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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The betting for Biden’s VP pick is getting tighter
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The betting for Biden’s VP pick is getting tighter
While we have all been focused on the pandemic there’s been some big movement in the Dems VP nomination betting with Kamala Harris sinking sharply and Warren moving up strongly.,
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#Curmudgeonly me
He needs a shot in the arm ...
Dettol, obvs.
So senators are elected, but any replacements are just appointed by the governor with no restriction to what party the replacement comes from? Potentially remaining in place for possibly over 5 years? Wow. I never knew that.
As it is, apart from an easterly wind, the lockdown weather has been solidly lovely.
I don't really see the point in picking Warren, the Bernie Bros have an enduring grudge against her and the rest of the left should get behind Biden anyhow. Gretchen Whitmer is starting to look like value, she's coming out well in the battle against her obliging comedy-villain Trumpist protestors.
I'm sure this is a deliberate approach from Trump, and he has probably been doing this all through his career.
The end result is that the experts you really need in those positions are either driven out or keep away, and you end up being advised by a bunch of incompetent yes-men.
Apart from the first 2 weeks after inauguration Trump has failed to reach positive territory in his average net approval ratings, something no other president has come remotely close to since at least 1945:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/?ex_cid=rrpromo
I think the recent brief and relatively small coronavirus rally-round effect shows the absolute upper limit of his support (roughly 46% approve, 50% disapprove). Enough for him to win, but hardly enough to make him a shoo-in.
I think the election was always likely to be close, and still is, but if there is a big win it is (and always was) way more likely to be for his opponent. Just as there is large group of voters who are going to vote for him no matter what, there's a larger group who are never going to vote for him no matter what. Trump's main hope is that enough of the majority who really don't like him don't vote for the Democrat candidate.
Of the 14 states that hold a special election, 10 allow the governor to make an interim appointment. Massachusetts is one of those. The rules for Massachusetts special election are that it must happen 145-160 days after vacancy occurs. If a vacancy occurs after April 10 but on or before the 70th day before the regular state primary, the office will appear on the regular state primary ballot. If a vacancy occurs after that time, the office will appear on the state election ballot that November.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Lewis181278/status/1253315161353449473
Surprise surprise, he's a union rep. No wonder free schools are so popular.
https://twitter.com/usambuk/status/1253229648546324480?s=21
Biden in particular has a much bigger picture to look at because "heartbeat from the Presidency" means so much more when the candidate is as old as him. That's why I don't buy into Whitmer as a choice (who has been a Governor for five minutes) or someone like Abrams. Similarly, I don't buy into the idea of Warren, who is so obviously not on his wing of the party (what type of Presidency should voters then expect?)
He really needs a somewhat "safe" choice who is in line with his pragmatic position within the party - someone who it iis easy to imagine stepping into the Oval Office. That speaks to Klobuchar or Harris as experienced senators.
On senator replacements, I think the point with Warren is less the Special Election (although there's recent history or a Republican winning one) and more the fact that the crucial first 100 days - when the President has most goodwill and wants to get achievements under his belt - would be that bit harder with a Republican appointed temporary replacement to Warren.
I suspect that considerations like "coming from a swing state" are greatly diminished by finding anyone you want and is competent.
I have just noticed that John McDonnell, in his interview with Andrew Neil, said of his and Corbyn’s impending resignations, ‘we will always make decisions in the best interests of our party.’
Leaving aside the fact that their judgement was perhaps not all it might have been, surely anyone aspiring to government should always make decisions in the best interests of the country?
Not that we actually had one of those on offer in 2019, of course, but it did just sum up for me the kind of narrow and small-minded selfishness that characterised Corbynism and goes a long way towards explaining its bizarre policy offering and casual racism.
My father-in-law used to tell me it was often the best month in Devon. I frequently dismissed the suggestion but year after year he has proven right.
I think there's a reasonably sound line of reasoning behind the notion. In the autumn the jetstream typically fires up off the eastern seaboard, fuelled by large sea temperature anomalies around the world. Winter often sees the jet begin to abate but it can still produce high precipitation. Summer, ideally, sees the Azores high ridging north and extending over the UK but storms can be frequent and heavy.
April is an isthmus month: it lies between the jet-fuelled winter and the summer storms.
You can look for yourself at the evidence here
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/?ex_cid=irpromo
Or any of the other sites that collect polling results.
"He was popular, especially in states he needed to win and clearly on course until the virus" my arse.
Is Trump bounce to stick with Pence or might he look elsewhere?
DYOR.
Much of that does reasonate with me and is deeply moving.
Does it not for you too?
Phase 1 (Feb): Cruise ship clown-shoes. Quarantine chaos, inspectors get infected and aren't tested, forget to test some of the passengers, put negative-testing people on trains home then they test again as infected.
Phase 2 (Mar 1st-ish): Early action. About 100 non-cruise-ship cases, move fast with WFH restrictions and voluntary call to cancel events, pass a law allowing the declaration of a state of emergency (but don't declare it). My town sent me a pack of masks with pictures of frogs and road safety messages on them.
Phase 3: (Mid-to-late March): Complacency. Phase 2 worked. Cases are flat around 50 per day. Schools to reopen. People take that as a sign the crisis is over. Unrestricted incoming travel from EU/US.
