not making the call when the result was already certain, even if the margin of 0.5% hadn't been reached yet, was irresponsible in the sense that it allowed Trump more time to promote this idea that he has won, everything's fraudulent etc. (Just look at his last tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1325099845045071873 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13250998450450718...) I disagree with that argument FWIW, but I can certainly understand it. Though I think people were just impatient to hear "Biden has won" be made official, even if they already knew. I certainly was.
- notatoad 6y agothe result was definitely not certain. there was more outstanding votes than the leader's margin, and it wasn't clear what the composition of those votes was. it was definitely very likely that they would follow the trend of the rest of the state, but it could have come to pass that the late-arriving absentee ballots or provisionals in PA broke very differently to the early-arriving absentee ballots. They called it when the first sample of outstanding allegheny county ballots were counted and made it clear that the rest of those votes were going to trend as expected. the networks have to balance a late call giving fodder to conspiracy theorists with an early or uncertain call also giving fodder to conspiracy theorists. they don't want to be doing anything that could promote a narrative claiming the networks are trying to influence the election for biden.
- 8ytecoder 6y agoIt is. The longer it drags the longer you can feed fodder to conspiracies. Calling it too quickly would have been bad as well but not as bad as not calling when the end is clear. I think calling it now seems appropriate even though I don’t think Arizona should have beeen called.
- duxup 6y agoTheir cautiousness made sense. Projections just before the election showed a lot steeper win for Biden. It didn't play out that way so it makes sense to be cautious. Trump had a lot more support among some demographics than people expected. as the race got tighter it made sense to doubt what might play out.
- wombatmobile 6y ago> Their cautiousness made sense. Projections just before the election showed a lot steeper win for Biden. You need to distinguish between the national vote, which met projections with a significant dem majority, and state races, some of which were close, which is also what was predicted.
- wolco2 6y agoState level projections in swing states were off by 7 points. Why were the polls so wrong again?
- wombatmobile 6y agoWhich projection was off by 7 points?
- wolco2 6y agoLet's take: Pennsylvania These polls are from November 1. Targoz Market Research was really off. 56 to 42 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e28be4ccb16eb0aa6496c31/t/5f9f6d4d11f67f690ade11aa/1604283726251/Crosstab+-+Pennsylvania+2020+PollSmart+Poll+Demos.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e28be4ccb16eb0aa6496... New York Times 42-49 https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/az-fl-pa-wi/bc6b622f38350414/full.pdf https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/az-fl-pa-wi/bc6b622f3...
- duxup 6y agoI am distinguishing between the popular vote... I honestly don't recall much in the way of news about the popular vote projections. Probably because folks were more concerned with other things.
- chlodwig 6y agobut it's easy to understand why when the Republicans made it so difficult to count absentee ballots before election night, In Pennsylvania, the Republican House passed a bill to start counting three days early but it died in the Senate under threat of veto from the Democrat governor -- https://apnews.com/article/2396bbdd1617a82c4919127726778711 https://apnews.com/article/2396bbdd1617a82c4919127726778711 The Democrats had a separate bill that would have started counting much earlier, but the Republicans opposed that for fear there would not be proper oversight over the counting process.
- lostdog 6y agoThat bill also bans dropboxes and makes it harder to get a mail-in ballot. It's just a normal voter suppression bill.
- chlodwig 6y agoThe bill would have still given PA voters multiple months to get their ballot and mail it in. Hardly voter suppression. As for dropboxes, I really wish we could have some survey of opinion about them before it became a partisan issue. If it wasn't a partisan thing, I think the problem of dropboxes making ballots less traceable and enabling fraud would be pretty well acknowledged by all.
- marcinzm 6y ago>The media was way too cautious in making the call here, but it's easy to understand why when the Republicans made it so difficult to count absentee ballots before election night, likely to benefit their candidate through the confusion of swinging red and then blue. I'm curious about the efficiency of this strategy. I'd figure they'd gain more by allowing early counting, leaking the pro-democrat results and thus lowering democrat turnout on election day. After all, why bother voting when it's already in the bag and so on.
- prh8 6y agoThe opposite effect occurred in 2016. With Trump leading in east coast states, west coast states saw reduced Democrat turnout (relative to norm)
- jberryman 6y agoWell, the Republican legislature apparently discussed with the whitehouse about ignoring the popular vote and appointing electors for Trump (and was willing to talk about this on record) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if... So apparently the strategy was to make the vote counting look suspicious enough that it would give cover for essentially a coup.
- kostarelo 6y ago> when the Republicans made it so difficult to count absentee ballots before election night Haven't been watching this closely. Care to share some refs? Thanks
- MisterBastahrd 6y agohttps://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pennsylvania-counting-votes-election-day/story?id=73993649 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pennsylvania-counting-votes-... Republicans in Pennsylvania, a swing state, created a law that didn't allow for absentee ballots to begin to be counted until 8pm on election day.
- hobofan 6y ago> pressure your red representatives to stop demonizing mail-in/advance voting, and stop destroying the postal system You can pressure them all you want on that. It won't change a thing because making it easier to vote via mail will possibly result in them being voted out by making it easier for minorities to vote.
- buzzert 6y agoBecause minorities are unable to find polling locations? I don’t understand your claim.
- hobofan 6y agoBecause the economically disadvantaged part of the US population (which disproportionately affects minorities) can't afford to take a day off from work to vote, so voting by mail is a good way for them to vote without a personal downside. Alternatively this could be fixed by making Election Day a national holiday and/or setting up more polling locations.
- bavell 6y agoIt took me less than 15m to vote on Tuesday, no lines or anything (deep red county). I've heard of people waiting for hours but that's because their local govt failed them (not enough locations, under-staffed, etc). IMO seems more accurate to say in-person voting disproportionately affects incompetent municipalities.
- hobofan 6y agoI mean a deep red county that will stay red whether they correctly reflect their populations leanings or not, so there is little incentive to suppress any voting efforts, right? That's in contrast to a currently-elected-light-red county where the population is slightly leaning blue, but can't express that due to hindrances in the voting process (you can flip the colors if you want).
- 6y ago
- jberryman 6y agoAnd stop closing polling places in urban (Black) neighborhoods, etc, etc
- alessivs 6y ago> pressure your red representatives to stop demonizing mail-in/advance voting, and stop destroying the postal system I don't see why expressing concerns about postal voting would necessarily be a partisan thing. Don't the TWO major political blocks want a fair process? Perhaps everyone? ...especially in light of evidence of documented cases. Here is a sample query for: "Fraudulent Use of Absentee Ballots which resulted in a criminal conviction" (with results ruled as recently as 2020): https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=&state=All&year=&case_type=24487&fraud_type=24489 https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=&state=Al... The result set doesn't include "Duplicate voting", "Impersonation", "Altering the vote count", which are separate criteria (relevant to mention because they are part of the ongoing allegations).
- scrollaway 6y agoDirect link: https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-biden-election-results-11-07-20/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-biden-elect... Also called by ABC, NBC and the AP (https://twitter.com/AP/status/1325112826072084480 https://twitter.com/AP/status/1325112826072084480). Congratulations, America.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Trasmatta 6y agoThank god. Now I want the last 4 years of my life back.
- mam2 6y agoYou poor thing.
- ufo 6y agoOr 6 years, if you also count the 2016 primaries.
- masklinn 6y agoYou still have to deal with a 6/3 hard-right supreme court, courts packed to the gill with FedSoc pasties, and most likely (though depending on a GA runoff) the same senate which basically gridlocked Obama's second term and prepared the grounds for Trump's term.
- Trasmatta 6y agoGetting Trump out of office was the number one priority. We can doom about the other stuff later.
- jraby3 6y agoDisagree. I think getting McConnell out of office would’ve been a much bigger win.
- Master_Odin 6y agoThere are enough other Republicans in the Senate from safe states that I'm sure one of them would be happy to play obstructist on any Democrat policy. Eliminating any one senator without gaining majority is just a morale victory.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
- CurtHagenlocher 6y agoEverybody does realize that this has no legal significance, right?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- adamch 6y agoIt's predictive of a forthcoming legally-significant event.
- User23 6y agoSurely somewhere in the emanations and penumbras of the constitution we can find that the AP’s decision is binding.
- dentemple 6y agoAs Hamilton famously wrote in Federalist Paper #85: "It's not official until it's Facebook Official."
- notatoad 6y agoYes, I'm pretty sure everybody here understands that AP doesn't officially decide who wins the election. It still has significance.
- Kye 6y ago2016 HN had a big, busy thread for Trump's election and didn't wait for the Electoral College to vote in December. It stayed up. Please show the same consideration.
- seek3r 6y agoNot an American citizen, but I’m really glad that Biden won. USA sets an example for other Western countries, and Trump wasn’t a good example. I hope you’re able to recover from Trumpism and that the Republican Party rejects such violent and authoritarian points of view. Edit: I’m not saying US citizens should think of other nations when casting their vote. Just glad — as non-US citizen - that Biden won and that our national far-right politicians can finally shut up about Trump
- refurb 6y agoI agree. When I vote I make sure I pick the candidate that other countries would be happy with.
- seek3r 6y agoTouché
- foolmeonce 6y agoVery wise, it sucks to end up trapped on an island first politically, then economically and finally socially. The US understands that stick very well when the topic is its opponents.
- pvaldes 6y ago> When I vote I make sure I pick the candidate that other countries would be happy with. Is not something that the common voter could control. You will do in the 50% of the cases in fact, just by chance. And is great, because deliberately burning all bridges with all your allies and to pee in the curtains just to make a vanity statement, is not a productive way to work in a multinational team to obtain your goals.
- marban 6y agoWhy is this getting downvoted? https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-u-s-elections-germany-looks-across-the-atlantic-with-anxiety-and-hope-a-7d866483-ceeb-4de3-9e3c-617aaa916ec8 https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-u-s-electio...
- refurb 6y agoNot saying Biden didn’t win, but is it really the media that makes the call?
- ihuman 6y agoNo, the real call isn't until the electoral college votes on December 14th. The media is calling states when their projections are confident enough (and possibly when the difference is above the automatic recount threshold).
- disown 6y ago> No, the real call isn't until the electoral college votes on December 14th. Doubtful. Doesn't look like Trump is going to concede. Likely litigation and supreme court in the coming weeks. > The media is calling states when their projections are confident enough (and possibly when the difference is above the automatic recount threshold). The media has been projecting trump to lose since 2016. Well since 2014 really. Either way, it's history in the making. Comfy chair. Popcorn. All set.
- dllthomas 6y agoIIUC, litigation cannot (Constitutionally) change when the electoral college votes, when those votes are counted, or when the Presidency transfers. Assuming all states appoint electors in accordance with the safe harbor provisions of the Electoral Count Act, the "real call" is December 14th. If that doesn't happen, then it's possible neither candidate will have 270+ votes and in that case the "real call" is an unusually counted vote in the house. With the current projections, it would likely have to be three states that fail to send electors properly for Biden to have a chance of losing.
- akhilcacharya 6y agoHim conceding or not doesn't change anything. At worst the secret service will drag him out of the residence at 12PM 1/20
- handmodel 6y ago
- Simulacra 6y agoLike when the second plane hit the world trade center…
- cmurf 6y agoIt's flagged why? There's an identically titled one for Trump from 2016.
- ihuman 6y agoPolitics is usually against the HN guidelines. Also there's a new thread from the NY Times that has more votes and isn't flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25016070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25016070
- cmurf 6y agoAbsurd. There is an identically titled article from election night 2016, for Trump. HN has consistently carried water for Trump by allowing a small number of HNers to flag Trump critical articles, for four years. Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907201
- Kye 6y agoI won't deny that HN as a whole has a conservative tilt (edit: at least in who's willing to flag and downvote), but I've always found dang's rulings on stuff fair and reasonable. We'll probably get a thread at some point with a stickied reminder to chill out. edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967 You're on the right one!
- 6y ago
- bluejay2387 6y agoI don't understand why this is flagged. It's highly relevant to tech (particularly given trump's moves on Chinese tech firms and his treatment of social media) and from a legitimate source.
- thekyle 6y agoYeah, I'm not sure, the one from 2016 where Donald Trump won had a very nice discussion on it.
- atomi 6y agoIt wasn't flagged. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12909752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12909752
- briandear 6y agoTechnically it’s false because one doesn’t become President-Elect until vote counts are officially certified.
- karmicthreat 6y agoYea, but we've always referred to them as president elect once it's obvious they will win.
- jeffbee 6y agoNo, one becomes the president elect after the electoral college votes, which is still a month away.
- handmodel 6y agoBiden will now begin to receive intelligence briefings. He is the President-Elect (which is not a legal term - it is a media one - so it is silly to insist your definition is correct)
- finallyhappened 6y agoMost biden wins and supporting comments are getting downvoted. Just keep an eye and you will understand the types that moderate the forum.
- dang 6y agoAll: before reading further, make sure you're up on the site guidelines and don't post political or ideological flames to this thread. If you're hot under the collar, please cool down and wait for your curiosity to come back before commenting (and maybe even reading) further. This is a good test case to see if HN can stick to its intended spirit: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: There are now multiple pages of comments in this thread. If you want to see the later pages, click 'More' at the bottom of the earlier pages. Or get there like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=6 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=6 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=7 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=7 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=8 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=8 --- As many have pointed out, a dozen or so submissions on this topic were flagged by users. That's actually the immune system working as intended, but another component of the system is that moderators rescue the very most historic stories so HN can have a single big thread about them. We did that 4 years ago, also for Brexit, etc. Since this was the first submission on the topic, it seems fairest to be the one to restore. (It's still on our todo list to have some form of karma sharing for situations like this, to make it be less of a race and/or lottery.) I changed the URL from https://www.cnn.com/ https://www.cnn.com/ since that is not the most useful link and the AP seems as close as one can get to a neutral source.
- te_chris 6y agoOn behalf of the rest of the world: thanks America, removing the arsonist of global unity and multilateralism is appreciated.
- oh_sigh 6y agoPrepare for 4 years straight of Kumbaya and shoulder rubs. Prepare for world peace. Just like the world had in 2015 before the arsonist got in power.
- adkadskhj 6y agoIt's nice not to have someone so clearly and purposefully antagonizing everyone though. That is an awful trait in any president.
- oh_sigh 6y agoI'm fairly sure he wasn't antagonizing everyone. Mostly it seemed like coastal elite journalists and twitter mob that got the most antagonized. Did US foreign policy get affected because Trump tweeted something mean?
- adkadskhj 6y agoNot but given that his public interactions like re-tweeting blurbs about "The only good democrat is a dead democrat"[1] i would argue America's internal discourse has gotten far, far worse as a direct result of his behavior. [1]: Yes, he retweeted this. The video blurb does not give any more context. The full video does, as they only call for death of Democrats "politically speaking", but not only is this retweet from the President a great example of how violent blurbs without context are unconstructive, we've seen example of violent acts recently that one can't help but feel the President personally promoted - for example the attempted kidnapping of a democrat official. Context is king, and the President is known for giving vague and awful statements without context. For his followers that only look skin deep, of which plenty of humans do, what do you think they take from this?
- 6y ago
- sergiotapia 6y agoHow does this election relate to the 2000 election when all media called Gore the winner, but then in December, Bush became the president elect? https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/11/04/the-2000-election-wasnt-decided-until-december-after-a-recountheres-what-happened-to-the-stock-market/?sh=4be60bfd625b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/11/04/the... "On election night, it was unclear who had won, with the electoral votes of the state of Florida still undecided. The returns showed that Bush had won Florida by such a close margin that state law required a recount. A month-long series of legal battles led to the highly controversial 5–4 Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore, which ended the recount." Can this happen again this time?
- granzymes 6y agoA few differences: * In 2000 it was one tipping-point state. Here, Biden has multiple states putting him over the top. * The margin in those states is larger than in Florida. The final official Florida count gave the victory to Bush by 537 votes. * 2000 involved a recount of legitimately questionable ballots. Trump's legal cases (thus far) have been judged by experts to be far less serious. * Trump (so far) is not challenging enough ballots to give him the lead in the tipping-point state.
- jansan 6y ago* Trump's legal cases (thus far) have been judged by experts to be far less serious* Tell us more, where are the details of that legal case?
- granzymes 6y agohttps://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-elections-voting-fraud-and-irregularities-us-supreme-court-14eb73bc80dfd2aa637d097a3f41fca5 https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-electi... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/us/politics/trump-election-voter-fraud.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/us/politics/trump-electio... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-06/supreme-court-probably-wont-decide-2020-us-presidential-election/12856390 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-06/supreme-court-probabl... https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/06/politics/lawsuits-trump-gop-proof/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/06/politics/lawsuits-trump-gop-p... https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/judges-evidence-trump-campaign-election-cases-tossed/story?id=74071460 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/judges-evidence-trump-campai...
- minimaxir 6y agodang's comment from 4 years ago on this subject (Trump's election win): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12910929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12910929
- disown 6y agoAnyone else get weird vibes reading that? If feels like that comment was written yesterday and an eternity ago. It's feels like 4 years just passed by in a jiffy but at the same time, it felt like it was the longest 4 years of my life.
- lol768 6y agoYeah, reading dang's wording again brought back memories of that thread and all the events back then - and my general disbelief at the result. This year in particular has been weird for me for passage-of-time; it feels simultaneously like the pandemic has been a constant forever - but also, spring and summer have gone so fast and now it's almost 2021.
- dang 6y ago(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25017129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25017129)
- quattrofan 6y agoThe orange tumour has been excised, however it's clear some chemo is required for the spread into the Republicans of trumpism.
- murat124 6y agoUntil the midterms in 2022 I don't expect much to happen on federal level (minus executive orders) but there's a lot of work to do. Trump has proved US can be hijacked and someone who's a bit more competent can actually take over the country.
- scrollaway 6y ago> It's still on our todo list to have some form of karma sharing for situations like this, to make it be less of a race and/or lottery. Just disable karma on topics like these. They are going to be submitted multiple times and very quickly anyway, nobody "needs" the karma and it doesn't matter if nobody gets it.
- AlimJaffer 6y agoAgreed. One of the factors that makes HN superior to the likes of reddit is the lack of overt karma farming which reduces the quality of discourse.
- dang 6y ago(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25017129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25017129)
- bkovacev 6y agoAs someone who is not that much into politics but receives salary in US dollar - what does Biden win mean for the US economy and the dollar?
- m3kw9 6y agoNot much if they don’t win the senate.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoHistorically, when the President and at least one house of Congress are opposing parties, the federal government tends to be gridlocked except in time of national emergency (e.g., 9/11). This, I believe, is why the markets are reacting rather optimistically to the election results. Market makers clearly believe that a Biden presidency and a Republican Senate will get very little done, pass very few new laws, and spend a lot of time quarreling. This allows the economy to essentially run on auto-pilot, which in a free market system is rather conducive to growth. If however the Senate swings to the Democrats after all the votes are counted, it may be a different story.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Historically, when the President and at least one house of Congress are opposing parties, the federal government tends to be gridlocked except in time of national emergency (e.g., 9/11). Unless you mean in the strict technical sense of national emergency, where the US has spent exactly 14 months not in one since March 9, 1933 (so the rule is moot because it basically never applies), historically that's mostly not true; it wasn't that true in the 1980s through 1992s with Democrats controlling one and sometimes two houses of Congress and Reagan-Bush presidencies. It wasn't very true in the mid-late 1990s with Clinton vs. Gingrich (there were shutdowns, but also major bipartisan initiatives like welfare reform). Still, it's pretty true if you narrow it to a Democratic President and Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority leader, rather than trying to make it some nonpartisan broad historical phenomenon.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rixrax 6y agoI am holding my breath until Jan 6th at least when electoral college votes: Url: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11641 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11641 The Electoral College: A 2020 Presidential Election Timeline
- minimaxir 6y agoFaithless electors will not invalidate the results, especially in this case where Biden has much more than 270 electoral votes.
- Izkata 6y agoStill a bit early to say "much more": Arizona can still flip (it's been inching ever closer and is at 0.6% difference at 90% counted) and Georgia has already announced a recount because it's so close. If those do both actually end up in Trumps favor, that puts him only 11 electoral votes short. If the voting machine errors in Michigan do turn out to be a thing (and the error is large enough), or he wins legal battles there or in Pennsylvania, that's enough to flip the whole election. It's a very long shot, but this isn't actually over yet until everything is counted and verified.
