The theory is with covid expanding again, maybe Trump will be forced to renounce the GOP nomination. It's a shitty theory and you should bet against it.

Bolton said that Trump is dangerous and must go. Bolton for Pete's sake. Now Carly Fiorina, who just 3 years ago was running for the Republican nomination, is going to vote for Biden. You must stop and ask yourself, why? At the end, there will only be 2 people in America it seems who'll stick with Trump till the end.

I'm begrudgingly realizing that I must be the oldest guy here at 54. So maybe most of you guys don't remember or know Reagan. What I remember about the Reagan presidency is that Reagan brought back American pride and self confidence.
And he achieved this starting with the invasion of Granada.
I know this sounds like a terrible thing. I'm against war, and the invasion of that tiny island Nation was mostly a stunt. But what you guys probably don't know is that America was still traumitized from the Vietnam war. That little Granada adventure brought self confidence back.
Otherwise, yeah, he was not a great president, but he was a man of integrity.
Just go back and listen to some of his speeches. Trump is not half the man Reagan was.

sounds like we should go get ourselves an atlas

The equity would be in Trump dies or decides not to run - the only scenario in which the latter happens if if he has a hissy fit and 'quits' if it becomes clear he's going to lose in a landslide like 15+ points but I can't imagine that happening even if he's heading for a landslide loss.

I guess its 4 months and America has had 4 presidents assassinated plus 4 others die in office and Trump is in his 70s and overweight/works a stressful job when he isn't golfing compared to what he's done most of his life, it's obviously very unlikely but once you hit your mid 70s you're probably 1% or so to die in a 4 month stretch, same applies to Biden and that's without any assassination equity which might add another 0.x%

I don't get why it's 1.07 etc though that's obviously way too high (as is Biden not being the Dem nominee at 1.05 or whatever it is atm) neither of them are not going to be the nominee as long as they're alive and not in a coma or whatever. I guess with Covid there's a chance either nominee gets it and at their age it's a risk but even then they're both a favourite to survive it. I assume it's that high because not many people want to tie up money for four months to make 7% and fade a slim chance of something random happening like one of the candidates dying or whatever.

I think the highest chance of Trump not being the nominee if he's alive is his polls continue to decline, he has a meltdown and lashes out at Fox, they cut their losses and turn on him and when he ends up 15-20 points down he declares victory says he accomplished everything he wanted to accomplish in office but now has some beautiful hotels to build and walks away from it all when he realises victory is impossible. I really, really, really doubt any of that would happen though.

I really think Trump could commit a felony on camera at this point and still be the Republican nominee if he wants to be.

I just don't see a scenario where he isn't the nominee if he is alive and not incapacitated - it would be a Trumplike thing to declare victory and quit on election night while he's down 15 points while claiming the Democrats cheated or whatever, but I think the most likely scenario is still just the election goes on as planned with both candidates and Trump probably loses unless he can drastically improve his position between now and election day

Cleared of any marxists thanks to our American friends.
Vacation paradise.

No. He was an absolute ****. He began his presidential run in Philadelphia, Mississippi. A small town of no note except for the brutal murder of three civil rights workers there. And Reagan went there and kicked off his campaign by giving a speech about states' rights, aka why Southern states should be able to continue segregation without federal interference. That's pretty much the definition of a racist dogwhistle.

Economically, he broke the unions by firing all the air traffic controllers during their strike. He tripled the debt in order to hand out massive tax cuts to the rich. Combined, these policies set us down the road to the awful economic stratification we have today. Since 1980, hourly productivity is up 140%. The average worker's wages are up 9%. The other 131% has all been captured by the top-level elites.

In foreign policy, Reagan began by sabotaging the Carter administration's efforts to bring home the hostages from Iran. Reagan offered the Ayatollah a better deal if he waited until after Reagan's election to release the hostages. An utterly cynical and evil betrayal of the United States. Then of course there was Iran-Contra, in which Reagan sold weapons to Iran (you know, the regime that leads mass chants of "Death to America" every night, and sponsored terrorism worldwide), then took the money and gave it to the Nicaraguan Contra terrorists and death squads.

The man was a traitor to the country, and 40 years later his policies are still ****ing us up. I have no idea how his legacy has stayed so strong. Reagan should be dug up and shot.

LOL. parttimepro, I'm taken aback. I think it's the most obvious that Swoop is the most liberal here, but I thought I was the more louder liberal. Now I'm left with nothing. Nothing!

