lvr is a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger effect
If we want to say what's the difference between the last three presidents, Obama is a fairly flawed moderate who didn't have any real personal scandals and implemented a bad but better than the previous system healthcare plan because the political right and Joe Lieberman tanked the public option which is necessary for a functioning healthcare policy that includes a mandate to have insurance. Did not start any wars, but did not finish Bush's wars either.
Bush was a warmonger who was asleep at the wheel for 9/11 then started two wars one of which was based on a lie which led to assorted war crimes and whose economic policies helped lead to the 2008 recession. On a personal level he didn't have substantial failings but on a policy level I don't think anyone can suggest he did well with either foreign or domestic policy.
Trump is a dumpster fire of a human being whose failed response to the Covid crises managed to somehow both tank the economy and lead to more Covid deaths than any other country in the world and has more personal and policy scandals than I could list in a thousand words.
In a paragraph or so we have speaks highly of dictators while attacking american allies, tried the blackmail Ukraine and got impeached over it, refuses to secure election system from Russian interference, all of his various cabinet members that have been fired or stepped down in disgrace, failed covid response, paid off pornstars (Daniels, McDougal etc) he was having affairs with, locking up kids/family separation, sexual assault allegations and alleged rape case (Carroll), tore up Iran deal meaning countries will be reluctant to trust America to live up to treaties they sign in future, failed to stop additional North Korean nuclear tests despite 'friendship' with Kim, completely subservient to Putin and demanded private meetings etc, Mueller investigation, lies about random easily disprovable stuff all the time and goes on unprofessional twitter rants at 1am including spreading fake news/lying, questionable pardons including the war crimes murderous navy Seal guy, Arpaio etc, banned trans people in the military while claiming to be pro-LGBT during campaign, assorted racism, nominated man accused of sexual assault to supreme court, ordered Michael Cohen to do a ton of illegal stuff which Cohen went to jail for, firing of assorted members of legal profession who are political enemies, all the Michael Flynn stuff ignoring advice not to hire him etc, everything to do with Betsy Devos and putting coal execs in charge of the EPA and all of his other swamp creatures after claiming to want to drain the swamp, close ties to Jeffrey Epstein and his murder or suicide while in custody, all of Bill Barr's various obstruction of justice, attacked his own AG Jeff Sessions for correctly recusing himself due to a conflict of interest, endorsed Roy Moore for Senate AFTER it was known he was a sexual predator, had the 'SS' assault protestors so he could take a photo op with a bible at a church that didn't want him there, the grab them by the pussy tape, tax cuts for the wealthy exploding the deficit while claiming to be a fiscal conservative, central park five stuff which I guess still falls under assorted racism and I guess I could go on for another several paragraphs in the same manner but that's a paragraph or so and i'm sure i've forgotten dozens of Trump scandals that would have ended a Bush or Obama Presidency
Obama has 'oversaw drone strikes same as Bush and Trump', Snowden/NSA spying, moderately unpopular healthcare law, long time in the past went to a church with a radical preacher, Benghazi response where no real wrongdoing was found then stuff like 'tan suit and fancy mustard'
America hasn't had a truly great President in a long time on either side probably since FDR who among other things ended the great depression, created the New Deal and basically won World War 2 and defeated fascism although I guess Truman finished it off.
It feels like Eisenhower was the last 'good' Republican President and while Clinton and Obama were both serviceable, the last top tier Democratic President was FDR. LBJ accomplished a lot, the Civil Rights Act etc, but has Vietnam and foreign policy failures overshadowing his domestic policy achievements. Reagan has 'won the cold war' under his list of top tier accomplishments but his administration was also riddled with scandals and he had a lot of failures too like the AIDS epidemic and the start of trickle down economics and policies which have led to the dismantling of much of the American middle class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor..._United_States makes some interesting reading in terms of historical rankings of Presidents. In general since 1900 the consensus seems to be America had a mixture of good (Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson) and bad Presidents in the early 1900s including some disasters that led to the great depression, then a great run from FDR to LBJ then Nixon through Carter were belw average without being a disaster, Reagan ratings are all over the shop but in general decent solely on the Cold War I assume then of the recent Presidents we have, Obama is upper-mid tier as someone who was competent but didn't achieve much, same for Clinton and Bush 1, and then Bush 2 is fairly lowly ranked without being a disaster and Trump is basically considered to be a disaster as a President mired in scandal and corruption who has no major significant domestic or foreign policy accomplishments other than a tax cut that exploded the deficit and some judicial nominations.
I'm growing more and more convinced that Trump is going to lose fairly badly, attacking Fox News on twitter has to be a very very poor sign for his prospects, if Fox abandon Trump (unlikely but possible if he keeps attacking them) he is done - he's also hit us with some new soundbytes for Biden ads on Covid with Trump asking to reduce the number of tests done to reduce the number of confirmed cases and his polling numbers are still just garbage and it's late June now, it's only 134 days until the election and we're mere months away from the polling being very significant and there are a lower than usual number of undecided voters because people either love or hate Trump, he really needs historically low turnout to have a chance.
Trump has drifted from about -145 to +163 on Betfair for reelection over the past couple months with over 70 million matched. I feel like Biden's a steal around -130 but still don't really want to tie up cash for months on end when I think it's highly unlikely Biden will drop to worse than -250 even if the numbers are the same as today a few days before the election and if the numbers were the same as today and voter enthusiasm levels are normal in polling data Biden will be over 90% to win
I'd imagine it tightens between now and then because usually Republican voters come home but this is going to be a pretty unique election that is basically a referendum on the incumbent when his opponent is basically 'low key uncharismatic but qualified moderate democrat'. Biden just needs to shut the **** up and not do anything disqualifying to the Democratic base or moderates and let Trump continue to hang himself
I thought the D side was ~60% to win when Trump was still a fav, i'd say Biden's closer to 70% now if I had to guess and only because it is so far from election day there is time for the narrative to change and it could easily become a coinflip again but it could also easily be 90%+ by election day if Biden is up 10%+ in the polls a week out
I'm still going to wait at least until the conventions to get involved and to know more about where Covid's headed in the US in a month or two
Last edited by SwoopAE; 06-22-2020 at 03:58 AM.