SUPERTHREAD: 2020 United States Elections

[The Romulan Republic]

A judge has ordered that the New York primary must go ahead, ruling that Cuomo's actions violated the 1st and 14th Amendment rights of the candidates removed from the ballot:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... ary-ballot

A federal judge issued a ruling Tuesday requiring New York to hold its presidential primary in June and restore Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other former presidential contenders to the ballot.

The ruling from Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York, an Obama appointee, said that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) decision to scrap his state’s primary violated the First and 14th Amendment rights of White House contenders who have since ended their campaigns.

“The Court concludes that Plaintiffs and Plaintiff-Intervenors have shown a clear and substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the Democratic Commissioners’ April 27 Resolution removing Yang, Sanders, and eight other Democratic presidential candidates from the ballot deprived them of associational rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution,” Torres ruled, referring to entrepreneur Andrew Yang, another former presidential candidate who filed the lawsuit against New York.

Cuomo first announced in April that he was cancelling New York’s presidential primary after Sanders dropped out of the race and essentially locked up Biden’s claim to the Democratic nomination. Still, Sanders had declared that he planned on remaining on upcoming primary ballots to win more delegates, who can work to influence the party’s platform at this summer’s Democratic National Convention.

“We shouldn’t have nonessential primaries. There is only one candidate who is running,” New York Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs said at the time.

Cuomo’s decision was met with an outcry from progressives who said the move would block progressives from promoting their candidate and hinder efforts to bridge divides between centrists and liberals within the party that continue to play out from 2016.

“Senator Sanders wishes to remain on the ballot, and is concerned that his removal from the ballot would undermine efforts to unify the Democratic Party in advance of the general election,” Malcolm Seymour, an attorney representing the Sanders campaign, wrote at the time to Andrew Spano, the commissioner for the New York State Board of Elections.

Torres wrote Tuesday that she agreed with progressives’ concerns, arguing that the cancellation could disenfranchise New York voters.

“[T]he removal of presidential contenders from the primary ballot not only deprived those candidates of the chance to garner votes for the Democratic Party’s nomination, but also deprived their pledged delegates of the opportunity to run for a position where they could influence the party platform, vote on party governance issues, pressure the eventual nominee on matters of personnel or policy, and react to unexpected developments at the Convention,” she wrote.

“And it deprived Democratic voters of the opportunity to elect delegates who could push their point of view in that forum.”

Despite New York’s ruling and his position as the presumptive nominee, Biden appeared to be aware of concerns that depriving Sanders of the chance to rack up more delegates could spark a progressive backlash. Biden and Sanders last week announced a deal that would allow the Vermont lawmaker to keep hundreds of delegates he’d won during the primary race.

“While Senator Sanders is no longer actively seeking the nomination, the Biden campaign feels strongly that it is in the best interest of the party and the effort to defeat Donald Trump in November to come to an agreement regarding these issues that will ensure representation of Sanders supporters and delegate candidates, both on the floor and in committees,” both the Biden and Sanders campaigns said in a memo.

Bernie and Yang 1, Cuomo 0.

[Knife]

While... yay. It means little in the long run.

[The Romulan Republic]

While... yay. It means little in the long run.

I disagree.

To the question of who the Democratic nominee is, it likely means little to nothing. Which is basically Cuomo's position.

To ensuring Bernie Sanders has committee representation, and to shaping the future platform and rules of the Democratic Party, it might mean something, although perhaps less now that he's struck his deal with Biden.

In terms of not setting a precedent of using covid-19 or other disasters to selectively cancel elections, or allowing states to selectively suppress primary candidates in the future, I dare say it means a great deal.

Seriously, that is a precedent we don't want set.

It may also mean something to the progressive candidates downballot who were counting on Bernie's name being on the ballot to drive up turnout.

[The Romulan Republic]

Sanders spokesman says he is not pushing for Warren as VP, and in fact is not advising Biden on VP in any way:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... -vp-report

Instead, the Bern is reportedly focussed on pushing policy.

[Gandalf]

The Lincoln Project's ad is pretty funny.

