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  • Exactly, I think because races have been so close lately, and the probabilities are ending up close to 50% often, people sometimes unintentionally conflate them with poll numbers. 53% to 46% would be a massive poll lead. For probabilities though in this situation it's the same as saying they have even odds of winning. Look at those massive 95% confidence intervals, the race is in a statistical dead heat. It's kind of remarkable how steady it has been despite all the wild events that have happened.

  • I have another good one very applicable to the teamsters union, Biden and democrats saved their pension fund.

    https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/dec/14/kevin-brady/bidens-36-billion-to-save-teamsters-fund-from-inso/

    Pensions that 360,000 retired teamster union workers were relying on.

    I really doubt Republicans would have lifted a finger. Probably would have just laughed as one of the largest unions in America collapsed.

    Heck here's some more good union news from Democrats. The new regulations and pro labor leadership of the nlrb have helped increase union election success rate to 74%, it's highest level in at least 15 years. It brought back over 8,000 workers that had been unjustly fired from their work places as retaliation for unionizing activities.

    The contrast with Republicans couldn't be starker. Project 2025 recommends firing general counsel and leadership of the NLRB "day one," purging existing civil servants so they can hire their own anti union sycophants, and passing new regulations to make it easier to dissolve unions and harder to form them.

    https://www.americanprogress.org/article/project-2025-would-undo-the-nlrbs-progress-on-protecting-workers-right-to-organize/

  • He knows that Biden and democratic policies have been good to unions, heck the teamsters pension fund was even bailed out by them in 2022, preventing large pension cuts to 350,000 union workers.

    https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/dec/14/kevin-brady/bidens-36-billion-to-save-teamsters-fund-from-inso/

    Going to be a real leopard ate my face moment if Trump wins and fills the national labor board with anti union officials again.

    It's especially inexplicable because in straw polls Biden has a clear lead in support among teamster members.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/us/politics/teamsters-trump-biden.html

    “But you know,” Mr. Palmer added, “you can pick up a snake and play with it, but if you play with it enough, it’s going to bite you eventually.”

  • It does bring in some things for democrats, like really obvious attack ad ideas. Just play JD Vance's own comments about Trump, over and over again.

  • That could certainly be the case, I was trying to get at that with the second part of the comment. I'll link the poll below directly for people where that can be seen easier. I wish we had some more people who already could poll better though. I was also hoping that Trump's support might drop some with some of the other choices though, with some moving to the not sure category when a different democrat was proposed. Unfortunately it was looking like the "not sure" people are mostly coming from the previously Biden category, with Trump staying locked in at 40 like he is with Biden, or even higher for some of them. Michelle Obama was the only to get that to drop, and only to 39%.

    The "wouldn't vote category" also dropped by a percent or 2 for some of them, so a few voters at least might be pulled of the sideline with a new candidate if they can manage to keep all the Biden voters. It was pretty impressive for Michelle Obama again, lowering from 8% to 4% not voting for the poll-takers in the case of Michelle Obama. She seems to pull her extra support over Biden from the current "won't vote" and third party voters. Some of the other potentials also peeled off a percent or two from the third party voters too into the not sure category. These are the people that really need to be convinced if we're going to beat Trump, and some of them at least seem to at least think about it when a new democrat is proposed.

    https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/only-michelle-obama-bests-trump-alternative-biden-2024

  • I envision the higher courts slapping it down a few times, then an eventual appeal up to the supreme court, who then if four justices are willing to go along with it, put the whole case on ice until next Summer while they argue this. Just like they did with the January 6th trial and presidential immunity rulings.

  • Cannon's ruling is going to be appealed. If it gets appealed all the way to the supreme court, again (and Clarence Thomas has specifically asked for this in one of his prior rulings), and the supreme court holds with them, then any charges brought by a special counsel in any case are gone. Her ruling invalidates special counsels in general. The office that is pressing charges against Hunter Biden will no longer exist.

    The scary part about this is it means that if Trump were to win he would have every excuse and cover from the judiciary to hand pick his own justice department attorney hires to go after people with no semblance of independence. After all, special counsels aren't even allowed to be used anymore. So you're of course right, it does fit into a larger fascist plant, and I certainly don't mean to imply that it doesn't or this isn't all for Trump's benefit.

    I just wanted to point out that the current move would also be able to get Hunter Biden off the hook on the off chance that it gets anyone blindly supporting Trump immunity to stop and think for a second that maybe this isn't actually a good thing (since a lot of them seem to have some pretty extreme beliefs about Hunter Biden going to jail).

  • I know Michelle Obama doesn't want to run, but like, please Michelle? Would you think about it? Things are getting pretty desperate here. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/03/michelle-obama-would-beat-trump/74289680007/

    If you really don't want to do it, you could just win handily and then resign the first day and hand it off to someone else.

