I think you are creating a bit of a narrative to fit the beliefs you have of what happened. I think you would have a hard time finding a lot of people with experience in campaigns to agree that Biden sitting in his basement for 2 months doing no debates / campaigning is the path to victory.

Indeed we will see how it goes. I will be surprised if the debates are anything special in terms of moving the needle and in the end it comes down to whether a chunk of non-hard core base people care or realize how much Trump lies about everything. His base enjoys and revels in his lying (even if they are the ones screwed by it), but the results will depend on how the small segment of undecided voters lean in some key states.

With all due respect I think you completely missed a significant segment of recent news so you will likely be very surprised by this...

Nancy Pelosi says Joe Biden should not debate Trump at all

And she is not the only top Dem on the record that thinks. If you need me to, I can quote many more.

She says stuff like that to troll Trump, which I completely agree with as a strategy, but she knows there has to be debates, and I would be genuinely surprised if behind the scenes she would advocate to not participating in debates.

I like how she messages it, but I do not read that as a firm belief that staying in the basement is the way to go to victory. She is just trying to hit Trump in his ego to get under his skin.

Not sure what else to tell you - if you really believe your stay in the basement strategy is the way to go then contact the Biden campaign and push for it. Feel free to tell them to change their inane slogan as well.

We can agree to disagree obviously. There are many top Dem's suggesting Joe not debate Trump. You are free to believe they all secretly want him to. I do not think they do and take them at their word.

I think many people realize Joe will not be able to 'debate' Trump. If you think it will be a debate I think you are naive (but again we will see). I think it will be a circus and Trump will be the ring master and Joe is entering willfully just hoping to escape without any major gaffs of set backs. He certainly is not going to get a chance to beat Trump of substantive points.


Hey I hope I wrong. We will see.

Every single republican on this board will support Trump staying in office.

And for longer than two terms...

Surprised to see the odds for the elections are now even stevens:
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics

Trump has the momentum at the moment.

A fistfight?

It's almost a guarantee that he's going to cross a line and try to make Biden mad. Biden knows this. I'm sure they are preparing for it as Clinton did for her debate. We now know they were prepared for a bj in the White house, every conspiracy theory etc. to be thrown at her.

I think the debate will be much more boring than you expect with both people being meh at best, since that is kind of their ability in debates already.

I semi agree about the points of substance, but that is because points of substance mean nothing to Trump or his followers. Trump is running a campaign which implies Biden is the incumbent. Trump will lie all the time, so trying to debate the details of infrastructure week will be pointless. Just call the liar a liar and say whatever you want about the topic.

We will see. If this ends up being filled with fireworks and Trump as the manipulator of Biden then feel free to come back here and point out how Biden should have followed the basement strategy for victory. Definitely a possibility, but I would expect it to be more meh, whatever with both sides declaring victory. Trump's followers would declare victory if Trump simply barked like a dog the whole night and took a piss on the stage, so I certainly expect them to say he won no matter what.

If Biden debates he need to be uber focused on Trump looking to gut HealthCare (pre-existing conditions) and Medicare.

Those are the two issues, Trump does not want voters focused on as they crushed him in the mIdterms. He wants to inflame the race stuff and have all the focus there.

Joe should ignore the baiting or dismiss it with a quick comment of 'while you continue to try to inflame race issues and divisions, we are focused on protecting American citizens from your gov'ts continued attempts to strip them of their Health Care, their protection for pre-existing conditions and Medicare, because if you get a second term the citizen are sure to lose those'.

Hammer that with the relentlessness Trump will hammer his various lies.

Yup, I agree with you on that general approach and the topics. Trump will lie all the time, it is what he does. His hard core supporters love that he lies, but Biden is not pitching to them, so he should just dismiss the lies and focus on the issues that Trump is weak on including Covid and health care.

We will see how it plays out, but remember - if Biden seems to be actually there mentally then that is way above the bar that the Trump people chose to frame him before the debates. Now, is Biden a person I would wager a ton on to crush a debate? Hardly, but Trump is pretty weak as well, so the end result has a lot of potential variance.

Ya agreed but the big difference is Trump loses nothing in his non stop gaffs and far worse senior moment derangement that he says. It is fully baked in and many in his base see it as a plus.

I mean, if Biden ever answered anything like Trump does here, he would done. It would be run non stop on both Fox and the rest of the MSM.

This is sheer incoherent ramblings of a mad man.

The Dems will do everything possible to keep it close enough for him to steal.

Who do you consider 'the left' ?

The Democrats won't do anything if Trump refused to leave. As their record shows. They'll just continue taking care of their corporate donors. All will be fine in their world.

Report:

https://paxsims.files.wordpress.com/...ion-8-3-20.pdf

Very interesting, and scary, read.