It'd be more interesting if the Lincoln Project weren't seemingly also a bunch of people who thought that people like GWB and McCain/Palin were decent politicians/candidates?

[The Romulan Republic]

The Lincoln Project's ad is pretty funny.

It'd be more interesting if the Lincoln Project weren't seemingly also a bunch of people who thought that people like GWB and McCain/Palin were decent politicians/candidates?

Yeah, it must take some weird cognitive dissonance on their part.

[Ace Pace]

The Lincoln Project's ad is pretty funny.

It'd be more interesting if the Lincoln Project weren't seemingly also a bunch of people who thought that people like GWB and McCain/Palin were decent politicians/candidates?

Why do you think that there is no difference from their perspective between GWB and Trump?

[Dalton]

The Lincoln Project's ad is pretty funny.

It'd be more interesting if the Lincoln Project weren't seemingly also a bunch of people who thought that people like GWB and McCain/Palin were decent politicians/candidates?

And your point is?

[The Romulan Republic]

How polling is responding to the Tara Reade story, and Biden's denial:

https://vox.com/2020/5/7/21247933/tara- ... bers-trump

Tara Reade’s sexual assault accusation hasn’t made a noticeable dent in Joe Biden’s poll numbers against President Donald Trump — yet.

The presumptive Democratic nominee has “unequivocally” denied sexual assault allegations from Reade, a former Senate staffer of his, for an incident she says happened in 1993. While some are calling for Biden to step down or be replaced at the Democratic convention, polling so far shows Democrats and independent voters are still largely behind the former vice president.

A new national poll by Monmouth University released Wednesday with a margin of error of 3.6 percent shows Biden leading Trump 50-41. The same poll showed voters evenly split on whether they believed Reade’s allegation: 37 percent of voters said it is “probably true,” while 32 percent said it is “probably not true” and another 31 percent had no opinion.

Other polls out this week paint a similar picture: Even if some voters think the Reade allegations are true, that may not be enough to turn some them off of Biden unless more corroboration or additional accusers come forward, numerous pollsters told Vox.

“I think basically the news itself in terms of its impact is not enough to override what is the underlying fundamental of this election, which is a referendum on the president,” Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray told Vox. “The alternative has to be really something unacceptable. I think in a different situation in a different time with different candidates, this would have a much more significant impact for Biden.”

While the Monmouth poll shows Biden’s approval rating dipping slightly, his numbers in a head-to-head matchup against Trump remain relatively stable — even growing a bit from past Monmouth polls. It should be noted that Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to assault by more than 20 women, and was elected president in 2016 a month after a tape emerged of him bragging about assaulting women.

Two other polls released this week suggest the Reade allegations are causing a minority of Democratic voters to rethink the party’s choice for nominee, with women and younger voters more skeptical of Biden’s denial. A Monday Morning Consult poll found about 25 percent of Democrats wanted Biden to be replaced as the Democratic nominee after watching his denial of the Reade allegations, while another poll by Politico and Morning Consult found 32 percent of voters from all parties said Reade’s allegations made them less likely to vote for Biden.

Fracturing party unity and slipping poll numbers with young voters in particular could spell trouble for Biden down the line. But at this point in the campaign, these numbers may in part reflect that Democrats recently finished a divisive primary — and these voters weren’t excited about Biden to begin with, pollsters told Vox.

“If I’m on the Biden campaign and I see that one in four Democrats want Biden replaced at this point, I’m thinking that number is not that bad,” said Cameron Easley, senior editor at Morning Consult. “In fact, I might expect it to be a little bit higher. Unless you see some other details emerge, some other Democratic elites and leaders come off the sidelines and turn on Biden, I wouldn’t expect these numbers to get much higher.”

As he runs against Trump — a man whose response to sexual assault allegations has been to attack his accusers — Biden has leaned heavily into his image as a champion of women’s rights and a moral authority. Whether or not Reade’s allegations are ever proven, they could get in the way of the contrast Biden wants to draw.

A Morning Consult tracking poll conducted May 2-3 with a 2 percent margin of error showed voters don’t see a ton of daylight between the two men on the issue of sexual harassment and misconduct. The poll showed 44 percent of voters said it’s a “major issue” for Trump, while 37 percent said the same for Biden. The Trump campaign has already seized on the Reade allegations, and the coming weeks will set up a key test of how Biden and his campaign continue to respond.