    I'm also surprised at how much worse some Biden alternates do in the polling given people's reported desire for a switch, but maybe in time they'd have a higher support ceiling than Biden as people get more familiar with them.

  • Supreme Court will get around to this right away I'm sure. Like, next June. Super fast.

  • Ironically this would also invalidate any of the cases against Hunter Biden if the supreme court agrees with her.

  • 15102 is the zip code for Bethel Park though. There's no portion of that zip code that goes into Pittsburgh. But we should all probably just wait for the fbi investigation to finish, they'll have a lot more information I'm sure.

  • Real wages (wages as expressed in 1982-1984 dollars, so controlled for inflation) are higher now than before the start of the pandemic. They aren't quite as high as they briefly got in early 2021 when the government was propping up the economy with large amounts of money both to employers and directly to people, when people were initially holding on to money rather than spending causing prices to drop (things were closed, people couldn't or didn't want to travel and go out) and before the supply chain crisis among other things started causing inflation across the globe. The wage growth since the pandemic has been highest for low income and hourly workers, so higher income salary workers may not have seen as much. Some industries may not have done as well as others, for instance the high interest rates to help control inflation hit tech jobs particularly hard. And as always, these are averages across the largest economy in the world with over 300 million people, I'm not trying to assert conclusions about any one person's financial situation.

    January 2020 and January 2021 real wages https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/realer_02102021.htm

    June 2023 and June 2024 real wages https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.t01.htm

    Wage growth vs inflation since March 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/

    Also for more full context keep in mind that real wages dropped some for decades before finally starting to recover in the 2000s. We're only just starting to get back to real wages as they were in the 1970s.

    https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

  • I'm unclear why you think the PAC thing would go to scotus. That's a routine thing. Like who would be sueing exactly, for what reason, and with what standing?

    https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/s-happens-candidates-leftover-money-rcna57340

    The money could be donated to a PAC or a political party, so it could also all be given to the DNC. It just can't be used for personal use. It could get a little thorny if someone besides Harris was picked though and Harris didn't want the money to go to help democrats for some reason, but that seems unlikely.

    And yes I'm voting for whatever Democrat is on the ballet, I just want whatever gives the best chance of keeping Trump out and helping down ballot democrats in congress who will be needed for any chance of enacting any major changes.

  • There's less barriers than you may think. For one the nominating convention hasn't happened yet. The only state that was a potential barrier was Ohio, and they made a change so the final candidate can be submitted after there too. If dems nominate someone else at their convention, that person should be able to be on all the ballots nationwide. The convention is where the candidate is actually picked, not the caucuses or primaries.

    The money currently in the campaign itself could be transitioned into a PAC. And yes while technically PACS aren't supposed to coordinate with candidates, we all know that line barely even exists anymore. And some big donors are apparently already building up new funds to be given to a new candidate if that occurs.

    I'm not certain a new candidate will guarantee a win, but I don't think a politician known for making gaffes for decades now is going to suddenly stop in their old age. And every single misstep will create another flurry of speculation about his cognition, and suck all the air out of the room for the rest of the race. I don't personally care, if Biden is elected and can't cut it anymore cognitively than Harris takes over and it's still miles better than Trump.

    But I worry all of this will just drive down engagement and turn out and make things harder and harder until election day. And it's clearly been demonstrated no matter how horrific trump acts or what terrible policies he promises or how badly his policies will hurt his own supporters, they aren't budging no matter what. If a majority of democrats and that slim amount of independent and undecided voters want Biden out of the race based on all of this, I think the best chance to make sure they show up for the polls on election day and vote blue is that they're given what they want.

  • Yeah there were plenty of facists in the US already before WWII. Here's Madison Square garden in 1939.

  • I'm not gonna disagree with you that more could be done and that they should be pushing even faster, but would also point out this is just one specific action being described in the article among many more. It wasn't trying to describe all actions that have been taken to help with ev roll out. It was focused on some plants that were in danger of closing, and requires they be changed to electric car or plug in hybrid factories in the process, saving some unionized jobs in the process.

  • The reasoning was that in the old style of filibuster no other senate business was possible. In theory was supposed to help the senate be more productive. In practice, it's made the filibuster even more powerful. If a party was holding up all legislation and other functions of the senate by grandstanding for something stupid, that could hurt them politically, especially if it got bad enough that the military was being impacted or there were government shutdowns. So maybe they would think twice if it was worth a filibuster. Now they can kind of do it risk free. I think if you saw, government shutdown caused by Republicans trying to prevent abortion protections, well it'd be pretty unpopular with most Americans. And they'd pay for it in the polls. Or maybe not even do the filibuster in the first place.