- GavinMcG 6y agoThe legal battles in Pennsylvania aren't even substantial enough to trigger a mandatory recount - the number of ballots the GOP is fighting over is too small. Also, the Michigan "errors" were errors in publishing the data, not in balloting: https://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127--544676--,00.html https://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127--544676--,00.html
- MilnerRoute 6y agoMichigan's results are accurate, and were never in question after one county's glitch. “Because the clerk did not update software, even though the tabulators counted all the ballots correctly, those accurate results were not combined properly when the clerk reported unofficial results,” the Department of State said. https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-technology-voting-michigan-6beeef230376e75252d6eaa91db3f88f https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-technology...
- ceilingcorner 6y agoCompletely independently of who won/will win this election, I find it massively irresponsible that media outlets are calling it before actual states are. The media should report the news, not make it.
- tdeck 6y agoThis happens every election. States always take days or weeks to certify their results.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoThe fact that it always happens doesn’t make it any better. Media announcements have real effects. We already saw this happen in 2000.
- brown9-2 6y agoThis is why they now wait until polls are closed.
- lwansbrough 6y agoThe media was not the reason why 2000 was controversial..
- zamadatix 6y agoIn 2000 it was bad because the call was done for something too close (hundreds of votes) that hadn't finalized and the controversy that followed was around how close that state was not that states had been called. The differences in the "close" states needed to push past 270 are nearly 100x that and multiple would need to flip to matter. The only remaining thing that's actually close to watch is how much over 270 Biden ends up with at this point.
- OneTwoPetitFour 6y agoThat is an old tradition. Why should the states call a national election?
- joak 6y agoWhat really afraid me is that if such an idiot was able to become president and was finally so hard to beat. There is room for a much smarter populist. It will be then very hard to remove him/her. How to avoid that in 2024 ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25017161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25017161
- adamnemecek 6y agoI think that there isn't anyone with that sort of name recognition who would want to do it.
- seppin 6y agoExactly, this dramatically understatements American obsession with celebrity and pageantry.
- phaemon 6y agoElon Musk?
- mixmastamyk 6y agoAgreed. What smart, successful person would take a low-paying job to be a professional punching bag?
- just-juan-post 6y agoJoe Biden, Kamala Harris Got a Big Social Media Boost from Indian Troll Farms https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-kamala-harris-got-big-social-media-boost-indian-troll-farms-1544047 https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-kamala-harris-got-big-soc... Social media has been devoid of Covid fear mongering since election night. For months we had daily stories pumping out fear about Covid. For the last few days there has been nothing to talk about while we waited for the recount yet no USA-centric Covid horror stories have appeared. Why are they gone? Where did they go? There were waves of Covid stories for months on Reddit, HN, and other media. Where did they go and more importantly where did the come from? "Coivd will go away when the election is over" is shorthand for "The Democrats pumped up the Covid fear to attempt to win elections". So far it has been true.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoIt's called "news" for a reason. Old stories simply aren't as interesting.
- softwaredoug 6y agoOn the data nerd side I continue to be shocked at how people misinterpret the certainty of polls/forecasts. Forecasts give us probability distributions based on historical polling error data. Not infallible predictions the expected value will 100% happen. It’s fairly revealing of society’s general innumeracy, just as it was 4 years ago when Trump won.
- fullshark 6y agoWhat % chance did the polls/forecast give the republicans gaining seats in the house (I actually don't know but from reading pundits it sounds like very little)? I think the interesting thing this cycle is betting markets were pretty much also at odds with pollsters/forecasts on Trump's chances, basically baking in a pro-trump (R?) polling error. Perhaps there really are issues with some of these forecasts / uncertainty estimates?
- softwaredoug 6y agoI think I only saw projections for Dems retaining control (which was high). I think GOP gaining seats was always in the cards. I think it’s interesting too how some of the qualitative predictions (like Sabatos crystal ball) were pretty close to the outcome in the Pres race.
- evgen 6y agoIn just about every model, but let's use 538 as the canonical example, there was a reasonable chance for the Dems to lose seats but a very, very low chance they would lose control. We are looking at a two or three standard deviation variance from expectations for loss of control but losing seats was well within the range of outcomes that should have surprised no one.
- jayd16 6y agoIt wasn't that little at all. Eyeballing the 538 graph it was about a 38% chance of Republicans gaining in the house? Over a one in three chance. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/house/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/...
- sdfhbdf 6y agoInteresting fact I noticed: If Biden is to take the presidency after the Electoral Collage voted that would make him the oldest president to take office yet, also interesting that wikipedia already marked Biden as president-elect [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_by_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Unit...
- junon 6y agoFuther, Donald Trump's wikipedia page is currently fully-locked, a rare classification for a wikipedia page. Biden is currently only under extended-confirmed protection. Of course this is necessary but one of my favorite pasttimes is to look at vandalism changes in the history, and I would have loved to see some of the stuff people came up with on either side.
- cesarb 6y agoIf you look at the protection log and follow the links, the request which led to that full protection is interesting: "Temporary full protection: The article is going crazy with everyone trying to add their version to the lead. There is so much edit conflicting it took me eight tries to bring the article back to a neutral version. Would anyone consider a few hours of full protection to let things calm down?"
- junon 6y agoSounds about right, I might have a gander just because - bound to have some gold nuggets of crazy to peruse!
- Kye 6y agoJust to add for the curious, the wiki on "President-elect of the United States" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President-elect_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President-elect_of_the_United_...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bosswipe 6y agoIf Republicans keep the Senate Biden won't accomplish much of his agenda. Especially with Mitch Mcconnell's uncompromising approach expect gridlock, government shutdowns, probably a constitutional crisis or two, and a complete inability to respond to any further crises.
- ochoseis 6y agoNah, he and Harris are senate insiders who will work relationships across the aisle and get things done.
- TedShiller 6y agonot really
- Ericson2314 6y ago- Why would Mitch let them do anything? It worked to hobble Obama. If the axe a fair and powerful stimulus post-pandemic couldn't they pull off another mid-term comeback better? - Biden has little agenda, which make make comprimise appear easier, but one must not forget the pre-compromise that happened before negotiating began. We're in for at least 2 years of no meaningful policy, people.
- sg47 6y agoBiden has little agenda? Trump had none. He could not articulate a single policy that he'd pursue in his 2nd term.
- Ericson2314 6y agoYes, and? I wasn't trying to argue that Trump is better! I'm trying to argue that Biden is woefully insufficient.
- humanlion87 6y agoI highly doubt they can outmaneuver Mitch. Especially in this current environment where the two parties are unwilling to work together and have a divisive relationship. Things might have been better a couple of decades ago where working across the aisle was more common I think.
- drocer88 6y agoShouldn't we wait for the states to go through , in some cases, mandatory recounts and certification of the results and then the actual electoral college vote after any legal appeals?
- FandangoRanger 6y agoNo no that’s why you got downvoted. The media decides the election, not the Electoral College.
- otterley 6y agoHistory has shown that recounts rarely change anything beyond a few hundredths of a percent, if that (see: Florida 2000). The margins are wide enough, and there are enough states that tipped blue, that it is extremely unlikely as a matter of pure mathematics that there would be any change in outcome -- even if Trump's fans were granted every legal challenge on their wishlist. Courts are generally loath to grant relief when the outcome wouldn't change. ("Void as moot.")
- dawnerd 6y agoThey would have to get thousands of votes tossed out which no judge is going to do. That would really leave a bad stain on the election that both parties rely on.
- lwansbrough 6y agoNo, that’s never been a requirement for news media. California was called within 10 minutes of polls closing because it was expected to be a mathematical improbability of a Republican win in that state. Whenever a state gets called (and inevitably therefore the presidency), it is done because the math nerds at the media organizations put the odds of the other party winning outside the realm of what can realistically be achieved in the opinion of the analysts. There is no legal requirement to be eventually correct in your calls.
- hartator 6y agoWhy Alaska wasn’t called as fast then?
- auganov 6y agoFTX [0] has President Trump's chances at remaining President in February 2021 at a little over 10%. Numerous legal pathways remain for President Trump to win. https://ftx.com/trade/TRUMPFEB https://ftx.com/trade/TRUMPFEB
- GavinMcG 6y agoThat is patently false. There are no allegations at any level that would legally alter the election results.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoI'm not sure where you get your confidence from. Just yesterday the Supreme Courter ordered ballots received after election day to be counted separately in Pennsylvania. This will at least give us an idea if the legal proceedings can "legally alter the election results", because if that number is high enough to swing the state there's going to be a lot of litigation. There's a long way to go until Jan 20th folks. Buckle up. https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/524900-supreme-court-orders-separate-count-of-late-arriving-pa-ballots https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/524900-supreme-...
- nbst 6y agoPennsylvania was already segregating the ballots, the order just ensures it. They were NOT a part of the count yet.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoSource?
- grumple 6y agoThose votes were segregated and Trump lost soundly without them. I’m not even sure they’ve been counted yet in PA but reports were that there were only about 500 late ballots.
- 6y ago
- FandangoRanger 6y agoHe hasn’t been certified as the winner of even a single state yet. Trump called the bluff, soon the only vote that matters will be ACB’s.
- paulgb 6y agoNews organizations have always made the call before the vote was certified (hence the famous "Dewey Defeats Truman").
- 3np 6y agoWhat I’m really curious about now is how the GOP are going to position itself wrt Trump and his rhetoric and claims when he’s no longer in office.
- evgen 6y agoIn a sense, this was a bit of a worst-case scenario for the GOP. Trump is out of office and wounded, but not destroyed and so able to try to play kingmaker from the sidelines. A large, centrist portion of the GOP would probably have liked to see the end of Trump, but now they are going to have to wait for his conviction and imprisonment to finally be rid of him. Some will try to claim the mantle of racist-in-chief but Trump is a jealous god and will now allow another to steal focus from him, so I expect some rather petty knife-fights for a year or two while Trump goes through a few state trials but eventually some minimum security prison will finally take the phone out of his tiny hands (or at least force him to hoop it if he wants to tweet...)
- redisman 6y agoI think this is the ideal outcome for the GOP elite. They have the senate and SC and the white house is about to stop being a liability to them. They’re thrilled to not pass any legislation for the next X years
- pjc50 6y agoWho? In six months time people will be denouncing photos where they appear with him as "fake news".
- layer8 6y agoI just realized that Trump could become presidential candidate again in 2024 for a second term. So it might not be over yet.
- anonAndOn 6y agoZero chance the Republican Party would endorse someone who lost a national election. Arizona Republicans are no-doubt regretting putting a one-time loser in a position to lose yet again.[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_McSally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_McSally
- _wzf1 6y agoThere was zero chance they'd have nominated Trump in 2016 too, at first. Maybe it's hard to remember what a joke he was at the beginning, and even through most of the campaign. I'd say the chances are much higher than zero that the pro-Trump base would win him the nomination again if he ran. It's easy to imagine him pulling media stunts for the next 4 years in preparation for just that.
- 01100011 6y agoI think Trump did two things in 2016: - He gave hope to blue-collar workers, mostly white but not exclusively, who increasingly felt left behind by globalism and the tech-centric economy. This let him steal votes from Democrats as people wanted to try something different. Trump's rhetoric was tailored to them("drain the swamp", immigration crackdowns, economic warfare, etc). - He fired up the right-wing base of the party and got them to show up at the polls. This caused increased enthusiasm and helped drive turnout of all GOP leaning voters I believe. Also, let's not forget that Hillary Clinton, rightly or wrongly, was just not a very likeable candidate with broad appeal. She did win the popular vote, but as we all know that is meaningless. Now we've had 4 years to see what Trump was capable of. His primary opponents will be able to point to his record instead of just his promises. I don't think Trump will come back for another round. He'll be too old in 4 years, and won't want to risk being a loser again. Also, don't forget that he has pending legal and financial issues to sort out after his presidency is over. I suspect you will see someone else, maybe someone from the Trump family, run again with a Trump-like platform. They may very well win if the Democrats can't recalibrate their platform to appeal to more voters in electorally important states. I'm seeing a lot of wishful thinking regarding getting rid of the electoral college and it is frankly laughable. It's not happening anytime in the next 50 years. Small states will never give up that power. The best you could do is convince GOP leaders in 'purpling' states like TX to opt for a proportional assignment strategy to rob the Dems of the entire block of electoral votes once the state goes fully blue.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoNot surprising at all given Wikipedia's political leanings. I wonder what Wikipedia says about Antifa?
- oooooooooooow 6y agoI am not sure about the basis of this allegation, but the suspicion and possibility of it saddens me deeply
- sfkdjf9j3j 6y agoWikipedia is fine within its own defined limits. Conservatives see sources like New York Times as fundamentally biased and untrustworthy or "leftist" so from that perspective wikipedia is biased toward the left.
- mckirk 6y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/?title=Reality_has_a_well_known_liberal_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/?title=Reality_has_a_well_known_l... https://medium.com/s/story/why-does-reality-have-a-well-known-liberal-bias-9625b0dd28c6 https://medium.com/s/story/why-does-reality-have-a-well-know...
- ashleshbiradar 6y agoedits on wikipedia are not representative of the entire organization, and another important thing to note, is that neither are the edits permanent, just like in this case, the reference to Joe is gone, it was undone.
- dang 6y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25017345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25017345 and marked it off topic.
- nostromo 6y agoThere are a lot of curious statistics about ballot counts in a few swing states, including a record-breaking 90% turn-out in Wisconsin. https://theredelephants.com/there-is-undeniable-mathematical-evidence-the-election-is-being-stolen/ https://theredelephants.com/there-is-undeniable-mathematical... (Ignore the flame-bait headline, and go right to the charts.)
- matthewmcg 6y agoThe nearly 90% number is of registered voters. 72% of eligible WI voters voted in the 2020 election, which is about average, e.g. 2004 was 72.9%.
- charliemil4 6y agoJust so you know, that's still an incredible turnout that as a democracy proponent we should emulate throughout the land -- but I also know from local elections... I'm hard pressed to understand how that happened.
- zamadatix 6y agoGenuinely curious how you're hard pressed to understand how it happened. Are the GP's numbers wrong? Are you saying WI has been fraudulent for many decades but went undetected? Is there a component I'm missing?
- charliemil4 6y agoAt the moment we really don’t have every piece of information needed to say it’s without a doubt fraudulent — as in how many new voters registered just in time for the election and are not in the denominator. I’m saying if I were to run an election and have 90% of registered voters turn out for a state, I’d be a hot commodity for many campaigns. That’s an achievement like no other...
- zamadatix 6y ago
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoDecember 14th is the deadline to watch. That's the date at which the state must deliver the "Certificates of Ascertainment", signed by the governor. If they don't deliver by this date, the votes are forfeited. From this point to Dec 14th we're likely to see some interesting legal proceedings before the supreme court, such as whether or not ballots received without a postmark after election day can be legally counted (this might have impact in certain counties in Michigan and Pennsylvania). https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11641 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11641
- Darmody 6y agoTrump has changed American politics forever and we'll see that in the years to come.
- ashleshbiradar 6y agowe can not look at Trump as a single element, its part of a larger ecosystem, across the globe, propelled by heavy polarization, digital illiteracy and echo chambers.
- Darmody 6y agoOf course not, but he was the one that ended up being the president.
- 1_player 6y agoHere's an ignorant statement I truly believe in: social networks have ruined the world. They will be our downfall in fact. What we're seeing now is just the beginning. They're by far the scariest product of the wonderful, world-changing invention called the Internet.
- chrisin2d 6y agoI am in agreement. The web was envisioned as a utopian place where information could flow freely, watering humanity to grow enlightened. But it turned out that on the web, misinformation is cheaper to produce than true information, individuals—no matter how independently-minded—are no match for corporate and state actors that have vastly more resources and motivation to manipulate, and tribal identity is more powerful than abstract ideals. What have we wrought?
- 1_player 6y agoI don't think social networks are "evil" because of malice. They're evil because of our flaws as human beings. Of our biases. Social networks just amplify and exploit the way we think so mostly negative thoughts and emotions get amplified in an ever-expanding echo chamber [1] We get angrier, more polarised, more isolated in our tribe and cliques. If there has ever been an instrument of the Devil himself to sow discord on this planet, this is it. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
- lovecg 6y agoCan we have a conversation about broader implications of the increasing power in the public discourse of Twitter et al.? I’m no Trump supporter but I do wonder if the tables were turned and Twitter e.g. turned Biden’s page into a wall of hidden tweets because of something it disagreed with (there are enough grievances with Big Tech from both sides). Do people think this is isolated (because Trump is, well, Trump) or there’s a broader tendency here?
- minimaxir 6y agoTrump's recent tweets that were flagged by Twitter weren't disagreements, they were antidemocratic.
- googthrowaway42 6y agoCensoring the elected president is inherently anti democratic.
- brown9-2 6y agoA warning is not censorship.
- googthrowaway42 6y agoThat is a depraved level of disingenuousness.
- brown9-2 6y agoSo is telling the public that there was massive fraud in all the states you lost and refusing to admit defeat!
- googthrowaway42 6y agoHe didn't allege massive fraud in all the states he lost. There are severe irregularities that have been recorded in many different areas within certain swing states. He has no obligation to admit defeat until the electors vote on the President in mid December. Another morally depraved take.
- alexashka 6y agoDoes anyone feel strange about a 77 year old man being put under this much stress? Politics aside, I would not wish a stressful job on any 77 year old regardless of their health and well being - there are biological realities to being a human. I don't know what motivates these decisions but it seems to me the people of his own party either don't care that there is a non-trivial chance he will die, or they think the glory of being president, even if compromised is worth dying for, or something else. All of the reasons I can come up with strike me as misguided - 'president' is not a mountain peak you reach with your dying breath, it is supposed to be a difficult job of serving others. If someone has a take on what his party/he is thinking that's other than 'winning is all that matters', I'd really like to know.
- sosodev 6y agoI don’t get the age concerns. He’s only 3 years older than Trump.
- MisterBastahrd 6y agoHe's in vastly better physical condition than Trump, too.
- alexashka 6y agoWhat's Trump got to do with it? The question is whether or not you'd wish your 77 year old parent/grandparent to undertake 4 years of immense stress. If your answer is yes I would, I'd like to know why and what factors you consider worth the risk of dying of stress related illness. To be clear, this is not a job only select 70-year olds can do, this is a job many others want to do and I think if you ask any rational human being, a younger person would be better suited for.
- sosodev 6y agoWhat’s your point exactly? Yes, somebody younger can do the job but Biden chose to run and the people voted for him.
- 6y ago
- emailf845872 6y agoDemocrats want to subjugate. The anti-globalist portion of the Republican party (the one that elected Trump) just wants to get the hell away and have their own country. Split the country apart - let the coasts go, we will have the middle, let them have a northern corridor. It's time to break up, we want nothing to do with you. This is not a debate - we want to leave. My grandfather, and many other GIs would have dropped their firearms on the spot if they knew what the country would become today. The real enemy has always been the globalists.
- dang 6y agoWe've banned this account - this is an example of the ideological flaming that this site is not for. For anyone worried about bias, same applies the other way - e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25016654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25016654 Please (all/any of you) do not create accounts to break HN's guidelines with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- helloworld2352 6y agoAdvocating for a peaceful breakup of the country is an ideological flame?
- dang 6y agoIt always fascinates me how people erase the most significant parts of their comments when providing the angelic/innocent version. "Democrats want to subjugate", "we want nothing to do with you", "the real enemy", etc. - it's not like this was a borderline case. If you keep creating accounts to break HN's guidelines with, we're going to have to ban your main account as well, so please stop.
- gigatexal 6y agoWhat is really keeping me up at night is the existential problem the US faces for the next 50 years: the ever increasingly large divide that is the polarizing of the electorate. We have to come together as Americans or someone will divide and conquer us.
- louwrentius 6y agoThe past four years and this election has exposed some deep problems within American Society. If about 47% of your country was happy to kill democracy and reward immoral behaviour just to retain power, often justified by religious beliefs... And Trump is not gone yet... Who knows what the Republicans will do with the stacked Supreme Court...
- paulddraper 6y ago> If about 47% of your country was happy to kill democracy If you think half the country wants to rewrite the Constitution and remove democracy...I'm not really sure what to say.
- chillwaves 6y agoIt's more of the half of the 47% who are in the cult of personality. I don't think they were against democracy so much as for Trump (but it does go to show how little some folks care about democracy when they are losing).