You know, I forgot about the controller strike. Yeah, that was big.
That leaves us with the question. If Reagan was a traitor, what is Trump?

I got your back bro.

https://youtu.be/2R8QxCD6ir8

But he could be inspiring. Don't totally ruin the memories of my youth. Don't do it!

Edit: Damn, I still don't know how to do something as simple as fully load YouTube.
But this speech is a sample of the profound difference between him and Trump.

Yeah I mean Reagan has 'won the cold war by boosting defense spending to levels the Soviets couldnt keep up with' but the Soviets were starting to decline already

He sabotaged the Carter admin's attempts to get hostages released, Iran Contra, union busting which has led to the erosion of the American middle class and an entire working class that is working for below a living wage by keeping min wage low and destroying organised labor, etc

Reagan isn't all good or all bad, but to say he's a top 5 American president of all time or even the best Republican President of the 20th century is very questionable. Washington, Lincoln and FDR are basically locks for the top three Presidents, after that it's very debatable imo and even in the last century on the Republican side Eisenhower was probably a better President than Reagan overall

Anyway not super relevant

Not much line movement going on the last two days or so, going to be interesting to see whether Trump's numbers start to stabilise or keep falling as Covid ravages its way through the heartland

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...elcome/570832/

The Trump administration is currently still making efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, in the middle of a pandemic. I give up. I'm going to stop trying to make sense out of today's conservatives. It's a futile effort. What in the hell happened in the last 30 years? Take the time to read the link, if you're not aware of it. . Great piece.

If Trump gets reelected, I'm moving to Australia.

So guys, I know I'm being off topic again, but in the politics forum, no one is paying attention.
They're all always too busy trying to bring their points across.
I just want to ask you Sharp's a simple question.
Do you want this for the next 4 years?

Or this!!

Think about it

Once the covid lockdowns over you're welcome, Aussie border might be closed to everyone except NZ for a while (and any other countries that beat Covid)

Granted we have to beat a little outbreak we had in Victoria this week first but the rest of the states are single digit cases or zero daily atm

Fortunately Trump's +180ish in the markets atm and I personally think he's in the high +2xx to +300 range in terms of his win % from here

Thanks buddy,lol

I think I already used this little joke of mine that only I probably get.
But it's too darn cold in Canada.

But would love to visit one day.

I still think it's early and anything can still happen. That posters point about the poll warnings I thought was also spot on.
But Common sense and logic, from everything available to us at this moment in time, has an easy Biden victory.
I have two medium bets on already. On sports books. No predictit account, yet.
I'd lie at the exact amount but,
Biden to win the popular vote at -181
And I got , sort of a gamble bet, Biden to win North Carolina at (+115?). Which is actually looking good right now.

I like the idea of wagering on state by state, which betonline is offering. I'm probably going to do all the battleground states. Since there's good value.

Why do you think union busting is bad for the middle class or poor? Isn't it like minimum wage in that it helps a few people, but hurts a hue majority of others in the middle class and poor?

I think some conservatives, like myself, think it is a great idea to lower the cost of labor when unemployment is really high.

I unfortunately agree that Biden is very likely to win. I don't think any repub ever can get re-elected after covid-19 no matter what he/she did in response.

Mickey, I understand your view point that getting rid of Obama care will lower wage costs.
But don't you think that health care is none the less essential.
And what will happen with the people who don't have insurance and get sick?
Won't their medical bills still have to be paid by someone?
The taxpayers will be burdened with the costs at the end.
Why not let the insurance companies carry that burden. After all it's their business.
And businesses have to also carry the extra cost. It's the cost of doing business. Businesses cannot continue to expect to make 100 percent profit in this country. That's not capitilasm, that's a slave industry. Capitalism means free markets. It doesn't mean a welfare system for business.

