This 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.
Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
511–520 of 1001 posts
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#512A 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.
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#513I'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 ma…
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Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#514On 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.
I'm on the nerd side too, but I was quite surprised. Sampling isn't the only source of error in election polling - people also change their minds. In this election, people decided who they were going to vote for historically early - the lowest portion of people in the history of exit polls indicated they decided in the week before the election. In theory, this effect should reduce the width of the probability distrib…
I think the complaint is that here the polls were not just imperfect. They were at best, misleading raising questions over methodology ( lessons, apparently, not learned in 2016 ), wishful thinking, and their usefulness, or, at worst, attempts at influencing desired income.
I can absolutely agree that polling is not an exact science, but now it is twice in a row that polling science has grossly miscalculated the mood of the nation.
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#515What 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.
Nah. We’re actually at an inflection point where before white men were the elite, no question, that was what it took to get in the door outside a few congressional districts. Now it’s still mostly that but it takes more, and due to demographic shifts it will be that less and less. The right — belatedly (far too little far too late, and quite awkwardly) — has already started outreach to Latino and black communities. T…
This makes sense to me.
Then the transition of power or the changing demographics you speak of will disenfranchise those once in power and that could lead to violence (think white heavily-armed men intimidating or worse those they disagree with). This is what I fear as well.
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#516To 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 t…
She still got quite a lot of votes.
I think that what people don't want to admit is that Trump is what half of America wants. He is the right kind of masculine man and has all the right approaches.
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#517Being 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 ou…
I’d love to see an AOC/O’Rourke ticket sometime in the future. Both sides could do with a culling of the old and an infusion of new blood.
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#518What 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.
I was talking to a US expat this afternoon. Besides the congratulations and commenting the expectations for the new administration we reflected on the damage the last 30-40 years of propaganda for individualism have made. Individuals, their inner world and potential are very important, but you have systematically mortified the importance - and the “evolutionary advantage” - of the human societal organization. Over op…
I very strongly agree with this. All of us need to talk, avoid judgement and just understand one another better.
A higher degree of basic solidarity will help us a lot.
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#519To 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 t…
I'm not from the US, and I'm happy with how the election has turned out, but I agree for similar reasons.
I was telling my friend the other day, why is it that the presidency is a competition between retiree geriatrics of the same generation? Biden and Trump have 4 years difference in age. Where's the representation for people significantly younger than post-retirement age? Even Bernie Sanders, a favourite, is hitting his latter years, and it seems the Democrat candidate is just chosen by the DNC rather than what their voter base would like.
So, it's great news that Trump avoids a second term, but I don't see a progression in the political system yet.
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#520Please 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 cu…
And when there is a questionable war to be fought they are the first to bang the drums and demand their 'partners' join in a coalition. 'Or else...'.