- aranelsurion 6y agoI guess almost nobody wants to 'remove democracy' even in the least democratic places. A more plausible explanation here would be indifference. Maybe they don't want to remove democracy, but not exactly trying to uphold it over everything else either. Maybe seeing your cult of personality hero in office, or your religion or your flavour of boogieman (=not losing the country to commies kind of thinking) has ultimately higher priority than keeping the democracy alive. I'm not saying that's what is happening, I'm just saying I can see how masses can smother democracy without specifically having the intention to kill it. disclaimer: non-US, my opinion on anything US would be at best inaccurate.
- AnHonestComment 6y agoI’m censored on HN because I subscribe to wrongthink. @dang declared that no matter how calmly and politely I stated mainstream conservative positions, I’m an inherent flame war because the audience wants me silenced. This is here to stay. Edit: Looks like @dang beat me to a citation, but I’d invite readers to review my post history in general.
- dang 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23648091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23648091
- helloworld2352 6y agoLet the country break into two peacefully, before it will done by force, violently.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoI'm so glad it's stinking over. I might even read non-tech news again.
- deftnerd 6y agoI've always felt that the Trump presidency served as an effective form of "Chaos Engineering". Regardless of your views of Trump's politics, his administration and method of leadership has exposed a lot of flaws in how our government has been designed and engineered. The postmortem of the last 4 years should be analyzed deeply in order to identify the weak points in the infrastructure of our government in order to make improvements. Trump has been a very effective chaos monkey.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoIt is very strange how he, a master manipulator, missed the obvious danger Covid could cause to his presidency. I mean, really?
- peteretep 6y agoYou can’t bully a virus or subject it to social pressure
- afiori 6y agobut you can use it to escalate executive powers beyond reasonable limits, like many governors did or like the previous two administrations did for the war on terror.
- mhh__ 6y agoAny illusion Trump was a master negotiator is blown away by listening to Bob Woodward's interviews. He almost incriminates himself, for free, over the phone apparently purely because he wants Woodward to write a better book this time.
- chillwaves 6y agoDude's a carnival barker. He's great at working up the crowds, but that seems to be his only talent. Combined with his obvious deficiencies in other aspects of leadership.
- 6y ago
- viig99 6y agoMeh, trump's gonna whine democrats stole the election, media is constantly talk about him for next 4 years, he will win again in 2024 and nothing is going to change. Meanwhile climate change, economy and social media nonsensence will keep getting worse, why ? because nobody wants to really fight for the little guy.
- ThinkBeat 6y agoIt is Important to note that this is not the official result. It is 99.99% correct call but it is not the official result. Unless DJT does the sportsmen like thing and concedes. Given Hillary had told not to call concede under any circumstances DJT will probably not either. It will be a totally unnecessary mess.
- helloworld2352 6y agoApparently advocating for the US to separate into two countries peacefully is against HN rules, who knew.
- blargmaster42_8 6y agoThis is the end then, western civilization had s good run! Enjoy your feminist fascism! Due to demographic there will never be another republican precident.
- bra-ket 6y agoit's a projection, tens of thousands of provisioned and military ballots are still not counted. Recounts are still to happen in most swing states. Lawsuits are pending.
- jonstewart 6y agoIt’s unlikely a recount will happen in Pennsylvania, as Biden’s margin of victory now exceeds the recount threshold of 0.5%.
- bra-ket 6y agothere is legal battle ongoing in PA
- dschuetz 6y agoI'm glad for those Americans who suffered the nightmarish past 4 years. Finally, you're about to catch a break.
- beervirus 6y agoAnyone who’s just been living life and not obsessively reading CNN will tell you that the last 4 years have been pretty ordinary and fine.
- minimaxir 6y agoThe coronavirus pandemic and how the Trump administration handled it was likely the proximate cause for Trump losing the election. If things were indeed normal or he acted like a leader to minimize deaths, he likely would have won reelection.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- baxtr 6y agoInteresting fact: Trump could be elected president in 2024. I don’t think he will be gone for too long. EDIT: I am no Trump fan. I just think the fact that he could be president in 2024 is interesting.
- mrlala 6y agoYou need to stop
- emilsedgh 6y agoTrump has a lot of power now. "Republican kingmaker" they say. But, within the next 4 years, he will continue discrediting himself. I'm quite sure millions of people will still follow his lead, but it'll slowly get smaller and smaller. I think he will be a Rudy Giuliani type figure. Mostly an angry barking dog that people don't take as seriously anymore, just like before he was president.
- charliemil4 6y agoWe should trust but verify the results. The basis of facts should be settled in the following: 1. Select all ballots that were sent to the same address - or sent to the same Post Office (grouping all PO Boxes by post office). ^ Here you are trying to see if there is systemic voting behaviors out of the ordinary -- i.e. did 10+ ballots go to one address. 2. Select all ballots that were sent to an alternate address than the voter registration. ^ This is a general query -- select a sample set of these and confirm with the registered voter that they did indeed receive a mail in ballot. 3. If above is inconclusive, select all registered voters that requested a mail in ballot against the 2017-2018 Equifax Data to determine if correlations occur. 4. Select all ballots that were the voter did not vote in the last X elections (there are political consultancies that provide information on who NOT to waste your time on because they do not vote), did these people request a mail in ballot? Were these ballots sent to an alternate address? For clarification [1], if one were armed with a SSN or DL and a previous address, one could request a ballot on behalf of another person AND have that ballot redirected to a location of their choosing... including a PO Box. The form is included here for reference. [1] https://www.votespa.com/Register-to-Vote/Documents/PADOS_MailInApplication.pdf https://www.votespa.com/Register-to-Vote/Documents/PADOS_Mai... EDIT: just so you know, I think both of them did things like this. I want my d%mn democracy back.
- einpoklum 6y agoThis was not done after the 2016 elections. Why should such a procedure be adopted now? Are there any indications of widespread fraud / miscounting / etc. ?
- anonymouse008 6y agoThere was never any “cover” to hide behind — we never really did much mail in voting as a people (absentee mostly). Now the pandemic is cover enough to hide a few thousand with ease.
- willis936 6y agoI’m confused. People who count ballots only count ballots they issue. Sending in 50k ballots they didn’t issue would result in 50k ballots they didn’t issue getting thrown out. Where is there room for concern for fraud?
- sfblah 6y agoJust curious. Does anyone have a reasonable response to the following contention: Trump claims to have engineered the world's greatest economy, but in fact he has just benefitted from the Fed holding rates artificially low in spite of an ongoing economic expansion. In other words, he's taking credit for something he essentially had no hand in.
- nostromo 6y agoIt's more complicated than that. For example, rates were lower under Obama and the economy didn't perform as well. But -- the truth is, presidents just don't matter as much as we think they do when it comes to the economy.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoHis tax cuts, coupled with loosening energy regulations, led to a great deal more buying power for US consumers. Gasoline, heating oil, coal (clean) for electricity generation have the US a net exporter of energy for the first time in decades. Energy costs plummeted, putting more $ in consumer pockets. That drove the economy to new heights. The US Unemployment rate was at all-time lows prior to the pandemic. Even now, it are already back into the 'marginally acceptable' range at 6.9%.
- bfieidhbrjr 6y agoIt's amazing. My friends on the left think the only reason for voting trump is racism, and friends on the right think the only reason for voting biden is socialism. Where did all the intellect go? The social dilemma documentary I think is very useful. It feels like social media bubbles are a large component, although of course there have been many contentious elections in the past. Being centrist I can relate to parts of both sides but my experience is they both dislike centrists.
- bra-ket 6y agoTrump has been blatantly slandered by the mainstream media as racist evil orange man, it was 4 years of '1984' style brainwashing by the left. One of the big reasons for voting Trump was standing up against this propaganda machine.
- augustt 6y agoWould that slander look something like this? https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/18/nyregion/18nytrump1/18nytrump1-superJumbo.jpg https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/18/nyregion/18nytrum...
- bra-ket 6y agoAre you familiar with 1994 crime bill Biden signed? "We need more prisons" he said, watch his old speech on youtube. Kamala put tens of thousands of black people in prison for minor marijuana offenses. The hypocrisy of the liberals is mind-boggling.
- k__ 6y agoDid he get the senate? I had the impression, he can't do much without it, but news from yesterday implied he might get it too, then Biden could even do more than Obama if he has senate backing him.
- redisman 6y agoWe’ll know in January after the two Georgia seats are up for another vote. Right now, no.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- devit 6y agoIt's pretty remarkable though that almost half of the US voted for someone who is clearly unsuitable to be president based on his first term. It might be time to consider letting go of the democratic ideal that every person's vote has the same weight, and figure out some criteria for either voting eligibity or vote weight that would mostly exclude or give little weight to the votes of people who voted for a clearly unsuitable candidate.
- ColanR 6y agoThat's the way it was originally, when only people who owned land could vote (not the men-only part). It was a basic test of responsibility, similar to the 501-karma downvote requirement on HN. Holding land wasn't that hard, but it did indicate a baseline. Unless you're thinking of only allowing certain political or moral viewpoints to vote? That sounds fairly dystopian, no matter what one believes. Edit: we used to have something else like that - a certain subset of the population only got 3/5 of a whole vote. But I really doubt that's what you want.
- devit 6y agoThe simplest would be to weight one's vote by some non-decreasing function of the number of people who live in the same conurbation. That would partially achieve the outcome and also makes sense, because if someone wants to live in isolation, then they probably don't care and aren't affected very much by society's policies, and they don't have enough social experience to be correctly informed.
- ColanR 6y ago> if someone wants to live in isolation, then they probably don't care and aren't affected very much by society's policies Or they care too much, or society has driven them away, or they just don't like the population density, or it's cheaper, or they like the countryside better. See: the increasing number of people moving to the country and the popularity of Musk's Starlink project, indicating that remote people are invested in society. I think that making the assumption that the people who live closer together have a better handle on how to run the country (society != country) needs a lot of justification. The large fraction of the population that lives less densely should not be disregarded as somehow 'less valuable'. As I referenced above, the last time we tried to weight the value of different people it didn't turn out to be such a great idea. Skin color (the 3/5ths compromise, if you didn't get the reference) or geographic location, the value of a person or their vote shouldn't be tampered with.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- oyra 6y agoit is symbolic, they declared a victory on november 7th! Congratulation to comrades!
- sergioro 6y agoThe media doesn’t decide who wins elections, voters do.
- jseliger 6y agoA big problem that divides us is property renters versus owners: owners have spent the last several decades restricting access to property, and that's now raised the cost of the most productive metro areas to unacceptable levels: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/the-rent-really-is-too-damn-high/254718/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/the-ren... Many millions of people, especially but not exclusively the young, have in effect been gated out of prosperity. Matt Yglesias's new book One Billion Americans has a good discussion of the issue: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/one-billion-americans-by-matthew-yglesias-book-excerpt.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/one-billion-american..., even if you don't buy his population-based premise. Until we can free our land markets, we're going to have a lot of political problems caused by people who (correctly) feel they can't afford to live.
- paulddraper 6y agoIt's been bizarre to watch this develop, and yet somehow urbanization accelerates anyway. The more technology and communication humanity develops, the more it clusters into small pieces of land with exorbitant rents. Something just seems off.
- bbreier 6y agoThis same problem does not exist in many places where urbanization is much further along than it is here, which would lead me to question whether it was the primary factor at work.
- paulddraper 6y agoMind sharing an example? What place has large cities lacking residents with low standards of living?
- paleogizmo 6y agoThe issue isn't low standards of living in dense US cities but the lack of affordable housing. If you want an international example of providing affordable housing in an area with very high property values, Singapore accomplishes this with the government-run HDB apartments.
- jebronie 6y agoFor me the bottomline of the Trump administration is that he has started zero new wars, sparing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. As an outsider I hope that the US will not go back to its foreign military interventions.
- tsimionescu 6y agoThat is good, but counts for very little when he has helped sow the seeds of numerous other wars, especially by rolling back most climate change fights.
- Helloworldboy 6y agoThis is pure aimless, embarrasing reaching
- newherefordc 6y agoHe got lucky with foreign policy, and he did start a war against immigrants and people whose skin color is not white in the USA itself, led by Stephen Miller.
- jebronie 6y agoHow high is the death toll, how many cities where obliterated?
- Grakel 6y agoEntering the country illegally makes you a criminal. Trump got 40 percent of the Hispanic vote.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoLatino vote is currently responsible for almost all of the house seat flips for republicans, especially in CA.
- markus_zhang 6y agoMy perception is whoever think that since Trump is gone we can wipe the plate clean and go back to the good old way, is wrong.
- aaron695 6y agoAnyone else not getting Trump's real Twitter account on search anymore for the past few days? "Trump Twitter" Obviously @realdonaldtrump is normally top, with preview.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- MichaelMoser123 6y agoWhatever his style, Trump didn't start any wars during his term. Lets see if Biden will do as well.
- jonwinstanley 6y agoPushed the US closer to civil war though. Isn’t that worse?
- gjs278 6y agolol no because there isn’t going to be a civil war
- jelliclesfarm 6y agohow?
- jonwinstanley 6y agoLots of ways
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoSome would say its better. I guess it depends on your perspective.
- rtx 6y agoNo brown people are very thankful.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- odiroot 6y agoI had an impression this strong division already started during Obama presidency. Probably in the aftermath of 2008 crisis.
- jungletime 6y agoHigh odds he will be the first holographic president ever. He's a uniter and not a divider. One day he will resurect from the crypt to whisper sweet affirmations on live TV about unity, sugar and spice and everything nice, and get claps from a parking lot of empty cars.
- BooneJS 6y agoThis isn’t and end, it’s a new beginning. Talk is cheap, and if Biden wants to heal the nation he’s going to need to walk the line between disparate groups. Go back to first principles on what it means to be an American, adapt it for 2020, and make more room at the table for people who will debate and compromise instead of point and shame.
- mmastrac 6y agoWhy is this up to Biden? Why didn't Trump do this over four years?
- preordained 6y agoBecause, saying "look at the other guy" isn't a solution
- kelnos 6y agoIt's up to Biden because this is the hand he's been dealt. He doesn't get to cry "no fair, Trump should have done this" and sit on his hands.
- BooneJS 6y agoAs my mom told my brother and I: I don’t care who started it. I care who ends it.
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- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- faebi 6y agoIs this good or bad for the stock market? Or does it not matter at all?
- TechBro8615 6y agoIt depends on the senate. If republicans hold control of it after GA runoffs in January, then it will be good for the market. The market likes gridlock.
- tiziniano 6y agoOf course it matters: If there is an income tax increase, if COVID lockdowns are renewed or imposed on a more federal level, if the US ceases to be a net exporter of oil, if the tariffs with China are suspended, they will go down.
- lalaland1125 6y agoIf the tariffs with China are suspended the stock market will probably go up. The trade war with China has been a disaster.
- justinzollars 6y agoBiden will be the First Democrat since Grover Cleveland to take office without a Democratic Senate. The House majority is smaller. So his mandate is effectively toast. Another interesting historical fact. America has never elected 4 consecutive 2 term presidents. If Trump would have been elected it would have been the first time in US history that this has happened. This election wasn't a blue wave by any means, Trump underperformed House Republicans in many swing states implying this was more of a personal decision rather than political. What do I see changing? Not much: - foreign policy: policy changes with Syria and Iran - China: An end to tariffs - local changes: No more federal opposition to safe injection sites in San Francisco - federal taxes could still go up, the Senate has two liberal Republicans who could deliver tax increases to Joe - expanded federal regulations that do not require changes to the law What will likely not happen: - PR and DC becoming states is no longer plausible - packing the Supreme Court is no longer plausible - a green new deal or expansions to entitlements are no longer plausible - state bailouts are now in question, which could force major structural reforms
- tsimionescu 6y agoYou're forgetting by far the most important item: some efforts to combat climate change will happen. This single issue should have been enough to mark Biden as preferable to Trump, even if everything else had been worse.
- justinzollars 6y agoThis is completely true. We will have more regulation. This list is not exhaustive and is my personal opinion on the way I see things changing. I'll attempt to modify
- reedwolf 6y agoThat depends on the Georgia runoffs in January. If the Dems win those two seats, then along with Harris's tie breaking vote they would have a senate majority.
- 6y ago
- einpoklum 6y agoBiden has vowed to a group of his donor that, if he is elected, "Nothing would fundamentally change": https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/ https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-no... so the title should be amended to: "Biden wins White House, effectively vowing no new direction for US".
- zamadatix 6y agoSo tired of calls to action from everyone related to pulling sentence fragments out of speeches from group figureheads and building a whole narrative around what it could have meant since what was said isn't "shocking" enough in context. Always 3rd (or worse) level references because the source material wasn't clickbaity enough. Often shared with comments like "not sure if this is true but it really makes you think" or other ways of feigning ignorance about what was just said while still saying it. Isn't there anything good being done by any leaders worth sharing instead of how one found a year old article or tweet that they managed to turn into a "hot take" comment? Or progress on actual efforts instead? Is this thought the real silent majority or is all anyone's ever interesting in shitting on whatever <other guy> says?
- tiziniano 6y agoAfter the l4ptop from hell was exposed, we can see he does not care for much other than continuing to enrich his family. There certainly will be new directions towards China, Middle east
- einpoklum 6y agoActually, in Biden's defense - while those emails do provide further evidence of corruption, they don't show he doesn't care for anything other than family enrichment. They perhaps show that he care to unduly benefit his son, which is bad, but not the same thing.
- ojnabieoot 6y agoWhile it’s true that the US government needs structural reform, the issue wasn’t anything the Constitution can fix by nibbling around the edges. The issue is that the unified Republican elite, along with > 35% of the electorate, is fundamentally lawless and anti-democratic, and will do anything it can to cheat its way into power. All three branches are implicated and have been for a while: Bush v Gore in 2000, the US Attorney firings, Shelby County in 2013, the refusal of the Senate to convict Trump in 2020, the disgusting anti-science politicization of coronavirus, and so on. The scale of Trump’s personal corruption is unique among Republican national figures, particularly in foreign policy. But the racist authoritarianism and fundamental disrespect for elections is a defining creed of the party. One of the more unpleasant truth about democracy is that it’s quite fragile. In any real sense, the US has only been a democracy since 1965. When large segments of the population are ideologically opposed to democratic governance - universal human rights, respecting fair elections, following the plain text of the law, and so on - mechanisms by which democracy sustains itself begins to fail. One possibility is to amend the constitution to change first-past-the-post voting in all local-to-federal elections, to let never-Trump types speak out without facing electoral suicide, and to divert right-conservative attention away from a single “leader” figure. And obviously the electoral college needs to go. But the fact that more than 65 million people voted for Trump at all speaks to a great sickness and nihilism in American culture. Trump himself might be put out to pasture. But Trumpism existed before he got here, and it isn’t going anywhere.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- friedman23 6y agoNihilism is the truth of the world. Everyone is deluding themselves otherwise. Nearly everyone with significant power is nihilistic. Without god (and even if there was a god) there are no morals. All we have is genetics. Morals are just bias. Using nihilism as a negative descriptor is funny when nihilism as a philosophy isn't against or for anything. Reality is of course uncomfortable for most people which is why I'm getting downvoted :)
- 6y ago
- once-in-a-while 6y agoNo he didn't. Wait until mid Dec. Trump will stay president. He will win both the Senate and the House. You folks are so brainwashed, it's almost scary...
- eruci 6y agoI predict a spike in Covid cases due to mass celebrations.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoBeing a centrist, I can definitely understand the desire for more conservative policies, and a rejection of more liberal policies. What has been tough for me personally, though, is to see a person as amoral as Trump get so much support. I DO agree that Trump has done some good things, things that before him neither the left nor the right was willing to do in a substantial way (mainly his forcing a re-evaluation of our relationship with China). But his utter (and ongoing) disregard for our democratic system, his incessant lying, the fact that all he cares about is loyalty to him but gives no loyalty in return, the insane narcissism, treating the Justice Dept. like his personal legal firm, etc., etc.. I just find it disgusting on every level. That said, the recent Sam Harris podcast really helped me understand his appeal. And I hope (but am not hopeful) that the left tries to mend their ways by refraining from pushing (mainly white, straight men, but also others, like the religious) many further from the Democratic party.
- CameronNemo 6y agoI really detest the conservative vs. liberal duality. Conservatism is not comparable to liberalism. They are not alternatives. It just means a desire to maintain the status quo. The opposite of conservatism is progressivism, not liberalism. In fact most Republicans in the US are liberal-democrats.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoI mean, I don't disagree with you, but I feel you are missing my primary point, which is that I have no problem with people that have a strong preference for current Republican policy positions (or, on the flip side, Democratic). My problem is that Trump is just a man of such awful character that it hurts to see how many supported him, regardless of policy preferences. I have never felt this way about any previous president, Republican or Democrat.