Phase 4: (Late March / Early April): Cases from the Complacency phase now getting detected all over the place, especially big/international cities. Olympics cancelled, ambitious Tokyo governor immediately flips from "everything is fine" to "this is a terrible crisis and I will save you". Govt calls state of emergency, which gives some extra powers to local government, but the response is still almost entirely voluntary. In practical terms we've got a lot more working from home, some restaurants are changing to takeaway only, some shops are reducing their hours. Pachinko places are still open, the Tokyo government is trying to shame them into closing, good luck with that. The central government is sending every household two (2) washable masks, with no pictures of frogs, many of which are apparently moldy.
Here's the data showing Tokyo traffic changes, which shows you these phases with actual data (as opposed to the preferred metrics used by the NYT or BBC journalists, walking around and seeing if you can see a lot of people in the park).
[1\2]
Where we are now is that detected cases are flat again, around 400 against a very short peak of 700. Testing is pretty weak, but it's been belatedly ramping up, and the increased number of tests doesn't seem to be showing an increased number of cases, so it doesn't look like there were absolute *loads* of infected people who weren't in the numbers for lack of testing. (Japan does a *lot* of CT scans which seem to be a good way to filter for covid19, so it may be that they were already quite good at getting the right people to PCR tests.) There was a law that said that if you were found infected you had to be hospitalized, which risked flooding the hospitals with infectious-but-not-sick people, but at least in Tokyo they've now started putting these people in hotels, which may have been reducing the incentive to go easy on testing.
Hospitals are short of PPE, like everywhere else, since demand has gone up and supply has gone down. Some hospitals are hurriedly setting up wards for covid19, most of the others won't accept covid19 cases. This means that if someone gets covid19, it can be hard to find a hospital that can take them nearby. There was always a little bit of chaos in Tokyo and some other places when someone gets picked up in an ambulance (which is a free, public service run by the fire brigade) and they have to find a (independently-run) hospital that will take them, which seems to be a ridiculous manual process involving phoning around, and that's now worse both for covid19 patients (since most hospitals won't take them) and for regular patients (since some of the capacity is being cleared out to handle covid19). Some doctors in Tokyo and Osaka have been saying things like "if this crisis keeps getting worse hospitals won't be able to cope", which is true and is the whole point of the social distancing stuff, and the western media obviously report as "Japanese medical systems on the brink of collapse" or something.
I guess the next question is whether the current, apparently successful voluntary response can be sustained, or whether we go into another Complacency phase and the whole cycle repeats.
The first one may be why he said it, but doesn’t in any way invalidate my conclusion.
That's how they think.
He’s giving the future tourist industry a boost that it wouldn’t get if he tweeted a video of Luton high street, the Durham miners rally or an XR demo outside of a chainsaw outlet.
Despite being deeply weird it's also a total abrogation of leadership so I hope (for his sake) it's not true.
It could lead to the accusation he can't even put his own socks on without help.
If he can't make a simply (although important) decision like that, why should he be President?
Look what it is doing to people, Boris!
Otherwise it should be dismissed, ignored or totally re-written.
The much harder trick is somebody who does that WITHOUT horrifying marginal voters into the arms of Biden or whoever the Dems eventually pick. And there Pence is perfect, because he’s quite low profile, Plus he’s fairly softly spoken and articulate. So you may not listen at all, and if you do, if you don’t actually pay attention to what he’s saying you’re just left with a vague grey impression.
So what's missing for you?
The dawning realisation as the results come in that all the people they arrogantly presumed to speak for think they’re ‘a bunch of posh ####s who don’t understand ordinary people’ is pure comedy gold.
Ashley Sarker’s face as she tried to explain how the exit poll didn’t show Labour had lost the working class and that ‘the red wave is still coming’ is if anything even better.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/23/21233006/joe-biden-trump-fake-ad-campaign-hillary-clinton-twitter-tumblr-reddit
Not that Bush is necessarily a good example. But I think Reagan did it too.
No-one needs to lay flowers.
The pick has to be bombproof.
"But one Israeli professor claims that all efforts will lead to the same result, because the disease is self-limiting, and largely vanishes after 70 days, with or without any interventions."
I saw clips of beautiful scenery, towns, villages, coastline and fishing villages. I also saw modern architecture in the Shard.
It was an aesthetically pleasing tour of what's beautiful in England.
I think you're reading too much into it because it was posted by Trump's ambassador.
I can hear the sneer from here - "its so passe darling"..
I repeat - he was doing a good thing - showcasing stuff normal Americans would like to see in England.
And your first instinct is to call our American guest out for being old fashioned.
At best its snobbery..
Your objection was on views of the past - period - so you've already surrendered on that argument.
Can in my original post?
" It is dripping with nostalgia, laden with the past"
I can hear the sneer from here - "its so passe darling"..
I repeat - he was doing a good thing - showcasing stuff normal Americans would like to see in England.
And your first instinct is to call our American guest out for being old fashioned.
At best its snobbery..
That is world class projection. Just because you want something to be true doesn’t make it true.
Most people have a mental sketch of other countries which they can't be bothered to nuance, like the idea that the US is New York+Hollywood+rednecks. or Russia is Moscow+peasants. Britain's USP for many tourists is that we have loads of visual history - that's why London is such a draw and you don't see many foreign tourists wandering round the Highlands.
So yes, I'd say history, landscape and heritage would be high on my list of visiting America too - it's what allows you to get under the skin of what really made a country.
It's rather sad that you do.
I'm disagreeing with his conclusions.
It's the most objectionable part of your rather bizzare "suite" of political views, IMHO.