Game One (Ambiguous Result) is terrifying:

Bolded would be a crazy move I didn't even know was possible.

I think they stopped wargaming at this point, but obviously it's absolute chaos. I think Pelosi as Speaker might claim acting POTUS at that point.

The "Red Mirage" scenario (which has Trump seeming to win in a landslide on election night but then slowly losing as the mail-in & absentee ballots are counted over the next several days) is both increasingly likely AND a total f-ing nightmare for the country.

For my podcast, I interviewed Omar Wasow, who did some research that got some press showing how violent protests/riots move the country more conservative/Republican.

In this interview, we also talk about worst-case Trump-related scenarios. I was kind of heartened a bit to hear that he's a bit more optimistic than I am about those kinds of things.

Hope it's okay to post, thought it was a bit relevant, as I don't often see pretty-knowledgeable people weighing in on these things: https://www.readingpokertells.video/...ts-omar-wasow/

As early posters ITT identified, Trump's ability to contest the election is limited by what the Republicans in Congress and the courts are willing to allow.

I think the courts, and particularly SCOTUS, are more concerned with finality and the perception of fairness than they are with a certain political outcome. SCOTUS will side with Trump in a situation akin to Bush v. Gore, i.e. they will put an end to recounts and other Democratic challenges to an election that went to Trump. SCOTUS is highly unlikely to overturn a Biden win in Trump's favor absent extenuating circumstances, i.e. it comes down to one state and there were major irregularities with Biden ballots.

Republicans will support Trump if there is a colorable argument for contesting the election, but they are not going to go out on a limb for him. The risk/reward for them is just too much. Ironically, if a new justice is confirmed before the election--or the Republican Senators are confident they can do it in a lame duck session--it probably decreases the likelihood the Republicans side with a Trump challenge because it moots one of the big benefits of another Trump term.

All in all, I expect Trump is going to face substantial pressure to concede the election (hard to imagine him giving a speech or what that looks like) if Biden runs it up big on election night. If it is close, but in Biden's favor, we may see some initial challenges that prevent a concession on election night, but those will probably fizzle out within 24-48 hours as the states finalize their counts/reporting and the results solidify. For Trump to mount a real challenge with teeth will require a pretty strong legal argument that the Republicans feel they can get behind and the courts will accept.

To be more specific, I think there might be some momentum for recounts, but not much more than that. And as we have learned, recounts rarely help.

Outside of Roy Moore or being criminally charged while in office, has anything really hurt Republicans so much that they cared about their conscience or reputation since the Trump inauguration? They will go out on every possible limb, or make up limbs, in order to keep Trump in power at this point. With another Trump term, they have a real shot at Stephen Breyer (82) retiring and can make it a 7-2 majority, too.

Even being criminally charged isn't always enough!

Bill Maher has been saying for YEARS that Trump won't leave office and has pressed Democrats for a plan if this happens and..... they really don't have an answer.
This past Friday night, Maher really hammered Bernie Sanders on this (and Maher really likes Sanders) and all Sanders could muster is something vague about how "the people" won't stand for it but couldn't give anything specific.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...ve-trump-if-he

From a procedural stand point, Trump's term as president ends January 20th, 2021 at 11:59am. If the election results are being contested at that time he doesn't magically get to keep his term as president going. Even the the ass clown tried to suggest the election should be delayed. Therefore, if the results of the election are still in question at 12pm January 20th, 2021, then the speaker of the house becomes president. Since the Democrats are likely to keep control of the house this coming election it would mean a president Pelosi. So, it isn't about Trump just sowing confusion about who won, Trump has to have somehow shown that he won the electoral college. Trump as the ultimate liar and hypocrite can do the election confusion, but proving he won the electoral college if he didn't is a difficult task. Trump's best way to steal the election is to be ahead on the votes cast by people in person and then use the bully pulpit to try and disallow as many mail in votes as possible. For example, in GW Bush versus Al Gore, Bush was ahead in Florida and only had to fight to stop them from continuing a recount.

Whoever is ahead on in person election day votes has a huge advantage. Some indications are that Republicans are more likely to vote in person, while Democrats are more likely to vote by mail. That gives Trump an enormous advantage to declare victory on election day even while tens of mail in ballots are still getting counted for days (if the my get counted at all).

I'm sorry to say that if you live in a swing state, it's important to risk your life & vote in person!

I mean, what can the Dems do? they dont have any power. they dont control the Senate or the Justice Department or most state offices and the entire army and law enforcement loves Trump.

and its not like they will be personally threatened by Trump winning. they still get their cushy jobs and lifes.

The really scary thing is that Trump might lose the popular vote and lose the electoral college vote and still become president.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/...on-gps-vpx.cnn