- beaner 6y agoWhen considering a person of "awful character," a lot of people make the rational decision to nonetheless value the benefit of 320 million people as more important than retribution against that one person, if that person's policies benefit the rest.
- Trias11 6y agoLet see how taxing wealthy out of existence to pave the road to prosperity will work out for Bi... I mean Harris.
- gbil 6y agoI'd like to open a slightly different topic here which stems though from the elections of the past 20 years. Wouldn't be a big take away now the reform of the Elector College and the shift to a direct vote from the people ? As a nonUS citizen from a country in which the head of state is being elected directly from the people, I find it very unsettling that there have been cases in which the president in US elections was running behind in popular votes and by a big amount of votes, which almost happened here. I've tried to research it a bit but I couldn't still understand why especially since the House and Senate members are elected by popular vote already I'd appreciate any insights here
- sillysaurusx 6y agoNah. A popular vote is like two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner. System's working as intended.
- oa335 6y agoYour metaphor cuts both ways. Electoral college is like 3 lambs and 2 wolves voting for what's for dinner. Lambs live in one state and wolves live in two states. Wolves win even though they are numerically the minority. Your metaphor simply exposes a risk of any sort of majority rules, it's not specific to popular vote systems.
- dingaling 6y ago> System's working as intended. The System didn't anticipate the maturation of the political landscape into a steady-state of two enormously wealthy parties that exclude any disrupters, and thereby between them decide what's selectable for dinner from a menu of two choices. Do you want that lamb with mint sauce or without? Not once on electoral coverage did I see votes for independent or third-party candidates listed.
- nostromo 6y agoIt's similar to the European Parliament, in that small member states have a small advantage over populous member states. The whole point is to prevent Germany and France (or New York and California) from dominating everything.
- blargmaster42_8 6y agoCommunism?
- Grakel 6y agoThe media doesn't have a role in declaring victory in elections.
- implements 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate Not an official one, but certainly one of political influence: “Though it is not formally recognized as a part of a political system, it [News Media] wields significant indirect social influence.” The media “shifts ground” - in this case making it very hard for President Trump to continue to frame the issue in a way to suit himself.
- lreeves 6y agoThe media in this case is using approximately grade 6 math skills to tally up electoral college votes and declare that beyond most reasonable doubt Biden won. I think you're overestimating what their role is here. They were also very cautious and could have made a declaration earlier than they did.
- Grakel 6y agoAl Gore was projected winner, and didn't concede until mid December.
- david927 6y agoThey can’t declare victory, only project. Personally, I’m suspicious of the results, but if nothing changes, if fraud is not discovered, it’s a fair call.
- shadykiller 6y agoLooks like Biden would be able to fulfill his promise of not changing anything: https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/ https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-no... If the same situation persists in 2016 like the deep economical divide, we may even see another Trump like figure rising
- justinzollars 6y agoI agree with this perspective. We have not seen the end of Donald Trump. We have tough years ahead.
- symlinkk 6y agoI still don’t see what was so bad about Trump. Can someone explain?
- bra-ket 6y agoTrump has been blatantly slandered by the mainstream media as racist evil orange man, it was 4 years of '1984' style brainwashing by the left. One of the big reasons for voting Trump was standing up against this propaganda machine, lies, censorship and intimidation. 70M people thankfully did just that, which gives hope in the future of this country.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ashameddemocrat 6y agoAs a registered democrat, I too am ashamed at the last four years of slander.
- xupybd 6y agoI wonder what stories like this are like for the mods on this site. It must be a waterfall of flags.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoSince the oil embargo of 73-74[0], which was caused by the 'Arab-Israeli War', securing the oil supply from the Middle East has been a top priority of the US government. The embargo highlighted how vulnerable the US was to the Middle East. Since then, 'Peace in the Middle East' has been a plum goal of successive US administrations. President Carter was able to get a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt[1] which contributed to his ultimately winning a Nobel prize[2]. Succeeding administrations failed to gain additional peace and instead leaned on regime change in an attempt to oust unstable governments and seat US-friendly, stable regimes. This approach failed in principle: Regime change itself did not lead to stability. But instead, led to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and ultimately, it was the protracted presence of US troops in those nations that provided stability. That stability was paid for with the lives of US soldiers put in harms way of militants from both within those nations and from outside of them. Under Obama, two threats emerged: ISIS and an emboldened Iran. ISIS went from a 'JV Team', to controlling an area the size of Pennsylvania, spanning Iraq and Syria[3]. Iran was granted an agreement to suspend weapons-grade nuclear research until 2031 [4]. Iran may or may not be complying with the agreement, but it was known that they were causing instability throughout the Middle East, funding ISIS, Hezbolah, and planning and funding ambush attacks on US troops throughout the region[5]. This was the situation in January 2017. Reviewing what the current administration has done since taking office, the coordinated and deliberate steps, and the results, have been astonishing, given the intractable and largely unsuccessful efforts to stabilize the region over the last 50 years: a. Established 'energy independence' by modifying US regulations on production of oil, natural gas and coal. The US became a net exporter of energy, reducing the leverage that the Middle East states have over the US[6]. b. Moved the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and recognize the Golan Heights as Sovereign Israel territory. This worked to gain trust from Israel, improving their willingness to participate in peace agreements. [8] c. Coordinated with Russia to eliminate ISIS. It was completely eradicated, including US Special Forces killing the leader and founder, Al-Baghdadi[10]. d. Withdrew from the Iran Nuclear accord, and renewed sanctions against Iran. The funds provided by the accord likely were used in part to fund their terror activities. e. Killed General Soleimani, who was know to be the mastermind and source of funding for terrorism throughout the Middle East, directed not just at US, but other Arab States as well. [7] d. and e. illustrated to the Arab States that the US was willing to take decisive action to quell the regional threat that Iran posed. f. Withdrew troops from Syria, extricating the US from that war zone, after ISIS was defeated. g. Begin withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Most Arab countries want the US out so they can self-govern again. h. With the above puzzle pieces in place, the administration rapidly concluded peace agreements between Israel and three Arab states: United Arab Emirates, Bahrain [9] and later, Sudan. Other countries are said to be joining soon. i. Earned 2 Nobel peace prize nominations for the peace agreements (for 2021, winners will be announced next September). Reviewing this timeline, and the magnitude of this achievement, it's hard to square the approach and its success against the claims of ineptitude leveled. [0] https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/oil-embargo https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/oil-embargo [1] https://www.history.com/news/jimmy-carter-camp-david-accords-egypt-israel https://www.history.com/news/jimmy-carter-camp-david-accords... [2] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2002/carter/facts/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2002/carter/facts/ [3] https://abcnews.go.com/International/isis-years-jv-team-international-killers/story?id=40214844 https://abcnews.go.com/International/isis-years-jv-team-inte... [4] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/122460/full-text-of-the-iran-nuclear-deal.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/122460/full-text-of-t... [5] https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2019/iran/ https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2... [6] http://tiny.cc/oilexport http://tiny.cc/oilexport [7] http://tiny.cc/defang http://tiny.cc/defang [8] http://tiny.cc/Embassy http://tiny.cc/Embassy [9] http://tiny.cc/mideastpeace http://tiny.cc/mideastpeace [10] https://www.njhomelandsecurity.gov/analysis/tag/Abu+Bakr+al-Baghdadi https://www.njhomelandsecurity.gov/analysis/tag/Abu+Bakr+al-...
- op03 6y ago"Democracy - that flash of light between feudalism and automation and then it's gone"
- argella 6y agoIt'd be nice to discuss whether the benford's law analysis can be reasonably applied to election returns, but any mention of it is flagged by the thought police.
- stdbrouw 6y agoIs it flagged? Mostly, I think people just don't care that much because Benford's law is a curious pattern that applies to some kinds of numbers some of the time, so it's interesting as a first diagnostic of fraud, but without an argument of why it applies to this particular kind of data, and without further investigation of what might be causing the irregularity, it's not a smoking gun by any means. See also https://www.eipartnership.net/rapid-response/what-the-election-results-dont-tell-us https://www.eipartnership.net/rapid-response/what-the-electi...
- argella 6y agoThanks for the link. There was a good post here with a link to all of the meme'ing trump claims of statistical anomalies (benford's law, turnout numbers, president vs senate party differences, etc.). Was going to reply to it but upon submitting it was gone / flagged.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gdubs 6y agoAn unforgettable week. An unforgettable year. The most intense and unusual — especially given the circumstances — campaign in my lifetime. I really do hope we can come together, and put divisions aside. In real life, people have more in common than we might think based on what happens online. There are actual differences, and a lot of anger, and resentment. But what makes America special is our reimagining of democracy, every generation — something we’re all a part of, if we choose to be. Here’s to science and civility.
- worik 6y agoFrom a long way away, and well clear of the slings and arrows that Americans are suffering, I would like to take a fleeting moment to wish you all well. I do think that after such a president it behoves the winners of this election to have a long hard think as to why the result was so close. Your nation's people deserve a rest from the division you are suffering. Go well and take the opportunity to set a course that is both good for you and worthy of your immense wealth and power.
- socialdemocrat 6y agoBiden’s focus ought to be making sure a crazy person like Trump is never elected again and that if he is, that government institutions cannot be abused the way they were under Trump. It should be made easier to prosecute a president for illegal activity. Things like showing tax returns should be formalized. New regulation needs to be put in place to limit the spread of falsehoods and conspiracy theories over facts. Social media currently benefit economically from this and that has to stop. The economic incentive to spread crazy and extremist ideas has to be removed.
- kortilla 6y ago> It should be made easier to prosecute a president for illegal activity. It’s already easy. The House made their case and the Senate disagreed. The same thing happens in real court (prosecution makes a case and jury disagrees). It absolutely should not be so easy that the house alone can remove the president with a simple majority. > Things like showing tax returns should be formalized. Why? Anything really insidious isn’t going to be on a return anyway. And if it’s required for the President, why not literally every other government position?
- dodobirdlord 6y agoIt probably should be required for any government position where the holder of the office is expected to exercise their own individual discretion. The Federal government won’t grant a security clearance to individuals that owe substantial amounts of money, especially to foreigners, or who have deep personal ties to foreigners or ownership stakes in foreign businesses. I for one would like to know whether candidates would be eligible for a security clearance (though of course the President themself is not subject to most rules about classified information).
- dannyw 6y agoI doubt tax returns would’ve stopped trump from winning in 2016. Ultimately the will of the people should prevail; that’s what a democracy is.
- yingw787 6y agoCongratulations to the President-elect, and to the government workers and volunteers at all levels who tirelessly worked around the clock to ensure our elections were free and fair. I think these next few weeks is a time for reflection, so that all of us can work hard to create the future we want. Wishing everyone well and to breathe in and out regularly, it's been a stressful year.
- tiziniano 6y agoDoesn't the actual election happen later? If I recall in 2000, they had some trouble until December with Al Gore.
- minimaxir 6y agoBecause vote counts in Florida 2000 were a) absurdly close and b) alone would have determined the winner of the election. Neither is the case here.
- mamon 6y agoMy condolences to all the Americans for voting Biden into the president's office. Please enjoy the remains your economic prosperity and peace while they last. Also: sign up your children for Chinese lessons, they'll need it.
- tinus_hn 6y agoI wonder what Biden is going to do about the coronavirus. Trumps denials don’t work but the things people expect Biden to do (mask mandates etc.) aren’t a magical solution either.
- jpgvm 6y agoWell not now that it's progressed too far. Full lockdown and masks would have worked just as well in America as it worked here in Asia if it was enforced quickly and with high adherence to the rules. (worth mentioning everyone is -still- wearing masks here in Thailand every day and have been since early March) Ironically a virus that began in Asia is now a Western problem because of inaction and/or lack of decisiveness.
- tinus_hn 6y agoWhatever the merit of the early masks and lockdowns strategy, the options Biden has do not include them, that ship has sailed. He’ll have to make do with the options he does have.
- jpgvm 6y agoStill probably means masks in 100% of public contexts, contact tracing and widespread testing. Similar to Japans approach. But yeah, Trump really fucking screwed the pooch on this so it's going to be an uphill battle and many will die or economy will need to suffer a massive ~2 month lockdown. If a middling approach is used then likely get the worst of both worlds, rolling regional lockdowns causing multiple blows to businesses, many more dead etc. I don't envy his task, Trump has effectively made it impossible by completely disregarding the pandemic playbook.
- nojvek 6y agoMask mandate is not a magical solution, however it will significantly reduce the spread. Basically the only option we have is to reduce the spread of the virus without really massively hurting the economy. At same time give scientists and labs everything they need to create a working vaccine verified by FDA rigorous quality process. A vaccine that kills even more people due to side effects and not vetted thoroughly is even a worse solution. Biden can’t close businesses and go on full lockdown. Everyone can wear masks in public and still go to work. That is not a huge ask. There are many pragmatic options.
- Nesco 6y agoPersonally I think we are watching the slow death of the USA. May be from France I am not getting all the subtle details about the situation on the ground but the country seems to be completely divided. There is almost nothing now that holds America coherent as a country. It has too much variance to form a sensible cluster. It went from a basically almost racially homogeneous, English speaking, Christian - with a lot of flavours I recognise but still - and ideologically united country to a multi racial, multi confessional, and now in some part multilingual with radically opposing views and interests country. There is more in common on many points between Estonia and Ireland than between California and Arkansas. Trumpism was not an outlier but an indication of how strong the centrifugal forces became...
- smaps 6y ago> Personally I think we are watching the slow death of the USA. May be from France I am not getting all the subtle details about the situation on the ground but the country seems to be completely divided. I live in Washington DC and completely agree with you. The division has only been getting worse for years.
- austincheney 6y agoMost of the country is not divided at all. There are differences of opinion sure, but not some kind of epic division. The media likes to focus on the extremes because they make the most noise and say the craziest things. Democrat representatives recently voiced an analysis that the crazy extreme minority of the party cost them seats in the House because the majority of voters don't want extremes or crazy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gamblor956 6y agoIt went from a basically almost racially homogeneous, English speaking, Christian - with a lot of flavours I recognise but still - and ideologically united country to a multi racial, multi confessional, and now in some part multilingual with radically opposing views and interests country. At no point in America's history was it ideologically united. It was divided from the very beginning; our founding document itself was the product of a compromise between two mutually exclusive governmental ideals. There is more in common on many points between Estonia and Ireland than between California and Arkansas. I doubt that very much. Arkansans and Californians speak the same language, eat the same food, watch the same shows and movies, listen to the same music, learn the same history. There are ideological differences, sure, but those ideological differences are the same as you see in other countries, including Estonia and Ireland.
- Pensacola 6y agoSkimming through this thread, it certainly verges on flame - but I'd just like to remind you all that officially, Biden hasn't won yet. Several (not all) media outlets have called the race, and it sure looks like he will; but the elections haven't yet been certified. With the coming legal challenges, it looks a lot like 2000. Patience.
- webkike 6y agoIt really does not. Florida was the deciding factor and was an extremely small margin we don’t see here.
- Pensacola 6y agoBecause the results are very close and several lawsuits are ongoing over the election outcome in several battlefield states, it’s more and more clear that this election will be settled through the judicial system.
- webkike 6y agoThe results were very close in Florida as in less than a thousand votes. All of the states here the difference is nowhere near that. Recounts typically change vote counts by less than these amounts. I do not think the judicial system will decide this. In fact, I believe their impact will be near zero.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago> The results were very close in Florida as in less than a thousand votes. This is incorrect. And it’s crazy you would be this wrong without anyone already correcting you. FL is 300-400,000 apart
- webkike 6y agoI’m referring to the 2000 election. I’m comparing and contrasting those results with the 2020 election, of which we see no similarity. I believe this was clear with context, as we are discussing the possibility of this election being decided in court.
- throwaway201103 6y agoTo me what this election (as well as the 2016 election) illustrates, is what a poor set of choices we have had. In no sane world should it have been difficult for the Democrats to defeat Donald Trump in 2016. He had no history in political office, and he lost the popular vote to just about the worst candidate the Democrats could have put up. Had the Democrats put up anyone who was less divisive than Hillary Clinton then we are not where we are today. Likewise this time around, nobody I have talked to seriously voted for Joe Biden on his own merits. They voted for him because he's not Donald Trump. I have had people tell me they don't care if there is fraud and cheating, it's worth it if Trump is defeated. Put up someone with more genuine appeal and you not only get the "anyone but Trump" vote but you get enough undecided votes that there isn't any room for questioning the result. We need better candidates who generate real support and appeal other than just not being their opponent. Not sure how to get there.
- mancerayder 6y agoThe journalists Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald talk about this a lot: the question of what happened with Clinton's loss, why Trump, why these shocks and why the persistent support. The argument would be that there's a strong elitism that manifested in the Democratic Party, which abandoned some of its core Progressive principles with things like NAFTA (and the never-ending wars). H. Clinton echoed this, with a haughty campaign that called people she should be wooing 'deplorables,' skipping campaigning in key battleground states, and blaming sexism for some of her campaign failures ("it's about me") instead of self-reflection ("How could I have had broader appeal.") Even today you'll often find people reminding you that Trump appeals to people without college degrees. Outside of a pure data context, saying that over and over again suggests that somehow people with degrees are better capable of selecting the leaders of everyone, which is an extremely elitist perspective. So Trump comes along, attacks NAFTA and free trade, speaks plainly and so forth. Was he making false promises about returning jobs overseas, helping workers and other Sanders talking points? Absolutely. But the self-reflection that needs to happen here (given the loss of two dozen House seats and numerous local upsets) is, what are we doing wrong, here. To wit: Exit polls, which can be unreliable, pegged his national support at 32%-35% of the Latino vote. More tellingly were results in certain counties. Starr County, Texas, the county with the highest percentage of Hispanic or Latino voters — above 95% — voted for Hillary Clinton by a 60-point margin in 2016, but gave Biden just a five point win in 2020. Even more amazing was Trump’s performance among Black voters. The man whose 2016 message to “the blacks” was very nearly a parody of long-ago New York mayoral candidate Mario Procaccino’s pledge that “My heart is as black as yours” must have found a new way to connect. Trump doubled his support with Black women, moving from 4% in 2016 to 8%, while upping his support among Black men from 13% to 18%. Remember, this was after four years of near-constant denunciations of Trump as not just a racist, but the leader of a literal white supremacist movement: [...] Trump’s numbers with the LGBTQ community were a stunner also, jumping from 14% to 28%. In September, a dating app for queer men called Hornet ran a survey that showed 45% support for Trump among gay men. Ever since Trump jumped into politics, media observers have rushed to denounce any Trump-related data that conflicts with conventional wisdom, and the Hornet survey was no different. Out magazine quoted a communications professor from Cal Poly Pomona as saying, “To tout a Hornet poll as evidence of LGBTQ support for Trump is clickbaity, sloppy journalism.” Even the Hornet editor scoffed at his own poll, before it all turned out to be true in the election. Trump even improved his standing among white women, 53% of whom were already pilloried in 2016 for voting for a man who bragged about how you “grab ‘em by the pussy, you can do anything.” (Matt Taibbi, Which is the Real "Working Class Party" Now?, Nov 2020)
- erichocean 6y agoFavorite fact about the 2020 election: Biden not only got more Black votes than Obama, he got a higher percentage of the Democratic Black vote (highest in history, in fact). IOW, Biden is significantly more popular among Blacks than Obama was in 2008 (or 2012). Amazing!
- joejoeshabadoo5 6y agoYes, definitely no fraud at all in this election!
- gizmodo59 6y agoPartly because of the voter turnout. By % wise its not a huge difference.
- nostromo 6y agoIt's interesting that Trump and Biden both have exceeded the previous record-holder for most votes: Obama in 08. 1. Biden '20 - 74,811,378 2. Trump '20 - 70,554,537 3. Obama '08 - 69,498,516 4. Clinton '16 - 65,853,514
- erichocean 6y agoWell, the population is growing so that's not too surprising. It's the percentages that I find incredible: more Democratic Blacks voted for Biden (by %) than Obama! That's truly historic, and gives Biden a mandate to address racial justice and end forever the white supremacy of Trump and his voters.