“How he handles this is really important,” said Suffolk University pollster David Paleologos. “I think it’s less about what happened and more about how Vice President Biden will deal with it.”

What the polls tell us about how voters view the Reade allegations
Three polls from Morning Consult, Politico, and Monmouth University released this week paint an overall picture that suggests even if voters believe Reade’s allegations, it may not be enough for them to dump Biden.

“It doesn’t change the underlying fundamental,” Murray said of what the results suggest. “That could change, we could get more allegations [from] more women. But right now, it’s not enough — even for people who believe it, it’s not enough.”

The Monmouth national poll of 739 registered voters showed a clear partisan split: 50 percent of Republicans said the allegation was probably true, compared to 17 percent who said it probably was not true; 55 percent of Democrats said it was probably not true compared to 20 percent who believed it was true. Independents were more likely than not to believe Reid’s claim; 43 percent said they believed it was true compared to 22 percent who said it was not true. Another 35 percent of voters said they had no opinion.

“There are Democratic-leaning independents in there — this is the group that says, ‘I believe this but I’m still voting for Biden,’” Murray said. “They’re not hardcore Democrats, but they’re anti-Trump people.”

A Monday Morning Consult poll of 1,991 registered voters nationwide with a 2 percentage point margin of error found 26 percent of voters said the Democratic Party should select a different nominee after watching Biden’s denial of the allegations in an MSNBC interview, while 61 percent said Biden should remain the Democratic nominee.

Overall, 41 percent of voters of all parties in the Morning Consult poll said they found Biden’s denial credible, while 38 percent said it was not credible (another 22 percent said they didn’t know). Morning Consult found 61 percent of Democrats consider Biden’s denials credible, compared to just 19 percent who said they didn’t.

The poll also found a noticeable gender and generational split on the issue; Democratic women were 12 percentage points less likely to believe Biden’s denial than Democratic men. Similarly, Democrats under the age of 45 were 14 points less likely to believe Biden than Democrats 45 and up. But when it came to the question of actually replacing Biden as the nominee ticket, just 24 percent of Democratic men and 28 percent of Democratic women said yes.

There was a much bigger generational split on this question: 40 percent of Democrats under 45 polled said Biden should be replaced, while just 15 percent of Democrats ages 45 and older said he should be.

The finding that younger voters were more likely to want Biden replaced matches up with Suffolk pollster Paleologos’s recent USA Today poll of more than 600 Sanders voters, which found 22 percent of those voters said they’d vote for a third-party candidate and 60 percent said they were “not very or not excited at all” about Biden’s nomination. Sanders largely captured the youth vote during the 2020 primaries, while Biden did well with older voters.

“That’s the Democratic wheelhouse for volunteers,” Paleologos said. “And here they are saying by a clear majority that they’re not excited. So Biden needs to be mindful of that, too.”

The Tuesday Morning Consult and Politico poll (also with a 2-point margin of error) found 32 percent of voters said the Reade allegations made it somewhat or much less likely they’d vote for Biden, while 42 percent said it made no difference either way. That poll also found 36 percent of voters said the Democratic Party should “definitely” or “probably” select a different nominee, compared to 40 percent who said “definitely” or “probably” not.

“Right now he’s doing well in the polling, but that could turn on a dime,” Paleologos said. “If there is other information that’s sitting out there that contradicts that, then I think his approach to the issue is going to be key, especially among swing voters.”

How the Biden campaign is responding to the allegations
Biden’s campaign was already making outreach to women a substantial part of its operation, well before Reade’s allegations surfaced.

Now, Biden is walking a tightrope. The former vice president has stated that “unequivocally, this claim is simply not true,” but he has also encouraged journalists to further investigate and vet Reade’s claims. Biden’s campaign recently wrote to the secretary of the US Senate asking to make public any records of a sexual harassment complaint against him (the Senate has denied Biden’s request).