Unions are great for both the working class and middle class, collective bargaining raises wages and improves working conditions and reduces income inequality by giving workers a bigger slice of the pie. If one worker threatens to quit if he doesn't get a living wage the company fires him if the entire workforce does it through a union they have to negotiate

The reason the American working and middle classes are in decline and that full time workers being in poverty is a thing is because wages are falling relative to purching power and productivity levels and have been ever since Reagan and co destroyed most union power in America

People working 40 hours a week in any job shouldn't be struggling to make rent in the wealthiest country in the world and the reason they do is the American right has destroyed the working man's collective bargaining power by getting rid of unions

I'm surprised the democratic party isn't more focused on reinvigorating the union movement in America. Unions have been successfully demonised by the right in America to the point where some workers think that joining a union would work against their interests. There is a reason Walmart and co fire people trying to organise a union and run anti union propaganda and it isn't because they want to pay their workforce what their productivity is worth

Another day and more bad news for Trump plus price drift, +194 novig for Trump next President on Betfair now

It's hard to see Trump's price getting much higher until closer to the election if he's still down by 8-12% etc but who knows it's bad news day after bad news day at the moment and every day takes us a day closer to the election

Today it's he's allegedly known since March that Russia was putting bounties on American soldiers to encourage Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers and doesn't seem to have done anything about it, very strong and presidential obv

Four months left to change the narrative or he's toast, just don't think he's capable of doing it. We'll see. Obv happy with my Field -143 given where market is at now.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...roval-ratings/


Approval rating is something that has not been mentioned here, as far as I know.
Based on what I've been able to briefly research, no incumbent has won re-election with an approval rating of under 46%. Trumps approval rating at the moment is around an abysmal 40%.

Trump may have passionate and overzealous supporters, but his overall approval ratings, and they've actually been pretty consistent all 3 and a half years, are comparable to Ford, Carter and papa Bush, who all lost re-election.

Yeah if he's going to win he needs one of two things, to add like 8 to 10 percent to his approval rating which has had a hard cap on it before 50 percent all term or historically low turnout on the dem side while his supporters still turn out. He has four months to do it.

Covid could hurt dem turnout a bit as they tend to take the virus more seriously than Republicans but that's the best argument I can make for his re-election atm and who knows what the state of things will be in 4 months time virus wise

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...sident-ranked/

This is just the most recent Washington post article on possible Biden vp pick.
Not state secrets, but not everyone has a Washington post subscription. Amiright?
And hey, my avatar is Captain Obvious. Obviously.

apologies if this has been discussed already. xposting this from a dead thread in pol

"biden to win overall and biden to win florida both trading at 62c. feels like an arb opportunity to me b/c florida feels like a checkmate state, but biden can win without it.

like is biden really gonna lose michigan while he ships florida? seems like we should be betting trump in every swing state and biden to win the presidency."

I started buying Trump shares across the board on PI. I feel like his political fortunes have hit rock bottom at this point and can only improve from here.

The Russia/Taliban story isn't impacting anyone. Nobody's gonna remember Bolton's book after a few weeks. Many states will complete there reopening plans soon, and the federal unemployment benefits conclude at the end of July. People will be back to work, back doing things they enjoy, and their perception of the economy / direction of the country will improve.

At some point this will have to turn into Trump v Biden instead of Trump v Trump. In my view, the only way his numbers could drop further would be if Covid rebounds in states that have already seen a recovery, and things start shutting down again, schools don't reopen in the fall, and so on. Which is entirely possible, especially due to his poor leadership on the issue, trivializing it etc. But I think the governors in those states have done nice jobs, allowing Trump to take some credit.

If he was smart, he would realize his fortunes are tied to how he handles this virus, and how the economy goes from here. He should shift gears, explain that we have the best scientists the world has ever seen, and full throatedly embrace their recommendations. He should realize he has the base shored up (always boasts about the 96% approval) and start making a play for swing voters, focusing all of his attention there, while also doing whatever he can to turn the spotlight on Biden.

There's still plenty of time to turn things around. Not saying that he can change his fortunes and win the election, but rather there's more room for growth now than sinking any further

Yeah Bidens first path is Hillary states + PA WI MI, Biden has been up 9+ points for a couple weeks now in those states and that gets him to 270. He gets to 269 even without Wisconsin if he wins the Maine or Nebraska competitive district or 270 with both too, granted if he gets those chances are he's won other swing states.

The only way he wins without sweeping PA WI MI to get to 270 first is if he somehow tanks his support hard with the white working class, yet gets high minority turnout to win Florida and/or NC + big hispanic turnout to win AZ

Once you get to states like FL specifically Trump basically doesn't have any paths to victory if he loses Florida he would have to win MI WI PA and all of the other competitive swing states and if he loses Florida that just isn't going to happen

On the other hand Biden could easily sweep the midwest (or midwest minus wisconsin but plus Arizona or NC, more likely AZ) and still win

Trump wins FL/Loses election is a lot more likely than loses FL and wins election if there's a split