- TgXYTFZd9Nrx 6y agoAmericans: "we made up our mind about racism, color doesn't matter, all citizens are equal" Also Americans: "omg look at how the BLACKS are voting!"
- abvdasker 6y agoTo me, a more plausible explanation is that Trump is uniquely unpopular with black voters.
- OJFord 6y ago> Kamala Harris also made history as the first Black woman to become vice president, an achievement that comes as the U.S. faces a reckoning on racial justice. The California senator, who is also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, will become the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in government, four years after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. Can someone explain that last sentence to a non-American? Doesn't it simply reduce the whole paragraph to 'first female VP'? Or does it mean 'first female senator to go on to government, but not the first including non-senators', in which case.. uh-ok, is that significant? Just seems like it's slicing her up into as many 'firsts' as possible.
- binthere 6y agoYou are slicing her up not the article. It is simply stating that no woman has ever achieved a ranking as high as she did and it also happens to be a woman of color. I don't think it's that hard to understand, is it? Also, this is indeed significant because it puts hope to so many woman and woman of color that they can achieve it too and not be afraid of be who they are in America.
- OJFord 6y agoI'm not, maybe I haven't explained clearly, because you've just repeated the 'a ranking as high' bit that I don't understand rather than answering it. Does it refer to her having been a senator, or to now being VP? From what you're saying, I think it's that she's first female VP and also happens to be black and also happens to have a South Asian background? I don't have an agenda here, I just didn't understand that paragraph, and, if I'm correct in my understanding above, think it was written in just about the most confusing way possible.
- zamadatix 6y agoComing from the outside it might be easier to work forwards to the statement instead of backwards from it: All vice presidents (2nd highest executive position) and presidents (highest executive position) up until this point have been white males with the exception of former president Barack Obama who was a black male and former vice president Charles Curtis who was native american male. Kamala Harris is a black/asian female who looks to be the next vice president. Hopefully that helps :).
- rasengan0 6y agoHacking defeat: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/why-trump-cant-afford-to-lose https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/why-trump-cant...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gmays 6y agoOn a related note, this was interesting to watch about what happens if a candidate refuses to concede: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZWRhLW7Y8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZWRhLW7Y8w
- aaronharsh 6y agoThe Trump presidency put a spotlight on the damage that can be done by a combination of: - Concerted attempts by press and others to create a filter bubbles - An electorate that's unwilling to look outside their preferred bubbles Those problems don't go away with a new president. What's the solution? How do we prevent the next election cycle from being worse?
- dodobirdlord 6y agoRevising our electoral system to change the incentives for political parties and politicians would be an approach. Winner-take-all on a state by state basis with single-party primaries produce candidates who are far from the median voter and then campaign to drum up support among their party base. Universal primary systems encourage candidates with broader appeal outside of their party to end up as the party nominee, who then have a much easier time running a general election campaign on appealing to opposition party voters rather than being forced by the positions they took in their primary to campaign only to boost turnout among their existing base.
- The_rationalist 6y agoSTOP TEH COUNTS
- The_rationalist 6y ago/s
- grosales 6y agoAs a dad and an United States citizen, I am proud to call Joe Biden , my president. When he was sworn in as a senator - after his wife and daughter died in a car accident after he won the seat. He said: “If in six months or so there’s a conflict between my being a good father and being a good senator, which I hope will not occur, we can always get another senator but they can’t get another father,” As a father, I understand the feeling. It also shows me he is a fighter, he has always been. We need someone like him to unite us and move us forward.
- erichocean 6y agoBiden is literally the most popular president for Blacks in US history, blowing past Obama. Historic! LOL Some HN racist Trump voter downvoted this. Facts hurt!
- temo4ka 6y agoThey are not so much pro-Biden as anti-Trump.
- erichocean 6y agoBiden literally won the Democratic primary entirely due to the Black vote in South Carolina. Why act like they don't love him?
- zepolen 6y agoThey don't love him. They hate Trump. How hard is it to understand? It's like giving a vegan the choice between meat and their least favorite veggie. They don't love that veggie, but they will pick it over the meat.
- erichocean 6y agoBiden is going to be the most pro-Black President in history, even more than Obama (due to a better political climate). He literally ran his campaign as a repudiation of Charlottesville and White supremacy. (See: His announcement speech.) Biden's VP is Black, and he personally insisted on that. Racial justice is literally the core of Biden's platform, and he'll deliver for Blacks (and against White supremacists) like no other President in history.
- haunter 6y agoAs a european outsider I see big social media (Twitter, FB, Reddit etc.) as the loser here, no matter the president. - Dems already hated them because they were "complying" with the right/far right. Not enough removal, deplatforming etc. - Reps also hated them because of all the removal and deplatforming, "free speech" problems etc. Then HN replies with the "They are a private company so they can do whatever they want" > which leads the conundrum when Google banning accounts and the whole site gets upset about it. [0] Just the week before the election Vice had an article, "Facebook Has Always Been Right-Wing Media" [1]. It was aptly removed from here but shows the upcoming struggle which I think as I said above will be much worse for social media sites Interesting times for sure. 0, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965432 1, https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7vvwq/facebook-has-always-been-right-wing-media https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7vvwq/facebook-has-always-b...
- thinkingemote 6y agoYou should add the 4 years of "Russian control over social media" narrative which has suddenly disappeared
- paul7986 6y agoGreat news and I voted for neither! But what a relief!!!
- ffggvv 6y agothis election was a huge win for republicans, despite trump losing. they (in all likelihood) retain a senate majority, while massively narrowing down the gap in the house.
- beloch 6y agoAs a Canadian, what stands out for me about the last two elections is that many Americans seem to desperately want a variety of political reforms, but neither party seems interested in providing them. Trump and Sanders both sold themselves as reform candidates in 2016, but only Trump wound up on the ticket. Sanders might be the real deal, but he's not going to represent a major party until donation and campaign spending limits (like we have in Canada) reduce corporate influence on U.S. politics. Sanders scares away the "big money" that U.S. elections depend so heavily on. Trump has not proven to be a reform candidate in any sense of the word. As a political outsider with control over both the house and senate for his first two years in office, he had the power to deliver meaningful reforms, but didn't. Americans desiring reform should have felt deeply betrayed by Trump's first term. The democrats had a smoother primary in 2020, but decided on an utterly bland candidate. Biden is a return to the status-quo. I predicted that, after the last four years, a return to the status quo would appeal to many, but this election proves otherwise. This should have been an easy slam dunk for the Democrats to win, but it's turned out to be a squeaker! If the democrats ride the status quo for the next four years and both parties were to run the same candidates again, I suspect Biden would lose. The Democrats need to pay attention to what Americans want. I would suggest that Biden's administration should, despite running on a thoroughly status-quo platform, embrace reform. Too many Americans mistrust their own political system, to the point that they're willing to picket polling stations because they think fraud is being committed. That must be fixed. Finding ways to reduce the influence of money on politics (e.g. campaign spending limits) would be a good start. It will also be an easy sell to devolve and distribute some of the powers that have accumulated in the white house over the last several decades. If you're not comfortable with some of the powers Trump wielded during his time in office, then perhaps those powers shouldn't rest with the POTUS. Bottom line, if the democrats try to pretend Trump never happened and couldn't happen again, they're in for unpleasant surprises.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mikedilger 6y agoNov 3 - Election Day Nov 7 - News media called a winner (this is not an official act) Dec 8 - Deadline for resolving election disputes Dec 14 - Electoral college casts votes Dec 23 - Deadline for receipt of electoral college votes Jan 6 - Congress counts the electoral college votes Jan 20 - Inauguration Day
- debt 6y agoJudges have thrown out nearly every lawsuit the Trump campaign has filed.
- jimnotgym 6y agoPlease permit me a ramble, there are too many points to fit in a hn box and I'm typing on a phone. I'm sure our stateside friends would be happy to acknowledge that US politics has a major effect on the whole world. I have had it pointed out to me before, however, that the USA can vote in whomever they please, and it is none of our business. But American companies sell us our books and films (understatement), take cuts of our credit card payments, make us coffee, organize our taxis. All of this seems to be with preferential tax treatment. All of these things could be done without the US, but the US is our partner in peace, so it is tolerated. And here is the rub, this works so long as the USA is a legitimate ally. And then came Trump, telling us that we don't spend enough on Nato (with US defence companies) and threatening our peace. I believe this has lead to a situation where the US is seen less as a partner and more as a bully, a colonial overlord demanding tribute. I think the next 20 years will see a shift in this kind of trade to the EU and to the East. The USA can be insular if it wants, but it can't do so and expect everything to be the same as it has been for the last 50 years. An insular US is a declining US. Your new President has a terrific amount of work to do to undo this damage...
- johndevor 6y ago> But American companies sell us our books and films (understatement), take cuts of our credit card payments, make us coffee, organize our taxis. All of this seems to be with preferential tax treatment. All of these things could be done without the US, but the US is our partner in peace, so it is tolerated. Are you implying that America is exporting more than it imports from the EU? The US actually has a trade deficit with Europe. https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c0003.html https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c0003.html
- systemvoltage 6y agoDoes that include software services? Edit: Just checked the source. It is goods only. And does not include services, software or not. So, this is sort of a meaningless argument for an economy that is shifting towards services from hard goods.
- guerrilla 6y ago
- bra-ket 6y agoThe fat lady isn’t singing yet
- ycosynot 6y agoSome people criticize Biden's charisma, but it goes to show that Americans have grown beyond the "popularity contest" that elections tend to be. They elected someone for what he stands for. This does not look like much, but it should be inspiring.
- libraryatnight 6y agoI don't think I realized just how much this was wearing on me. I know there's steps to go before this is irrefutable, but the weight lifted is palpable and I didn't really think it would be given how many troubles we still face. I sincerely hope this is a step towards a healthier country. And for those that did not like Trump, but weren't thrilled with Biden, I hope Biden is a stepping stone towards even better candidates.
- albertTJames 6y agoThe republican party has no counterpart anywhere in the world. They are led by evangelical bigots and some of them even believe in QAnon conspiracy theories. It is the hideous face of inbred de-evolution of philosophical and political ideas into fanatisms and childish naratives. They are not going away. Educate you population, separate church and state now, and maybe future trumps wont be able to do so much damage.
- ineedasername 6y agoI just hope we have a relatively boring 4 years without daily issues that get people on one or both side of the political spectrum upset/angry/hateful/malicious.
- briantakita 6y agoBiden has not "won the whitehouse". There is a process which includes court challenges, recounts, & the Electoral College. This headline is premature at best & if Trump wins court challenges, could be misleading...
- ddingus 6y agoThe division and basically legal corruption are my concerns. On a basic level, we are all people and all run the same basic way, and have the same basic needs. One layer up, we are Americans. Those of us who travel, or who communicate outside the domestic US, see many other nations and often a higher degree of solidarity as citizens. Looks like a priority problem to me. We all need to earn enough to make it, or we all end up paying the costs associated with chronic homelessness, for example. We all need to see the doctor too. Eating good food, and the other human basics are not hard to understand. Often, I see "those other people" type arguments of various kinds too. Lazy people. Different colored people. Weird people. Other people; namely, not people like us, or not in our tribe, group, and... Ordinary people do not have very effective representation. Money talks. And it should, but that brings me back to priorities again. No judgement, no blame here. Just observations. I submit resolving these things to a more harmonious body politic is on us people. I am not convinced anyone, or entity can just swoop in and improve things. That is just where we are today. One other observation: Nations older than us have been where we are. Their peoples have had to do the work to get past it, and have had to do that multiple times. This tells me we aren't experiencing anything fundementally new, in human terms. But it is new to America. New in the sense of the USA being young enough, and the pace of change in the world being rapid enough for the state of things to feel new, or like doom, or, or... Given the burden of improving on our current state lies with us as people, citizens, I submit the following: We all need to understand one another better. That starts by talking. Really talking and listening. This is best done sans judgement, and with deliberate intent to understand better. We all are where we are in life, and we all have made choices, and relitigating the past does not appear to hold answers for our future. This is about what we do now. It is about our priorities as humans and Americans too. Take voting, for example. People had the following options: Vote Major Party Vote other No vote. Everyone made their choice and had reasons, right? If we apply the intent to seek understanding of one another and avoid judgement, that means having a talk about why people voted or no voted the way they did. People no voting, often did so because they did not want to consent to, or endorse, approve of what they see as ineffective, corrupt governance. Or they did not connect a vote to a positive future for themselves and theirs. Why is that? I think many, and include myself until recently, would rush to judge and blame. A vote for non major party X really is a vote for major party Y. Same for staying home. After talking some, the idea of candidates interviewing for a job comes up and poor or toxic representation means not approving them for the job, and with that we see lazy, or stupid aren't really valid as reasons why. I will stop there, and urge you to think about how all of that is framed up as a duty, or burden and how people may reject all of that in light of what they may see as an irrational election. Same goes for how people have voted or not before too. Those decisions are made, cannot be unmade and people had their reasons for making them. Notably, after some real discussion, the reality hits: we can't tell people to approve of potential leaders, and we can't dictate what is best, nor their point of view. We can talk to them and understand what they need to cast a vote. We can attract them to join a cause and all that too. So why doesn't that happen more? I submit this is a big part of the priority and mutual understanding and consideration discussion we all need to have. Without that talk being a fundamental part of our body politic, we appear to be divided into factions, blocs who understand others, "those other people" increasingly poorly as pressure to avoid the worst continues to rise. With that discussion, it becomes much easier to see what we may consider an obvious, rational choice, say lesser evil as an example, really is not so obvious, or may even be harmful, not a lesser evil, but perhaps just a different kind. No matter how this all goes, at any given time our future is about the decisions we make together, the actions we take together, and the outcome we live with together. The election is past us now, but please do consider it was about the votes people were about to cast, not the ones they may have cast in the past. Talking about all that is much easier and can be far more effective when people are not also fending off negative, and frankly until we understand one another better, uninformed personal judgements too. We are divided to a harmful degree despite all of us having the same basic humanity. I urge you to talk, and I mean really talk with others very indifferent from you, who live differently than you do and understand one another better. I do not know how we get our priorities in order as people otherwise. And without that, we rub the risk of our future continuing to be an increasingly mixed bag for increasing numbers of us. Finally, consider this idea: When we make the discussion about what we oppose, it is not going to be about what we need, or want that is good. Think about trying to lead a team by only telling them what not to do. They will get somewhere, and it won't be anything anyone opposed either. We all benefit from an explicit, public good. That means the basics are in order leaving people with free agency to get after better, or what they want. Understanding one another better will make that explicit, public good more clear. It will improve our basic solidarity as people, reduce division. I submit one final idea: There will not be a net public good we all benefit from and depend on, unless we make the discussion, body politic, about it. And that is how I am playing it now, and have been for a while now. I want and need to be voting FOR good, not AGAINST bad, or evil. You probably do too, and I encourage you to make more of the discussion about that explicit, public good and demand our leaders do the same things; namely, understand the people they need votes from better, and to apply that understanding to propose policy people can vote FOR, not just default to people voting AGAINST the very worst.
- jeffrallen 6y agoThis election was your regular 4 year reminder that the electoral college is stupid and that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact needs to be completed.
- abvdasker 6y agoI agree with that, though I am pretty concerned that the NPVIC would be struck down by the now 6-3 conservative SCOTUS.
- wrkronmiller 6y agoI don’t disagree with your goal but I think you ought to elaborate on your arguments. The electoral college balances geographic diversity against raw popularity. This is just one of many ways the US government gives outsized power to vocal political minorities. Perhaps explain why you don’t like things this way?
- stjo 6y agoIf I understand how the election works, the “first past the post” voting system is just as damaging. Correct me if I’m wrong, but they are not related. Explanation from game theory pov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU
- dimitrios1 6y agoA lot of people here are talking about the "healing the division" but what if the path forward is to figure out how to exist with the division? We need to start getting more creative than just wishfully thinking this polarization is going away anytime soon because news flash, it's not. So what is the step forward? A national divorce needs to start being talked about more seriously. It's at least peaceful and amicable, and better than the other alternatives (civil war, foreign conquerors, authoritarianism, etc). This isn't "giving up" on the problems per say, but instead, accepting reality and thinking of solutions going forward. Thinking the left and right can be unified again is as wishful as thinking Artificial intelligence won't displace anymore workers.
- chmod600 6y agoA voting system needs to be accurate but it also needs to inspire confidence. I think the U.S. failed on the latter point. Let me be clear that I don't think this affected the outcome, only the confidence in the outcome. Mail-in voting has existed for a long time, but it is being done at a larger scale and in new ways and new places. It was a mistake to do it during such a contentious election. Covid is not a good enough reason: it's easy enough to drop the ballot in a county box so the secretary of state has a chain of custody for all valid ballots. I would actually prefer voter ID as well as people standing there to do a brief check. In addition to preventing fraud, it also helps remind voters if they forgot to sign or something. Also, I think it needs to be said that a lot of people hate Trump. Hate can cause people to do things that they would never imagine doing otherwise, like election fraud. It doesn't need to be a conspiracy... just a lot of individuals doing small stuff (post office employees throwing away likely Trump ballots, etc.). And it doesn't help that the map looked quite red on the day of the election, and that the poll numbers were WAY off, and that the media was rooting for Biden. It all just erodes confidence.
- kylestlb 6y agohave any links to real evidence of widespread fraud that would affect the outcome?
- rjkennedy98 6y agoThey said the same thing about NSA surveillance before Snowden
- webkike 6y agoAnd then Snowden provided evidence. What are you getting at here?
- heartbeats 6y agoI have many links to evidence that there are real people out there who are convinced that there was election fraud. Whether there actually was any is immaterial; the mere appearance of fraud is bad enough.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TheRealPomax 6y agoNo: he hasn't, and that's confusing to both "the world" as well as waaay too many Americans: the election isn't until mid December, when the electoral college casts its votes. You didn't vote for the president, you voted for what your state will try to vote for in December. Unfortunately, state representatives in the presidential election are not universally required to vote along the state election result, and while rare in the past, the current administration is clearly not above bribery and criminal endeavours to get what they want, when they need it. (Of course, if that's news to you, then you're probably not in the US right now) Biden is PROJECTED to win the White House, because that's how US elections work. It looks for all the world that he'll win, but he might not depending on the electoral college: you don't win because the most people voted for you. That's not how elections work in the US. And before someone goes "what are the odds": this isn't 2016 when people still pretended to honour the system. We have 4 years of established corruption, exploits, and literal criminal behaviour to draw on. Until elected by the electoral college, Biden has not won. And remember that many states merely put a monetary fine on being a faithless electors: it's not even illegal. $1000 to pick the guy who'll pay you back bigger, instead of who the state voted for? Scandalous! But also: entirely legal.
- jefftk 6y agoWhile what you describe is possible, I really don't think anyone thinks it's at all likely? For example, I would happily give you 10:1 odds against (a) the decision of the electoral college is not what we expected because of faithless electors and then (b) that decision stands.
- fairity 6y agoI'll up that to 50:1.
- krick 6y agoObviously I don't think it's likely, but that's not really the point. I literally laughed out loud when I read in the local news earlier today that the president of my country "congratulated Biden with his victory". (AFAIK, he is not some outlier, many of them did, but unfortunately I couldn't find a full list). I mean, we all know that's not how it's formally done, and we all know how important formality always used to be to these folks. With such vigor they should've just appointed Biden the new PotUSA months ago based on some CNN polls and be done with it. Trump would obviously protest, but he is protesting now, so what's the difference?
- godelmachine 6y agoOne of the important things I would be watching out is if Biden lives up to his word of removing the hurdles on family based immigration, as has been outlined in https://joebiden.com/indian-americans/ https://joebiden.com/indian-americans/
- medium_burrito 6y agoIn an ideal world, I think we should do either: A) Random selection a la the Venetian Doge (political leader, not meme-canine). The house should definitely be random selection- preferably all citizens over 18 and under say 70 filing a tax return. B) Allow indefinite run-offs with None-of-the-above options. Basically, if None-of-the-above wins, the election is redone but nobody on the ballot is allowed to run for the run-off.
- cblconfederate 6y agoThe Doge wasn't selected randomly, but via a series of randomized election rounds in order to ensure that no coordination was possible. Wiki has a fun description: > Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine, and the nine elected forty-five. These forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who elected the doge.[19] Election required at least twenty-five votes out of forty-one, nine votes out of eleven or twelve, or seven votes out of nine electors. Ancient Athens appointed most offices by lot, they even had a democracy machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleroterion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleroterion
- zw123456 6y agoI think we should thank the people who counted the votes, all of them, but especially the ones in those "battle ground" places who had to feel a lot of pressure and had to work in difficult circumstances during a pandemic. Thank you all poll workers, you help make our, sometimes confounding, democracy work.
