Eh? No that's net asset values

Just so glad that when Joe was VP during the pandemic Barrack Obama sent him to Detroit to fix it

Wonder if he drove there in his corvette

I think that Biden is planning to withdraw. In a recent speech he said something like "this election isn't about me. It's about making sure the other guy doesn't get elected." That may be true, but it isn't the kind of thing that typical candidates say no matter how bad they think their opponent is. But a self-deprecating remark like that would make sense if you knew you were not going to be the nominee.

nah his defining trait is his narcissism, no way he steps down. only way that happens is him dropping dead. if he said it, "this isn't about me" is him begging everyone to ignore how much he simultaneously sucks and blows in about every way

Yeah... baring like a cancer diagnosis, the time to do that wouldd have been before the primaries.

I understand that the Democrats hate democracy almost as much as Trump. But i don't think they are stupid enough to think the public would support doing away with even the pretense of voter input.

In my own lifetime there have been presidential elections where the nominee wasn't certain until the party convention. And there is no law saying the nominee must be the winner of the state primary elections.

I also don't think it's likely that Biden won't be the nominee, but I don't think it is a crazy idea that could never happen.

And I also would not be surprised if the reason given was a cancer diagnosis, even if it's just as an excuse. Very likely to be true anyway - how many American 81yo men don't probably have some kind of cancer bubbling under?

???
that would be absolute weird take from you. it woul d be gg for any dem running since its to late now.. if he wasn't going to run he would have said so a year+ ago

Do you think that if he died or became completely incapacitated right now, the democrats would have zero chance of beating Trump?

Yeah, if the only person who got votes in the primary drops out this late just getting a candidate on the ballot in all 50 states would be impressive.

If it wasn't Harris, their chances might go up.

But there is a difference between "the President died" and "we just decided to overtly bypass the primaties and install a nominee."

The latter would trigger a major backlash imo.

I agree, which is why that question wasn't directed to you, but to the guy who implied that no other democrat could win the election.

That’s quite a big difference from Biden knowing he’s not running now and just pretending like he is for some reason as was claimed.

There is nobody on the dem bench that is electable in a national election and if Biden was going to bail he would have already done it.

Coming to the conclusion he’s dropping out because of something he said is insane. This is the same guy who has trouble reading a teleprompter, can’t remember peoples names, gets countries confused, can’t find the stairs on stages and constantly tells lies not because he enjoys lying but because he truly believes things that aren’t true.

If I am right, it would be because of a very recent events that has made him seriously contemplate what he had not seriously contemplated previously. I think the fact that the first debate is so soon is partially because Democrats want to have time to change candidates if the debate doesn't go well. The worse his chances look, the smaller the replacement chances have to be to make his withdrawing the better play (both from the standpoint of increasing the chances of beating Trump and avoiding personal embarrassment to Biden.) Meanwhile if the "dem bench" includes Michelle Obama it is not that clear that Biden is the best chance for a democratic win.

And of course it is wrong to think that I came to the conclusion that he is dropping out "because of something he said". I didn't move my opinion from 0% to 55% based on his few words. It was more like from 20% to 55% and the 20% was only a very recent opinion because of how things are going. I don't even think Biden himself has made a final decision and won't until after the first debate. But I do think he realizes that he might decide to drop out, so he threw in that "its not about me" comment in case he decides to prove me right.

the idea that corporations are going to screw over people less under trump shows the average intelligence of voters in america. just so incredibly stupid. trump admin will gut all consumer protection like they have been trying to do for so long. just incredibly incredibly stupid. and thats sad that people can be tricked into believing this crap.

Is it sad that supposedly smart people think that it would be even sadder if there was a technique that lessened the importance of the opinion of those people you deem incredibly stupid or gullible?

Hmmm...

Maybe not so stupid after all.

Oh man, where are you when people are circle-jerking over countless articles about taxing the evil billionaires who, "Made more money in the markets yesterday than the bottom half of Americans make in a decade"?

You know that you can have state consumer protection, right?

Why is that a federal issue to begin with?

You can live where people agree with you and tax and regulate local companies (or any company selling or operating in your state) as much as you want, there are very few constitutional limits to that.

Why do you want to decide how things work elsewhere though is the question

because in reality the more localized you get the more whackjob you get. that form of government only made sense before modern times. it's a poor relic of a bygone era. there's no reason for the law to be different in every one of the 8 states i can drive across in one day.

also what power does my local government have vs walmart price gouging me? that's just dumb. why should one state treat an internet company differently than another? how do you reconcile that with capitalism or the commerce clause?

i dont think those people shouldn't vote or anything. i just think it's sad they are so dumb about issues they proclaim to be important to them.

like you have tons of people saying immigration is their number 1 issue, but Trump effectively veto'd the most conservative immigration policy in decades because he wants to trick dumb xenophobic people into voting for him.

Nice that you use Walmart, which keeps your prices actually down, in an ultra competitive sector, as an example of price gouging, means you really have a grasp of the topic.

Why should a sovereign entity reach a different decision on tradeoff considerations than a fellow one elsewhere....

Because it represents different people with different preferences.

The reason for laws to be different in different places (when it happens) is for the law to represent the actual will of the actual people, or you know, what they call actual democracy.

It also allows competing models to coexist in otherwise similar places, so that people can check the different results and make better decisions. And they can move where their preferences are the law, instead of being violently binded to the will of the national majority, which if they find far enough from theirs, means living all your life in a country that doesn't represent you at all.

Having everything from a radical right to a radical left to everything in between in the 50 states allows better matching of people with their preferences.

Commerce clause has been abused forever to justify federal power overreach toward a centralist model which is inimical at its core with the federal constitution. And to freedom for the reasons state above.

With CC abuse you can violently impose your preferences everywhere, there is no escape. So others can live differently proving it works better.

Unsurprisingly you bring it out here as well.

But we know why want want rules (and taxation and welfare) to be national: because you know under regulated states will attract the rich, the productive, the people you want to tax to pay for what you care about, and if they have an escape route elsewhere you can't regulate at the state level as much as you want, because companies will all flee and you will be left ruling over an economic desert.

Keep in mind that you are scared about the upcoming elections because of the model you are defending.

If federal elections had minimal consequences to your life in your state, and you live in a place that solidly represents your values, why would you give a ****? If 90-99% of what affect your life is decided at the state and local level as it should be , you would be left discussing some geopolitics for fun and that's it. Never scared about an election again.

Wouldn't it be far better for basically everyone?

all of this stuff is just utopia talk.

i picked walmart because their grocery stores were literally just accused in price gouging within the last two months. so maybe we shouldn't talk about who has the grasp of the topic.

the local law rarely represents the actual people though. that doesn't happen in reality. it's just a slightly different ruling class that's more ripe for cronyism and corruption. you also just completely dismiss the idea that moving somewhere that "matches with your preference" just isn't suitable for the majority of people in real life.

under regulated states don't do that. because most of them are pretty crappy places to actually live. just look where it's expensive to buy houses. instead you just have backwards red states bankrupting themselves through deregulation decreasing the quality of life every outside their already big mostly BLUE metro areas.

i'm scared of the upcoming election because i have empathy for people that are affected. i will be fine. i'm a white heterosexual cis male with a terminal degree i personally have nothing to fear from a trump presidency. but i, unlike the majority of repulicans, have enough empathy to know that more marginalized people won't necessarily fare similarly.

having more state power wouldn't help poor african american people in mississippi, louisiana, or alabama. but having more federal power might