- skee0083 6y agoDemocrats = welfare capitalism Republicans = neo-feudalism So since that's the only choice you get you might as well vote for dems and at least get some food stamps.
- vowelless 6y agoWhat kinds of investments can one make to capitalize on a Biden victory? For example: * If Biden will be weak on China, do we expect Chinese tech companies to perform well and if so, how can we get exposure to that? Some China tech ETF? * Biden will likely support a lot of green endeavors, and so Green ETFs could be a good BUY. * If there is a blue sweep, then there could be a massive stimulus, which would mean lots of money slushing around in the market. Maybe QQQ is a good BUY.
- darksaints 6y agoYou're too late.
- blargmaster42_8 6y agoJust institute Voter ID like the rest of the civilized world and this "voter fraud" thing will be solved. And open source the voteing machines.
- agntar 6y agoDisappointed that politics are now in the Hacker News.
- blantonl 6y agoFirst thing I am going to do is submit my resume for open tech leadership and policy positions in the new administration. If you are in a position with experience and financial comfort to serve your country with regards to science and technology, the Biden administration will almost certainly be a great place to land. Look for policy and leadership positions in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. I'll be submitting my resume and cover letter just as soon as the transition team site opens.
- Devils-Avocado 6y agoNow we can get back to destabilizing the Mideast, offshoring our manufacturing jobs, starting more endless wars and transferring the rest of our technology to China. The Trump years were just a speed bump on the way to complete globalization.
- abvdasker 6y agoWhat is your preferred solution to those problems?
- stevespang 6y agoNo worries - - Trump is now VESTED just like Joe Biden will be, and all the decades of American Presidents before them. Trump will start "collecting" in January . All of them grant favors in return for the moolah - - it's just they have to wait until after they get out of office to collect, speeches, book deals, highly questionable but all legal. Actually though, Joe may not make it 4 years, very unlikely, he already has signs of dementia . . .
- BlueTemplar 6y agoWell, Trump didn't waste time and has already found a new job: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM
- TopInvestor 6y agoNothing is officially certified.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoOne of the things this election, and the last four years, has shown me, is the impact of technology on our political discourse. It hasn't been a "good" insight. Federal Election records indicate that the leadership of technology companies overwhelmingly supported a set of values that their employees appear to just as overwhelmingly reject. That dissonance is really quite remarkable. I see one of the fundamental challenges facing the new administration is how to address this. I am not a fan of government regulation, more of a "let the markets decide" kind of guy. I recognize however there is a systemic risk where the technology "owner" can exploit it to harm society in a way that was previously impossible. While the country has focused on disinformation and hate speech, consider a company that controls, in real time, the self-driving software in a car. Such a technology, if weaponized, to could kill hundreds of thousands of people. Or it could be weaponize to kill select people who were in the intersection of riding in a self-driven car and in disfavor by the company that really controls that car. Early on in my career I chose not to work for military contractors who were the "big" employers in Los Angeles at the time I graduated from college. They were clearly engaged in finding clever, or at least more effective, ways to kill people and that wasn't where I wanted to spend my time. But what about someone working on self driving? It saves lives by avoiding some of the things end up resulting in crashes. But it also provides an opportunity for great evil. Do we trust the person in charge to not be evil? Companies change and while they might declare their intentions when they are growing, what happens when they are on top? Sometimes those quaint notions get cast aside when being a little bit evil makes what you're trying to do that much easier or maybe that much more profitable. What is the appropriate response, in a democracy, to a small number of people controlling a potential weapon that can destroy that democracy? Sadly this is no longer an idle question. I don't have any answers here, just more questions.
- bufferoverflow 6y ago> Such a technology, if weaponized, to could kill hundreds of thousands of people. Try and drive a Tesla through a red light or through a person that it clearly sees. Try and drive a Tesla fast without being in it. It just doesn't work. On the other hand, nothing stops someone from attaching a simple remote control system to a regular truck and driving through a crowd of people. Nothing stops someone from making an aimbot for a machine gun. That can kill a lot of people fast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QcfZGDvHU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QcfZGDvHU8
- opportune 6y agoMy biggest concern is how seemingly so many conservative people are becoming huge conspiracy theorists. I don't mean normal conspiracy theories like there being something more behind the JFK assassination, but like QAnon, Bill Gates injecting people with microchips, Pizzagate, etc. A lot of people in my own family in a rather backwards state believe that stuff. It's making me completely lose faith in this country and I'm seriously considering getting out because of this widespread idiocy. How do you even begin to "meet in the middle" or have reasonable conversations with people who believe in that stuff? edit: Don't really understand why this was de-nested from the original parent comment down to the third-fourth page :/
- 23B1 6y agoIn a sea of readily-available information with no way to qualify it, people gravitate towards concepts they can understand and that fit within their ideological framework. If we're in the Information Age, why is information literacy not as important as literacy itself?
- gimboland 6y agoInterestingly, it's not just conservatives. I'm in the UK, and some of the circles I move in are a bit "hippy" (and thus not conservative/right wing at all) and some of those folks are absolutely lapping it up. It is bewildering to see.
- rattray 6y agoFascinating. What kind of stuff? The whole qanon deal?
- tertiary 6y agoThe thing that will sit deep within me for at least the next few years is that, no matter how you slice it, a vote for Trump is complicit acceptance of his divisive and harmful behavior. Of course you don't need to be a racist to vote for Trump, but you do need to fear the other options so much that you agree that his behavior and the way that he represents our country to the rest of the world is tolerable compared to what might come after him. I was on the phone with my mom earlier and one of her friends called her up. She's a republican, but they avoid politics. She asked her, genuinely afraid, if she thought that Harris would steal the presidency and convert the country to socialism. She's not an idiot. She's a physician, but was still so caught up in fear mongering that she genuinely believed that the government would steal her income and that there would be riots in the streets as we turn into a third world nation. I'm going to think about her differently after hearing that. This is probably the first time in my life where I am going to look at people differently based on who they voted for and I hate that. However, I can't get it out of my head that they voted for a president that has so disgraced the highest office in our country and that they did it because of a fear of the future burning so far inside them that they felt another four years of Trump was preferable to even as bland of a change as a Biden presidency will be.
- rattray 6y agoWow. I'm used to the idea of republican physicians, but one who'd genuinely believe in a VP plot to steal the presidency to establish socialism is... surprising and scary. Where do you think she got the ideas? Fox? Other media outlets? Or does the sewer link into social media have an unknown source?
- tcbawo 6y agoPhysicians are just people like everyone else. In fact, many of them are far more concentrated in terms of education, social circle, and free time. Smart people are very good at coming up with rationalizations and justifications for the things they believe or fear. We think we're better than generations past, but human nature is human nature.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dpeterson 6y agoFraud
- kyleblarson 6y agoThe centrist left and the centrist right need to come together to create a new political party.
- _hyn3 6y agoRegardless of media projections (and we know how accurate projections have been the last few years), it's simply not true that Biden has won. No one has yet won. No one will have won the election until states certify their counts. It'd be nice if the counts, and recounts, were already completed. (Florida, of the "hanging chad" debacle, actually finished its count within hours in this election. Why did these less populous states move so quickly, and then slow down so much, once it became apparent who was winning? Scroll down on this page: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/... to see the timeline in the battleground states) No state (out of all 50) has yet certified their count, and certainly no battleground states have certified their counts. In fact, many of them have still not even finished counting the votes. To assert otherwise, over a weekend when none of the recounts or court cases are resolved, is literally spreading misinformation that many of the same media outlets are claiming to be stopping. Instead, they're shaping the narrative and rushing to crown a victor so that it becomes a fait accompli.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoThat has also been true of every election in the past that has been called by the media before the election has been formally certified. In a typical election, the media would call it, the loser would offer up a concession speech, and only then the winner would declare victory. Even Hillary did that back in 2016, it probably won’t happen like that in 2020 for the first time in recent history for reasons.
- aabhay 6y agoBallots take weeks and in some cases months to count. We’re all familiar with projecting/crowning a winner with the understanding that it could change. But the way we use won in almost all competitive contexts involve a high likelihood estimation. Including ‘winning’ a contract/deal, winning a race, etc. New information can affect outcomes.
- _hyn3 6y ago> We’re all familiar with projecting/crowning a winner with the understanding that it could change. But the title is "Biden wins", not "Biden is projected to win". It's obviously an incredibly close race, so there is a both a moral and legal onus for an even closer examination of the results. That has not happened. For example, per the NYT, Arizona has 3% votes outstanding (estimated), but the margin of victory that has been called for Biden is less than half that. The polls have just not been accurate at all this cycle (or the last), so using them to project victory is fraught with peril. > New information can affect outcomes. Indeed. ;)
- prossercj 6y agoAnyone else want to see more states adopt something other than a winner-take-all allotment of electoral votes? Here in Pennsylvania we’d be about evenly split. I wonder if splitting our electoral votes would moderate our politics.
- aabhay 6y agoIt would unquestionably help republicans. The problem is that the collective models highly favors small states. So even if large states agree to split their votes, small rural states will still drive the count.
- noobermin 6y agoHonestly, the right thing to do is go all the way and just elect the president by popular vote.
- honkycat 6y agoI'm glad we got Trump out of the white house. But I'm still skeptical. The growing divide and threat of civil war ( not going to happen btw ) are nothing compared to what will happen in the next 50 years of we do not have a green new deal. Climate change, and its little brother over fishing and unchecked exploitation of our environment, is an existential threat to the human race. Bernie took it seriously. Warren took it seriously. I'm not convinced the new establishment takes it seriously. We need radical action YESTERDAY. More business as usual is not going to cut it. Furthermore, the new administration doesn't believe in Medicare for all. They plan to do nothing about the currently broken system which causes 40% of people who are diagnosed with cancer to spend their entire life savings and often go bankrupt as a result of something that is not at all their fault. Democrats down ballot got massacred, well progressive policies like decriminalization of drugs, and raising the minimum wage passed with large margins. I'm glad we won but this was a mess and we're still not getting towards where we actually need to be: preventing the apocalypse
- RedBeetDeadpool 6y agoPreventing the apocalypse is not going to happen with just the US pursuing green tech, so its a moot point. We have to get the rest of the world on board, and that's simply not going to happen because there will always be a country that wants to improve the lives of their citizens, and thereby want to climb up the economic ladder, and as such will seek the advantages to be gleaned from the disproportionately more powerful fossil fuel. Sorry to be such a pessimist, but there's nothing that's going to stop climate change except the free market agreeing to pursue sustainability. Politics has no power here. Its just a bad strategy that puts anyone who pursues green tech at an economic disadvantage, a sort of prisoners dilemma. Anything else is just fantasizing that we live in a non competitive world. My advice: move to a colder state.
- cgrealy 6y ago> there's nothing that's going to stop climate change except the free market agreeing to pursue sustainability. That is exactly the attitude that got us into this situation in the first place. The free market will NEVER voluntarily choose compliance costs. The value simply isn't there. The free market is an engine to optimise profit. That's it. All other considerations are secondary. While there is a market niche for "ethical products", that is ultimately (and somewhat ironically) unsustainable without regulation. If I start a business behaving ethically, using renewable energy, paying my employees and suppliers a fair wage, etc... my only hope is that I can attract a niche market that will pay a premium for that. But history has shown us that is simply not the case. Regulation levels the playing field. Otherwise, we would still have child labour, weekend work, dangerous working conditions, etc. As for the argument that other countries will ignore this: 1: other countries AREN'T ignoring this. The US is the one that pulled out of Paris 2: The US is the still the biggest economy in the world. If the US government imposed regulations that all business must act in a sustainable fashion (including the supply chain) the rest of the world would have to follow through.
- ivanstame 6y agoGet this political crap off from HN... The amount of US meddling in other countries elections the whole world should decide the faith of the US.
- mewse 6y agoOne candidate supports separating children from their families for certain groups of illegal immigrants, kept those children in cages for some time, and has since lost track of around 500 of them; not reuiniting them with their families. This has all been extensively documented. And approximately seventy million people have voted for that candidate. Okay, so with all of that in mind, please provide the nuance you want to talk about. I’m very interested in this nuance that you claim will move us away from “crazy extremist”.
- dbrueck 6y agoThe last thing I want to do is come across as defending Trump, because I didn't vote for him either time and am happy to see him go. But your reply is a perfect example of the problem I'm talking about, and it is present on both sides of the equation (i.e. I'm going to point some things out, but please don't read that as meaning that I think this is a problem that only some people on one side participate in - both are incredibly guilt of it, generally speaking). So here goes: > One candidate supports separating children from their families This is objectively false. Nobody "supports" that position at all as a matter of policy - rather you have oversimplified a complex problem to the point of absurdity. A police officer pulls over a drunk driver and finds kids in the car. The driver is arrested. Do the kids go too? No, of course not. Is it correct to say that "the police support separating children from their families"? Only in the most technical and intentionally misleading sense. Is it their policy to find ways to separate kids from parents? Of course not. Are there sometimes situations in which the only practical solution is to separate some kids from their parents? Yep! > keeping them in cages Again, nobody "supports" keeping children in cages. (and do keep in mind that these so-called "cages" were used by earlier administrations too) But consider this situation: your country has a standing policy that when a refugee comes to your border, instead of turning them away, you let them in, you keep them in a temporary facility while you try to go through the legal process of evaluating their asylum claims or whatever because your country also has a standing policy that people just can't wander into the country unaccounted for. Most of the time, these two policies can be in harmony, but one day 20k people show up on your doorstep. Policy A says you don't turn them away, policy B says you don't let them loose into the country. What do you do? And I'm not talking about what would be the long term ideal, if we have unlimited time and money. I mean what do you do about this problem /today/? You're probably going to scramble and set up some temporary shelter while you get the policymakers to start figuring out a real solution, but you can't just call into existence beds, food, and furnishings. > and has lost track of 500 of them. The president obviously doesn't track them to begin with, so Trump obviously didn't lose track of them (any more than the 800,000 who are reported missing each year were personally lost by Trump - see https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-missing-children/missing-children-in-u-s-nearly-always-make-it-home-alive-idUSBRE83P14020120426 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-missing-children/miss...). I'm not really interested in debating these specific policies, because the larger issue is that you can look at things one of two ways: 1) There are 70 million people who voted for an idiot. By extension, they must be terrible to some degree or another too. 2) The solution to any "interesting" problem - especially social problems - involves tradeoffs, conflicting objectives, pros and cons. If the solution really were trivial and simple, we wouldn't argue about it. The debate is because it's so complex, and with any really complex problem, you can have very reasonable and intelligent people draw different conclusions on how best to proceed. If you choose to see the U.S through the lens of #1, you may as well give up now, because it's hopeless - those people are barely people and are separated from you by an insurmountable gulf. OTOH lens #2 is hopeful - you see that ultimately everyone wants pretty much the same high level objectives, the debate is the path to get there and how to spend limited resources. With #1, nothing will get done. With #2, potentially everything is possible.
- sanguy 6y agoCanadian who has been living in the US for 5 years. Perm resident but not naturalized. Arrived a year and a bit before Trump 2016 win. This election was so polarizing I am very afraid the country can recover from it. I am worried enough we have bug out bags packed, with critical documents, as I expect this could easily escalate to a civil war as both sides are convinced they are right; and more worrisome is that the other side is so completely corrupted that they are not Americans or humans and should be taken out like the trash. We have Trump who will not concede and will fight this to his last moment; and then will continue to fight it from the side lines. We have AOC on twitter asking people to send names for her registry of Trump supporters for future retribution. You know who else kept such lists? Hitler, Mao, Mussolini. Really scary times down here. Much worse than when Trump won in 2016. The US needs all the help, prayers, and luck it can muster right now to find it's way through this.
- jakear 6y agoGuessing you’re referring to: > Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future > Lol at the “party of personal responsibility” being upset at the idea of being responsible for their behavior over last four years Which I’m sure all will agree is not how you have characterized it. If I’m incorrect pls provide sources.
- sanguy 6y agoShe supports this project: https://www.trumpaccountability.net https://www.trumpaccountability.net Keeping such lists is wrong on many levels; and for a member of congress to suggest and support such a thing is beyond comprehension. I suggest going and standing in Dachau or similar places and reflect on what such lists have been used for in the past. It also seems others feel the same (random selection from many google results): https://nypost.com/2020/11/06/aoc-facing-heat-for-wanting-to-archive-posts-by-trump-sycophants/ https://nypost.com/2020/11/06/aoc-facing-heat-for-wanting-to...
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- sfoley 6y ago“ If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.” Flagged
- kyle_martin1 6y agoNot legally confirmed yet.
- ablekh 6y agoOK, so the transition from Make America Great Again slogan to Make America Decent Again (and Better) reality is inevitable and welcome. It is easy to get overjoyed by results of the U.S. Presidential Election (and some celebration certainly is in order). Uniting the country is definitely a commendable goal, though it is easier said than done. The election results across all levels clearly illustrate just how divided and polarized this land is. Thus, it will take quite a lot of time and effort to see a reasonable progress on this front. We all can play our part in it by a polite and constructive dialog with opponents and first finding common ground on such pressing and all-encompassing issues as coronavirus pandemic, environmental protection, social justice and health care reform. In the meantime, let us not forget that, in order to restore the heavily damaged moral fabric of this country, relevant measures should pass through the Congress. And while Democrats retain control of the House, the opposing party might retain control of the Senate. Which most certainly will lead to a significant gridlock in moving forward with the democratic and, in some cases, progressive agenda unless Democrats retake control in the Senate. Remember, winning a battle is not a guarantee for winning a war. That is why the U.S. Senate run-off elections in Georgia to be held on January 5 (https://georgia.gov/vote-2020-runoff-elections https://georgia.gov/vote-2020-runoff-elections) are crucial.
- harimau777 6y agoIs there really any common ground? My experience talking to the other side during this administration is that they are completely unable and often unwilling to consider any argument or information that conflicts with their views. How do you debate with people who don't care about facts or reason? In addition their leadership appears to be completely unwilling to act and good faith and the rank in file appear unwilling to hold them accountable for that fact. I would love to be able to see some way to find common ground, but It seems to me that doing so would just be playing the sucker.
- miked85 6y ago> My experience talking to the other side during this administration is that they are completely unable and often unwilling to consider any argument or information that conflicts with their views. This absolutely goes both ways; that is the biggest problem.
- Threeve303 6y agoWhatever happens, don't let the country both start and end in Philadelphia.
- throwawaysea 6y agoHow does HN feel about the call from AOC to compile lists of those who supported or worked for or aligned with the Trump administration (https://nypost.com/2020/11/06/aoc-facing-heat-for-wanting-to-archive-posts-by-trump-sycophants/ https://nypost.com/2020/11/06/aoc-facing-heat-for-wanting-to...). Former Obama administration staffer Michael Simon said that he is gathering the names of anyone who supported Trump in the 2016 and 2020 election, and has created a project for this (https://mobile.twitter.com/trumpaccproject https://mobile.twitter.com/trumpaccproject). This seems like the logical end of cancel culture and deplatforming, which is to assemble a list of people and organizations to target or shame or blacklist. I find this to be a very disagreeable suggestion given that people simply are exercising their constitutional and political rights and this furthers division, encourages extremism, and has a chilling silencing effect on civil discourse. To me this reeks of authoritarian Leftism, like the violence seen in past revolutions in China or Russia. There is also a great deal of irony as well, since AOC and her supporters are certainly not calling for a blacklist of Marxists, despite Marxism being the cause of over 100M deaths in the 20th century.
- vaccinator 6y agoUsually posts with many comments get demoted fast... Not this one I guess
- RedComet 6y ago"wins"
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- simianparrot 6y agoAnd this is relevant here how?
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- politician 6y agoI am convinced that the main problem in the US is the structure of the Senate. It is preposterous to assert that the state of Rhode Island or the welfare state of Kentucky is as important to the security or economic health of the nation as California or Texas. We are a divided nation: people trying to make the best of their situation, and the Senate, a fantasyland where we pretend that every state is equally relevant. The "2 per state" rule worked back in 1776 because the states were roughly the same size, everyone was a farmer, and fertilizer had not yet been invented. Today, senators should be allocated based on the GDP of each state.
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- ransom1538 6y agoAh the forefathers. Thanks for the good system.
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- anonu 6y agoThe country may be divided. But those divisions are manufactured and exacerbated over the last 4 years by a made-for-TV president. I couldn't help but think, in looking at various TV news channels this past week, that this is all sport. Big numbers on the score board and the play-by-play constantly flashing on the screens. We're the spectators, and the politicians are players on the field. Trump played the field better than anyone. I hope that a new president and a new administration can show the USA that the division is not as deep and worrisome as is portrayed. We're actually all rooting for the same things here.
- humanrebar 6y agoTrump is as much a product of the divisiveness as a cause. People initially took a shine to him because he was a "fighter". They saw a conflict already and wanted a fully willing combatant as a surrogate.
- jcims 6y agoA couple weeks before the 2016 election Michael Moore (who I’m typically not big a fan of) had one of the best reads on why Trump would and ultimately did win that election. I've been politically homeless for a while now but still registered Republican as is almost all of my family. Moore's points directly map to my conversations with them better than any other explanation I've seen on the Internet.: https://youtu.be/vMm5HfxNXY4 https://youtu.be/vMm5HfxNXY4 I think it's important to keep in mind that Trump winning the primaries in 2016 was essentially a repudiation of the entire Republican incumbency by a good portion of their base.
- joe_the_user 6y agoJust about every general "reason Trump would win" for last election looks pretty dumb with this election. Because basically all those arguments remain true - yet Trump didn't win. These aren't argument for why Trump would win. They were arguments for why Trump has some purchase. The reason Trump won was the elites go so sloppy they let him win, they let their garbage boogieman alternative become the choice because they were addicted to having that kind of creep as their opposition. And Michael Moore's argument in particular is crap among these. Homeless factory workers aren't Trump's base, family construction companies are his base - I see them regularly. The well-off but not college educated.
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- oneandonly1 6y agonice
- randshift 6y agoWow I just need to comment to be part of this historically large thread!
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- biscotti 6y ago"Racist" mentioned in this thread dozens of times along with fascists all the usual derogatory buzzwords. Communist and woke both worryingly have less mentions considering the context. Bolshevism suprisingly has got no mentions considering what the YCombinator Alumni Michael Simon tweeted and the platform he set up. Anywho, I digress. I believe those in here to be intelligent and educated so I would ask you to take your partisan hats off for a minute if you're honest and consider when AZ goes Trump this is the time for you to start freaking out. The mainstream media has been extremely irresponsible and the forthcoming riots when this is overturned are going to lay squarely on their feet. I would also ask those of you who have a conscience to be less irresponsible than journalists over these coming weeks until December in an attempt to reduce said damage. I say this because if you think Biden is going to be your president you haven't been watching carefully enough. Also dang if you will please change the title. Biden hasn't won anything yet - as you know the media doesn't declare winners esp not given their woeful conduct and bogus calls (AZ), states have to certify before a winner is declared. Also please ask PG to be more responsible with his tweets if he will listen. This will reflect badly on all involved. Thankyou. Edited to add: I don't see Next Page at the bottom of the pages in this story, I'm not sure if it's bugged...
- biscotti 6y agoThe downvotes were expected in this place. I just want whoever is reading to know everything you're seeing tonight is an illusion. There is no president elect until the officials appoint it according to Americas constitution. The concession that has not been received means a great deal. This is the third coup attempt after Russia and impeachment and a lot of the people on this board are going to be savagely disappointed. In addition I still can't believe this title stands. Interesting you would risk such bad press by perpetuating an actual lie on this delicate subject.
- lynndotpy 6y agoAs a graduate student, Biden's win is personally a huge relief for me and my peers. Most of my fellow grad students are international students, and it was very concerning to have the possibility of another four years of this anti-science, anti-academic, anti-China and generally xenophobic administration. So, this is received as Very Good News.
- hereme888 6y agoWhat would ya'll do if the courts rule in Trump's favor re: ballots arriving after Nov 3? I'm just saying, wait for the decisive victory, and be careful of the possibility of civil war.
- vcanales 6y agoSo, American friends, I can't imagine Trump stopping his hissy fit and conceding... what happens if he doesn't concede?
- krapp 6y agoNothing. There is no legal requirement to concede, it's just a polite formality. At noon on January 20, Donald Trump will no longer be President of the United States and he will leave the White House. The Marines and Secret Service will politely but firmly escort him and his belongings to the curb if necessary.
- b20000 6y agoAs far as I know the votes still need to be counted again. And, you can probably forget about that stimulus package if Biden really wins.
- lizardking 6y agoUnless the democrats win the Georgia special elections and do away with the filibuster. The former seems like a coin flip, but if it happens the latter seems like a certainty.
- aokiji 6y agoThe comment section of this thread is a clear example of what the Internet looks like when Chinese Communist Party propagandists are unleashed.
- aokiji 6y agoThis comment section is the perfect example of the Chinese Communist Party propaganda arm invading online platforms.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI look forward to not being consumed by political news every single second of the day.
- totaldude87 6y agoIt’s hard to fathom that even after all things happened in last 4 years , almost 71 million Americans sided with trump.. a divided country needing a decisive leader to heal.. Tough times ahead!!
- tamaharbor 6y agoEighty thousand votes is neither a “clear victory” nor a “mandate” for anything.
- tamaharbor 6y agoWhat if the election wasn’t fair? That is what worries me the most. We need Voter ID. You even need fingerprint ID to vote in Iran.
- throwaway316943 6y agoThis thread is the worst. September looms.
- throwawayx7 6y agoSomething that should be addressed as soon as possible is reducing the capacity of foreign actors to influence politics through organized trolling. There has been a lot of gaslighting around this issue, but the fact is that the United States has been protected by two vast oceans for its entire history, but it opened a conduit into its heartland for foreign mischief-makers through Facebook and Twitter. Whether it helped Trump or not in 2016 (frankly, I think it probably did but it's exhausting to debate this so I won't) it does represent a gaping hole in America's defenses. Until this election, there seemed to be a clear pattern (in the English speaking world anyway) that allowed one to reliably predict the winner of an election by seeing which side the trolls supported. There are no First Amendment protections for Russian/Iranian/Macedonian click or troll farms. Detecting VPNs and other attempts to conceal traffic is not an insurmountable technical challenge, yet it isn't done consistently. The seductive "Arab Spring" approach to letting free speech run rampant on social media turned out to be a mirage. Not only was the Arab Spring reversed in Egypt, based on my discussions with Egyptians, Facebook was turned into a tool of repression after the counter-revolution took hold. (Yes, the irony of posting this from a throwaway account doesn't escape me, but there's a difference between clearly anonymous speech, and speech that misrepresents its source).
- manigandham 6y agoMost people (in this election) are more voting against something they hate rather than for something they actually like and want.
- asdfman123 6y agoWhy do people think the president is supposed to be a person to grant your every wish and fix all the problems in America? It's an imperfect system. But at least we don't have someone in office who is actively trying to break it anymore, at least.
- manigandham 6y agoSocial media, and media in general, have a lot to do with it. The president won't have much impact on the day-to-day lives of most people. That's how government was setup with checks and balances. Yet people have been trained and agitated into believing a singular group and person is responsible for everything possible, even though local state and city policies make much more impact.
- dsauerbrun 6y agoAgreed, but what other choice was there given the system?
- manigandham 6y agoI don't have answer to the current system. I wish there was a way to vote for individual policies instead and the system would find the candidate that most matched.
- orblivion 6y agoNobody won the white house yet.
- dpeterson 6y agohe didn't win anything
- hj5ui8j 6y agoCongratulations! You are now United Cities of America ...
- engineer_22 6y agoI don't envy Joe's position. The vaccine is a question mark and COVID probably has a lot to do with his victory. I think I speak for all Americans when I say we all want to be free from this disease and doing better 4 years from now.
- hj5ui8j 6y agoCongratulations, you are now United Cities of America!
- cgrealy 6y agoLeaving Trump aside for the moment, the last four years have shown up how fundamentally undemocratic the US is. No one ever expected Trump to get more votes than Biden. Even the Republicans were well aware of this. In fact, 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections have ended with a Democrat getting more votes than a Republican. Yet even with a 3.5 million vote lead, the perception was the election was on a knife edge. This is ridiculous. The EC is an anachronmism and needs to be abolished. It made sense when it was established, but it's clearly not working. Same for the Senate. 70% of people are represented by 30% of Senators. You desperately need to fix your broken electoral systems.
- mjfl 6y agowhat do people think about the voting irregularities in this election - the delays in Nevada - the early calls in Arizona - the delayed, large swing in pennsylvania - the glitches in Wisconsin and Michigan - the military vote coming in 4:1 Biden in Georgia Are we allowed to talk about that here or is it verboten?
- username3 6y agoCreate an Ask HN for this. Data analysis is on topic here.
- nojvek 6y agoI’m not sure if they were anomalies. Trump advocated not to use mail in ballots, Biden encouraged everyone to stay safe and use ballots. So it’s likely that ballots would overwhelmingly have support for Biden. At this point, all we can do is speculate. Unless someone produces hard evidence that holds in court, there isn’t much substance to going down the rabbit hole of speculation.
- rangoon626 6y agoMany on here are dominated by the establishment, FAANG and mega banks, all of who back Joe Biden.
- innocentoldguy 6y agoThis is inaccurate. The media doesn't have any authority to determine election results. We're back in a situation like Bush vs. Gore in 2000 and the election is still up in the air.
- cortexio 6y agotbh the division was created by the democrats (for money). anyway, glad they cant use the "we hate trump" card anymore. Now they'll have to blame something else for their own hatred. Hopefully it's a mirror this time.
- sunkenvicar 6y agoTrump has the edge over Biden
- dorkwood 6y agoThere's a famous optical illusion with a spinning silhouette of a dancer. When you look at it, you'll swear it's spinning in one direction -- say, counter-clockwise. In fact, you'll be so sure it's spinning counter-clockwise, that the idea it could be spinning in the opposite direction will seem impossible to you. But if you stare at it long enough, and intently enough, you can make it spin the other way. I've noticed the same phenomenon with political views. People on the left think that anyone on the right is a lunatic, and everyone on the right thinks the same thing about the left. I, as most people do, lean in one direction politically, so naturally any comment I see coming from my side seems reasonable to me. In fact, it seems impossible that a reasonable person could think any other way. But since I grew up in a family that leaned in the opposite direction, and I shared their same mindset in my younger days, I can now draw on that experience, and I can take a political tweet that everyone on my side thinks is insane, and I can stare at it, and just as with the spinning dancer, I can flip it in my head so it seems reasonable. To me, it's a testament to the power of the tribal instincts within us. We think it's the other side that's crazy, but we're all under the same spell.
- mlurp 6y agoI think this is a really valuable way of thinking. Something similar I wish everyone would ask themselves is "why do I have this opinion/belief/etc?" for any topic. Just like most religious people are the religion that their parents were, most people don't really choose their political beliefs. It's not to say we don't learn justifications for what we believe, but it means that the fact that we believe in one thing over another is somewhat random imo. Somewhere out there in the US is someone who's pretty similar to me in most ways, they were just born in a part of the country where their default beliefs are different. And for consistency, I do put more stake in someone's beliefs when they change from their "defaults".
- troughway 6y agoHere's another one: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/c3/f3/59c3f3e74d9ca7f2ce945d70f80bc06f.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/c3/f3/59c3f3e74d9ca7f2ce94...
- charliemil4 6y ago
- dchichkov 6y agoWhat saddens me, is that by the standards of corporate world Trump didn't do anything extraordinary. He was running a country in a style of a mediocre corporate executive. Same type of an executive that, for example, resulted in The Boeing Company suffering losses and having fleets grounded. But nothing special, really. Think "Uber" type of a corporate culture. Or "WeWork". Used to run a country. It is no wonder, the likely result is 400k+ deaths and a worst downturn in a century. And one doesn't need to look further than Taiwan or South Korea, to see that it was not inevitable and preventable by good governance. A wish for good governance. Less cynicism. And a shift of culture in both politics and corporate world that doesn't allow for such disasters.
- titzer 6y agoTrump would not have lasted as CEO more than a few months. Such blatant lying and bullshitting just does not fly in a corporation with a board. He only sat atop Trump empire for so long because there was no one but him running the show.
- dayjobpork 6y agoIt's almost like the roles of government, such as medical access, social security and law enforcement, should not be run as a business
- onecommentman 6y agoThanks for the valiant attempts to keep this discussion from devolving into a full-fledged dumpster fire. 1. The US, by the most generally accepted definition, has had continuous governance as a democracy since 1788. Just one more election, and not the most contentious or momentous by a long shot. 2. Current reported spread in votes between D and R are pretty slim, 75.0M v. 70.7M Wikipedia 11PM EST 11/7. 3. Whatever your partisan opinion, at least 70M American adults, 48.5% of those voting, disagree with you and think you’re an idiot. Try not to confirm the fact with your comments. 4. Challenging the validity of the voting process is a time-honored tradition during tight races. Stop sounding like newbies. This is the only time that the validity of the electoral process gets enough visibility to figure out if anything’s broke. Seriously broke? See 1. 5. A paper trail is a beautiful thing. 6. And what a wonderfully fertile field these comments are for use as examples of propaganda, inflammatory rhetoric and logical fallacies. Wish I was teaching a course right about now. Timely for the application of manure on fields too... 7. It would be nice if the mods kept the discussion away from an r/politics-ization of HN. The sides are pretty obvious and enforcing an arbitrary quota of half blue hurrah/half red hurrah would lead to a better flow and balance. Heavy-handed, but appropriate in these few cases IMHO. The brilliant, stupid, wise, foolish, angry, mellow, old, young, rich, poor, naive, cynical, kind, nasty, sophisticated, brutish American people have spoken. Whether you agree with the results or not, it’s a beautiful thing.
- lumpenprole 6y ago> enforcing an arbitrary quota of half blue hurrah/half red hurrah would lead to a better flow and balance Very fine people on both sides.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- benignslime 6y agoyeah, that was a tell That last sentence sealed it, the exceptionalism reeks
- nojvek 6y ago
- EGreg 6y agoWhen I was growing up, Conservatives were the ones much more proud of US institutions, like the courts, universities, and even the free media, while Liberals and Leftists such as Chomsky were always criticizing these institutions, e.g. the media in the book Manufacturing Consent. (They criticized it as being too much a mouthpiece of the government.) I find it interesting that four years of Trump's usual blame-shifting, together with his fan base, has resulted in Trumpists blowing way past the Leftists in their distrust of all US institutions. This is far beyond the Tea party's displeasure with government spending. Sure, Republicans distrusted scientists before, but now Trump supporters distrust the following for partisan reasons: Media Polls Election Scientific establishment Medical establishment [1] Universities Courts (so-called judges[2], Mexican heritage[3] etc.) FBI CIA IRS and much more. Are the institutions perfect? No. Is there fraud and corruption? Sure, but comparing to other countries relatively little, and probably less than in the past. But destroying Americans' trust in these institutions can be dangerous. I can understand dissidents doing it, but the President? 1. https://ctmirror.org/2020/10/18/inside-the-fall-of-the-cdc/ https://ctmirror.org/2020/10/18/inside-the-fall-of-the-cdc/ 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/04/trump-lashes-out-at-federal-judge-who-temporarily-blocked-travel-ban/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/04/tr... 3. https://www.politifact.com/article/2016/jun/08/donald-trumps-racial-comments-about-judge-trump-un/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2016/jun/08/donald-trumps...
- betwixthewires 6y agoFor a site full of engineers I'm surprised to see the discussion center on partisan politics, talking points, unsourced claims and demands for sources, bickering over every detail, when what I'd want to talk about among technical people is the fact that Biden hasn't actually won, based on the rules of the system. He claimed he won. So did Trump. Neither are backed by anything tangible, yet. It looks like the PA AG has called for a statewide audit of votes, several court orders have been issued in several states, including Michigan and Wisconsin, there are lawsuits in several jurisdictions, and recounts in Georgia and Nevada are going to start soon. Notice how I'm not saying the lawsuits and accusations are founded, because I'd like to talk about the system. This is far from over. You could have votes invalidated. This is only over when the electors travel to DC and 270+ vote for one person. That could be halted. You could see the house delegations vote, you could see state or federal courts rule, you could even see some state legislative bodies make decisions on it. It takes a lot more than a claim of victory and a news organization calling it for an election to be over, and I'd expect a bunch of very smart people to know that.
- farrarstan 6y agoEngineers are dumb as hell in a lot of ways dude. Also the sun could blow up tomorrow and boy then we would all look stupid!
- baumandm 6y agoI'm not sure why you think people don't realize this. It is well-established tradition for both news organizations to call races and the apparent loser to concede, well in advance of December 14th. Biden's lead in both the electoral votes and the state margins means that in order for Trump to win, he would need to flip multiple states. Recounts typically only move a few hundred votes, and his legal challenges haven't seen any traction. So yes, it's technically not over yet, but it is incredibly unlikely to have any other outcome.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> This is only over when the electors travel to DC The electors do not, in fact, travel to DC, at all. [0] > and 270+ vote for one person. If you are going to be excessively legalistic, it's not over until the electoral votes are reviewed, judged, tallied, and reported by Congress. On the other hand, by design, by law, and by established practice, in various combinations for the various components, pretty much all of that process after the public vote and tallying is ministerial rather than discretionary; and the established practices for transition of power in an open seat or incumbent defeat situation very much rely on proceeding based on the known outcome before all the various ministerial acts are completed. [0] https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/roles#meeting https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/roles#meeting “On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, the electors meet in their respective States to cast their votes for President and Vice President of the United States.” [emphasis added]
- thrualoo2020 6y agoAs a non-US citizen watching this from the outside, I'm divided between my relief at American's not having to endure Trump's stupidity for another 4 years, and some trepidation for world citizens on what a competent/active US president will do w.r.t. foreign policy & proxy wars. The perception is that Trump was too dump to start new wars and wasn't subtle - so you could at least know what he's thinking w.r.t. your (non-American) interests. On the other hand, most American presidents are nice & courteous at face value while raining drone bombs on unsuspecting non-Americans, spreading Freedom (with a capital F). As a non-American, I would rather Americans endure a bit longer and the remaining (7B-0.3B) world citizens have 4 more years of (relative) US non-involvement. Selfish, I know, but the world needs a breather.
- charliebrownau 6y agoIf the ' news ' claims something as truth and fact it must be Lets throw out the evidence against Corruption Fake balots Bidens Laptop Bidens pornhub account Bidens crimes overseas with energy firms and the fact that he is an old corrupt kike that forgets and isnt mentally heathly for office
- spinny 6y agoThe division was created by all the media (social included) manipulation of reality perception. I bet that in 2016 a much higher percentage of votes were against Hillary. In 2020 the "against" was very likely higher. Division will likely keep increasing as everybody's media feeds become more and more tailored to the individual looking at them
- thinkingemote 6y agoWorth also pointing out that 4 years ago that social media was implicated as being manipulated by Russians. Seems like no foreign state interfered this time around, but the point was that the Democrats blamed division on social media on the Russians and that most of us have amnesia about that.
- SCAQTony 6y agoWhen you look at countries that are unified and act as a cohesive state such as Switzerland, Korea, Norway, or Singapore, what they have in common is culture. Los Angeles is nothing like Wichita. Beverly Hills is nothing like Miami. Multiculturalism produces many great subjects such as art, food, music, dance, poetry and great looking kids. But with amazing advantages comes equal disadvantages. These include racial tensions, religious tensions, political tensions, and gender identity strife. Biden will probably fail at unifying our country though I hope not. How do you unify those who appreciate civil war monuments and "Dukes of Hazard" reruns with BLM supporters and Cardi B music videos? The only way the United states would come together would be by way of a terrible unifying threat that scares the hell out of the nation or a "Grand White Swan" payout like universal basic income.
- 0xB31B1B 6y agoI kind of entirely disagree with the your read on the situation. The struggles that America has aren't that it doesn't have a common culture, the struggles are that it has too many veto points in its political process so it is extremely difficult for popular majorities to execute on a political vision, and it is extremely difficult for the population of the country to hold their leaders accountable when the multiple veto points lead to a diffusion of responsibility. The struggle we have is that popular majorities cannot enact their policy preferences, and then do not receive electoral feedback based on the policies they enact. America doesn't need a common culture, it needs a better feedback loop for things to go from idea -> popular will -> political power -> policy change -> impact on the people.
- nojvek 6y agoThis ^ 100%. Sure the election process may be democratic but the way bills and laws are passed are not. The power is in a handful of people who don’t represent the will of people. Instead we’ll see painful 4 years where things get blocked on the merit of “Democrats wrote this bill therefore it must be rejected and vice versa”.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- graycat 6y agoHere is a simplifying view: In the US there are some people, less than 1% of the voting population, who have a lot of power and control of a lot of money and are looking to the political system to make more money. This less than 1% do disagree among themselves, and that disagreement is the fundamental source of essentially all the political fighting. For the other 99+%, there isn't much to fight about. What the other 99+% want can be summarized in one word -- more. For more detail, they want the two biggies, peace and prosperity. For more, they want "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", financial and emotional security, love, home and family, good health, happy, successful children. There's not a lot to fight about there. So, again, the fighting is from the less than 1% who want to use their money and power to get more money. Of course, way more than 1% of the voting population are highly concerned about politics, are fighting, but, sorry, guys, they are foot soldiers, pawns, for the less than 1%. As an example, let's take one of the issues, say, health care. Glancing at history, US health care has come a long way since the lone country doctor with a one horse carriage. In terms of current US medicine, he was not very good. Point: Health care has changed a lot and is still changing, rapidly. So, what solution we come up with should accommodate such change. Health care can be really expensive, and we need a solution for that. We need in some sense to level out the costs, make them predictable. Ways have been private medical insurance, health care membership organizations, and government provided health care. So, here are the main concerns: Private health insurance is too expensive for a major fraction of the population, so those people look to other options. Then for the other options, concerns are quality of care (it might be too cheap and not very good -- loved ones could die), waiting times, and big tax increases. Point: These are all issues, but some examples can show that we should be able to do quite well on all the issues of quality, waiting times, costs, etc., well enough that we should not have much to fight about. And there has been the issue of private insurance and "pre-existing" conditions. We can all agree that it would be nice for private insurance companies to ignore such data, conditions. And the richer US states did have laws forcing the insurance companies to so ignore. But maybe now the US is wealthy enough to so ignore for everyone. Hopefully. So, we can all agree or nearly so. Not much to fight about. So, what is the cause of the the fighting? With some approaches and situations, for less than 1% of the voting population, there is or can be a lot of money involved, or a lot of power and then a lot of money. My view is that we can go down the list of main political topics and conclude the same -- for 99+% of the voters, there's not much to fight about except some people, less than 1%, want to fight to make money, big money. But for various policies, operations, programs, etc., it really is possible just to make a mess, to create waste. At least the 99+% can be against the waste! E.g., for the $trilions W and Obama spent on Gulf War II, was that from (a) people who were in line to make money from the effort or (b) just waste? I'd say, some of (a) but mostly (b). Point: Not all the issues are about the less than 1% seeking money and, instead, there can also be ordinary waste. Bottom line: The 99% should throttle the less than 1%, settle differences, and get on with life.
- nso95 6y agoI don't care if you're liberal or conservative. The problem with Trump is that all of his success has come from lying, cheating, and manipulation. That's all he knows. This was never a simple matter of political differences. This was not normal.
- gear54rus 6y agoWhat if everyone does it but he's just bad at it and that's why we notice. 48 laws of power opening certainly suggests so.
- carapace 6y ago"48 laws of power" was a book for fools though. "Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun" was better. (And "The Prince" more principled!) > What if everyone does it but he's just bad at it and that's why we notice. Seriously though, do you really believe that or are you just trolling?
- gear54rus 6y agoI would definitely err on the side of believing it and you are yet to provide any concrete arguments to why I shouldn't. Which makes me think you simply don't have them.
- carapace 6y ago> I would definitely err on the side of believing it You've never met one person with integrity? I mean, I admit, in my experience they're rare. Oh sure, everyone thinks that they have integrity, or at least, gets offended if you suggest they don't. But I've met a few. I even once met a politician who seemed to me to have integrity. FWIW, I can't tell if we're ruled by well-meaning incompetents, or competent evil people.
- gear54rus 6y agoI've met people who don't realize how to exploit everyone around them, sure. Don't know how to distinguish them from those who can but don't.
- 0xB31B1B 6y agoThere are facts here. Things like Covid 19 and climate change are both real and current or impending disasters. The "left" has solutions and the "right" pretends they don't exist. The US right has slipped further and further from understanding of what is actually happening around them and under trump specifically fell into a disinformation black hole. I hope that future repoublican leaders are more based in reality.
- logicchains 6y ago>the "right" pretends they don't exist. Most people in the right don't disbelieve the coronavirus exists, they just think it's not dangerous enough to warrant massive government impingement on people's rights to free movement, association and commerce.
- 0xB31B1B 6y agoMost people in the right don't disbelieve the coronavirus exists, they just think it's not going to kill them, its going to kill someone else. FTFY
- muzika 6y agoJust like regular flu. It kills lots of people every year. So do car accidents - lets just ban driving?
- techsupporter 6y ago> So do car accidents - lets just ban driving? Yes. Or, to be less hyperbolic about it: do a lot more things that change us towards being a society where travel via single-occupant vehicle is not the default, or the highest-prioritized use of a space when many other options are cleaner, safer, more efficient space uses, encourage better health, and are not as environmentally and socially damaging. So, to link it back to coronavirus: taking steps to mitigate a harm that we know exists, that we can predict coming, and that absolutely involves making changes to how we conduct our daily lives but if a lot of us make a little change, we make a dramatic effect.
- not_a_moth 6y agoThis title is actually wrong because networks don't decide who wins. If Biden wins, let it be because all due process was followed so that the 71MM who voted for Trump can get behind the new president. There are close and contested elections in various states, with mandatory recounts set, as well as lawsuits underway with affidavits of blocked observers and allegations of fraud. For the sake of not dividing the country, let the Trump half of the nation have their day in court, and then let's unify behind the new president.
- nullc 6y ago> This title is actually wrong because networks don't decide who wins. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/El74_VZWMAYZtnZ?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/El74_VZWMAYZtnZ?format=jpg&name=...
- bendmorris 6y agoDo you really think there's an amount of "due process" that will convince all Trump supporters to get behind Biden? Trump has clearly been planning to call the election illegitimate since long before it happened - casting doubt on mail-in ballots, etc. He hypocritically advocated continuing counts in some states and stopping them in others depending on whether he was ahead. He claimed without evidence that dead people had voted, late cast ballots had been counted, etc. And he falsely claimed that only votes counted by election night were legitimate. Do you honestly think once his claims relating to poll observers go through due process, everyone will be satisfied? Pragmatically, there is such a slim chance that any of his challenges change the outcome of the election, that it's reasonable to consider Biden President-elect at this point.
- djsumdog 6y agoI feel we should be mourning. Even if you wanted Biden to win, the election irregularities .. my god, they were so blatant. I stayed up until 2am Friday writing this: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-return-of-american-corruption/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-return-of-american-co... I have no problem returning to the status quo, but we need to acknowledge what happened. It's happened before in 2000 and with JFK, but never to this scale. The media manipulated the people into a 24/7 hate machine and have caused major psychological damage to the entire American population. We are literally seeing the world through two different screens. We are being told what to think and what is true. This should terrify all of us. This is not a time of honor.
- riffraff 6y ago3551 comments in this discussion as of now. I wonder if this will be the most commented thing in HN ever.
- julius_set 6y agoOk legit question, is Biden’s mental health an issue? (i.e. Dementia, Alzheimer’s). Surprised my family brings this up, and I’m not sure how to reply back to them..
- DylanDmitri 6y agoMy brother met him in an informal setting about two years ago, and expressed concern then over "wow he seemed really old / out of it". But Biden's current speeches and interviews seem lucid and coherent so maybe he was just having a bad day back then. The presidency, like most other executive jobs, ends up being run by a team of people working together behind the public figurehead. I have faith in Kamala, in the White House advisors, in the picks for cabinet positions, etc. Biden will probably invite back many Obama-era advisors, as opposed to white nationalists like Stephen Miller. Decent people tend to build decent organizations.
- ngcc_hk 6y agoAs a Hongkonger I am more worry about a) the problem of USA infrastructures due to the split. The nearly 50% vote for trump this time ... and b) the external resolve and attention paid to Asia especially Taiwan. I did note it is Clinton that sent in 2 aircraft carriers for Taiwan last time, which unlike hk is not yet that much a lost case. For Hong Kong, I do not have much hope but given it is not much of hope to begin with, fight on beyond the last stand. Best wish for USA and Taiwan, whilst I can still send message.
- FranzFerdiNaN 6y agoTrump and the MAGA crowd are absolutely fine with things like separating kids from their parents, forced sterilization, intense racism, celebrating and stimulating police violence, attempting to steal elections, open corruption by a sitting president and much much more. And yet you go “gosh darn that foreign interference is causing leftist ideas”. Maybe you should take a series look at your media consumption because it sounds like you’re a stereotypical Fox News viewer.
- blub 6y agoYou've read right past everything the parent comment said and wrote a generic comment demonizing the "MAGA crowd". This is not what a dialogue looks like and until people start controlling their fanaticism - especially the American left - the USA will make no progress on healing the divisions that have been building up for decades.
- ABCLAW 6y ago>This is not what a dialogue looks like Yes it is. You just don't like it. The post you're replying to lays out, from their perspective, a list of actions that they believe are self-evidently unjustifiable. Do you agree with that assessment? Do you believe there's justification to be had? I think most of the real arguments in favor of them have been left unsaid, because they fundamentally contradict a number of modern western paradigms regarding inherent rights and human dignity. But that's not really fatal to the philosophic position; maybe those paradigms are false.
- blub 6y agoWhat I like does not define what a dialogue is. Dialogue means engaging with the opposite party. No engagement, no dialogue. Enumerating a bunch of random things in reply to anything is not dialogue.
- pqhwan 6y agoThe comment is talking about how the gp has their priorities wrong. Separation policy, etc are actual problems, and more important than “my neighbors don’t love this country like I do: they don’t admit to being inspired by its founding myths, they don’t like to sing the anthem or say the pledge of allegiance”. Come on, in a country with a reputation for rough, independent individuals, that’s your top grievance? So the comment has a clear point, and it relates to what the gp stated. That’s a dialogue. You’re the one refusing to further engage with the counterpoint, which is how the dialogue was disrupted.
- james1071 6y agoStrange country where the media says who won the election. Elsewhere, there is an official announcement.
- asdfk-12 6y agoMedia and political institutions have been attempting to bury the current president with the tired Russia narrative and other gambits since he walked down the escalator. Joe's appeal today to "let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end here and now!" seems disingenous given the past 4 years, but I do hope that our public discourse improves, for everyone's sake.
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- arkis22 6y agothe downvotes in this thread are gross
- once-in-a-while 6y agoTrump got 71,000,000 legal votes, most ever for a sitting president. Biden is the hugest illusion in American politics. You will probably get very angry when the truth comes out (in a few weeks), because Trump will (OF COURSE) stay president. Nothing is as it seems. Illusions will go away. Only the Truth will stay forever. Better wake up now, The Great Awakening!
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- supergirl 6y ago> vowing new direction So... same as every president after election everywhere. Watch as Biden doesn't undo any of the things he promised to undo. Same as Obama.
- randomsearch 6y ago[This has been hinted at in various threads but I'm stating it clearly here] A fundamental cause of political polarisation is social media. Tech platforms incentivised by advertising to increase engagement have (probably mostly inadvertently) become manipulation engines that have destabilised democracies. I think at this moment in time the tech community should take pause to consider what we have done. We started with heady ideals and hopes, especially for the internet, but we have veered a long way from that vision. As engineers, we have great power in this world. For the foreseeable future, our skills will be highly in demand and shape the future of humanity, in every area of society - from finance to health, from entertainment to politics. If you work for a social media company, or a search engine, or any company that is reliant on adtech or high engagement for its income, then I implore you to think long and hard about how your actions may have contributed to bringing us to this point, and whether it is possible to change the course of your organisation or it would be better to leave. More positively, the large social media networks are now entrenched corporations, and they have lost the advantages that startups confer. With sufficient imagination and hard work there are many opportunities to disrupt those companies with the compelling mission of making the world a better, not a worse, place.
- Thorncorona 6y agoHint: 'Personalized' algorithms simply mean tailored to one's biases. As in Google will show liberals only liberal articles, and conservatives conservative articles.
- randomsearch 6y agoI think there's an important distinction between recommendation algorithms, which is how I'd describe what you're referring to, and _algorithms designed to maximise engagement_. Recommendation algorithms try to provide content that you'll enjoy, like new movies to watch. Engagement algorithms will try to find content that keeps you engaged, even if that means enraging you. They don't just exploit biases, rather they exploit what triggers you.
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- tomerbd 6y agoFor an outsider non US guy looking at the democrat / republican debate seems like a debate between a IntelliJ dark mode and IntelliJ white mode both are a matter of taste but code is the same.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoI‘m an „outsider non US“ guy and if you can’t spot the difference b/w Trump and really any normal politician, including Biden, you’re just ignorant.
- seanwilson 6y agoOn the topic of combatting disinformation, has any government rolled out a plan to educate the public on critical thinking? Did it work? I'd love it if the names of common logical fallacies were known by everyone and anyone lying to the media or making unsubstantiated claims would be immediately shut down e.g. "that's just a character attack, you're not answering the question".
- NicoJuicy 6y agoI am very curious on what someone voted for Trump. And what I ask here, is that I expect someone here to be straight forward and eg. Just mention when they just want lower taxes, for example. ( I'm not an American, just curious about other perspectives, since the groups I'm in are more liberal based, from a US perspective)
- nogglet 6y agoMy concern is the mass talk of voter fraud shows how distrustful a great deal of Americans are to their own democratic system. I'm ok with placating the fears people have of election fraud and investigating, given the studies done, it's quite certain voter fraud is a prime example of misinformation. 2016-2020 has been a time of seeing just how dangerous misinformation is in the world of mass social media. All it takes is the spreading of false rumors through various means of the internet and social media for people to lose their minds and question their own democracy. I think both social media, advertising agencies, and the modern media is largely responsible for this. Also, us in the tech industry, who have over these last 4 years began to see the truly ugly side of what we're building. In our constant need to hit KPIs, drive up SEO rank, drive virility, we've slowly fed a monster that is now making itself known, and disrupting the very fabric of democracy.
- svara 6y agoThe sentiment of mutual understanding accross polticial lines expressed in many comments here is beautiful. However, let's not forget that on election night the current US president clearly proved his staunchest critics right. What might have happened if Fox News had adopted his "stolen election" narrative? This is, quite literally, how autocratic strongmen destroy their countries for personal gain. There's more than enough historical precedent from around the world to know the playbook.
- whytaka 6y agoThis is literally the biggest surprise for me this election. That Murdoch withheld the coup.
- reducesuffering 6y agoWhile Murdoch holds and supports the spread of staunchly conservative views, I don't think he wants to go down in the history books as attempting to plunge the US into dictatorship.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoHow would Trump winning the election be plunging the US into a dictatorship?
- reducesuffering 6y agoIt's not about the scenario where Trump actually wins the electoral vote. It's about Biden actually winning the electoral vote, but Fox, Trump, and right wing media sowing enough doubt in half the country that a "coup" is taking place and Biden isn't lawfully President and that their supporters need to support the "legitimate" President by any means necessary.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoYou seem to have no idea Fox and establishment GOP hate Trump and want him to lose.
- richardARPANET 6y agoFact check: False. The election process is still ongoing, the media is simply saying Biden is their guess. Allegations of cheating will be investigated before we get the final result.
- sgt101 6y agoThe media are saying "It is mathematically impossible for Trump to win without recounts" and in fact we can make a stronger statement - it is highly unlikely that Trump will win even with recounts given the margins. So far there is not one story of substantial fraud that looks plausible (let alone probable) and the two closest that I have found are a data entry error by a polling company (leading to "they suddenly found 100k Biden votes" posts all over the alt-right-o-sphere) and a postal worker in Michigan caught on the Canadian boarder with 1k postal items in his truck including three ballots.
- richardARPANET 6y agoHere you go https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1325495515748950018 https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1325495515748950018 Interesting people claimed fraud for the last 4 years now claim it's impossible We'll find out the truth once every LEGAL vote gets counted in the coming weeks/months. p.s. The voting Software company (yes, the one with the "glitches" changing Trump votes to be for Biden), has been linked to Nancy Pelosi.
- jakeogh 6y agoAh. The AP. Ideologically it's NTY's parent org. Called #7 before it came down[2]. Amazing really. The US is -not- going to be run by the modern uncle police[1]. 2020 is just getting interesting. I predict Trump legally gets a 3rd term. [1] http://v6y.net/unclepolice.mp4 http://v6y.net/unclepolice.mp4 [2] https://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/video/pretext.mov https://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/video/pret...
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- isabelc 6y agoThe division will not be fixed until they realize that the division is not ideological. Most of these comments imply that the division is just ideological. I guess everyone here is so financially well off as to never having been too poor to afford health insurance but just above the cut off to get free health insurance. Families with kids and high living costs, and then being forced to pay over $2000 as penalty for not affording healthcare, it broke many spirits. It was the ACA "Individual Responsibility Mandate" and it is the reason why all the hispanics in Florida without health insurance that I know, voted for Trump in 2016--because he said he'd get rid of that depressing $2000+ fine. Which he finally did. Simple as that, and certainly not as idealistic as these comments imply. Those who don't see that did not have to pay that ACA "Individual Responsibility Mandate" while being poor in an expensive city. A "new direction for divided US" would mean that these politicians stop pretending people vote idealistically versus based on finances. Reading these other comments, one would think all the brown Floridians who voted for Trump are white supremacists. I thought Hacker News was above that simplistic rhetoric.
- greggturkington 6y agoI guess "the hispanics I know" forgot the proposed revisions to Title X and slashing across the board to any ACA outreach, much to their detriment. >I thought Hacker News was above that simplistic rhetoric Nope. Ideas like "hispanics voted for Trump [because of the mandate...], simple as that" are still abundant.
- kyleblarson 6y agoGet ready for 4 years of hard hitting articles like this from the MSM: https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-2020-election-results/2020/11/07/932624210/major-and-champ-are-major-champs-in-this-election-dogs-return-to-the-white-house https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-2020-election-resu...
- vaccinator 6y agoIf I was Trump, I would ask for a mental and physical evaluation of Biden since he is senile.
- ece 6y agoIn general I think racism and misogyny will need to be disarmed in ways that they haven't been in the past. Nextdoor and Reddit might be best examples which Twitter and Facebook could follow. Increasing friction to post/repost, more fact checks, more labels on misinformation, and better localized moderation in general should be something these companies should have a good handle on already, but it seems like they've barely started grasping the problems. It almost seems like if this isn't tackled head on instead of being ignored, that there might be scant progress on other issues like climate change.
- Fjolsvith 6y agoIts far from over. Has anyone compared the people on the legal team that Bush used to beat Gore with the current Supreme Court justices? 4D chess. Thats how he plays.
- shadowgovt 6y ago"Throwing every legal challenge at the wall to see what sticks" isn't exactly 4D chess. He's batting a little over 50% right now on even having cases heard, much less victories; a little under half of what's been filed, the courts have either already found against his campaign or summarily dismissed for being too half-baked to waste court time on. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/04/supreme-court-trump-reelection-434071 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/04/supreme-court-trump...
- Fjolsvith 6y agoIts going to go to the House of Representatives, and they will elect him. 4D, I'm telling you.
- shadowgovt 6y agoHow?
- salamimonger 6y agoHe's referring to the new information that two of the young lawyers that were involved in the Bush v Gore case, are now supreme court justices installed by Trump
- shadowgovt 6y agoI don't follow. A 269-269 split, given how the states have broken, is staggeringly unlikely. Multiple states would have to be flipped, and since US elections are so distributed, it's unlikely for SCOTUS to find in such a way as to change the results of more than one of these states, if any. And even if the election somehow ended up in the 12th Amendment case of the House deciding: the House is trending Democrat control.
- TopInvestor 6y agoBetting websites use the certification of the Federal Election Commission in order to pay out wagers.
- rangoon626 6y agoFOUR MORE YEARS FOUR MORE YEARS FOUR MORE YEARS FOUR MORE YEARS Overturn this in the SC so I can watch all of you squeal again.
- jakeogh 6y agoApproaching peak Fake News. Buckle up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s29jKFQD6rw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s29jKFQD6rw
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