“My knowledge that it isn’t true does nothing to shake my belief that women have to be able to be heard and that all the claims be taken seriously,” Biden said at a recent fundraiser. “I know that this claim has no merit. But as a candidate for president, I’m accountable to the American people. And I welcome that accountability and the scrutiny of the press as well.”

Biden needs women to turn out for him in order to win in November; as a voting bloc, they can’t be underestimated. Women are far more likely to consider themselves Democrats or leaning Democratic than men, and the gap between women and men has consistently grown since 2012, when women voted for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by 11 percentage points. In 2016, that gap widened to 13 points for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, and increased to 19 points for Democratic House candidates over Republican ones in 2018.

In March, Biden announced he’d pick a woman for his running mate and promised to appoint a black woman to the US Supreme Court if elected president. His pledge to select a woman vice president was a tacit recognition of how big a role women have in the Democratic Party; the 2016 nominee was a woman, and women candidates and voters alike powered Democratic wins in the 2018 midterms.

Not only do Reade’s claims put a question mark over Biden’s record on women’s issues, they could also give Republicans ammunition to muddy the waters on the central theme to Biden’s candidacy: restoring “the soul of the country, the character of our people.”

It’s far too early to tell whether Republicans will be successful in that attempt, Murray said.

“We just don’t have enough information yet in the polling data to suggest where a tipping point might be where it may start swinging voters against Biden on that issue or neutralize that campaign strategy for Biden,” he told Vox.

[Omega18]

In other news, Vox published a report which appears to show a major inconsistency issue with one of Reade's witnesses.

Basically the Vox reporter did speak to Reade a year ago and tracked down who Reade listed as the one available supporting witnesses at the time.

Last year, Reade encouraged me to speak with a friend of hers who counseled her through her time in Biden’s office in 1992 and 1993. The friend was clear about what had happened, and what hadn’t.

“On the scale of other things we heard, and I feel ashamed, but it wasn’t that bad. [Biden] never tried to kiss her directly. He never went for one of those touches. It was one of those, ‘sorry you took it that way.’ I know that is very hard to explain,” the friend told me. She went on: “What was creepy was that it was always in front of people.”...

When we spoke a year ago, Reade told me the only named sources she could give me were her deceased mother and the friend I spoke to. A recently uncovered tape of her mom on Larry King Live appears to corroborate Reade’s claim that she was struggling in Biden’s office in 1993, but does not include an assault allegation. When I reconnected with the friend I spoke to last year, who had previously told me Biden had not assaulted Reade, she told me a version of the story that matched Reade’s latest account

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/7/21248713/t ... accusation

The obvious massive problem is this earlier account clearly does not remotely match with Reade's latest claim about Biden's behavior (or even how the event occurred such as supposedly in front of a bunch of people according to the earlier witness story) while the witness is now explicitly backing a version of what she was told matching Reade's new account. (So it can not even be explained by Reade merely heavily underplaying what happened to her when talking to the witness.)

Now perhaps you can try to match this with a scenario where the witness does not actually remember the details of what Reade told her in the past at all (although that would be weird if Reade had told her a US Senator digitally penetrated her and the witness can't remember that specific detail) but she assumed whatever Reade is currently claiming matches what she was told at the time, and Reade was not aware of how her friend was arbitrarily filling in her memories. On the other hand this would very much fit with a scenario where the witness is lying and was not able to keep her stories straight and Reade knew that the supposed witness account was false all along. At a minimum it does bring some further doubt on the validity of Reade's claim.

[The Romulan Republic]

So you think a logical explanation is that not only is Reade lying, but that multiple witnesses are lying on her behalf and in at least tacit coordination with her. And you apparently think this is a simpler, more plausible explanation than "human memory is sometimes fallible"?

Because that's what you appear to be suggesting here, if you conclude the witness is lying and that Reade is aware of it. And because there are other people who've corroborated Reade's account, you are implying a conspiracy beyond these two people. You are implying that all of them, together, are conspiring to slander one of the most powerful men in America, presumably (since Reade isn't asking for money and its past the point where he can be prosecuted) for political purposes.

If so, what do they get out of it? Reade has (like all women who allege rape in high profile cases) been subjected to doxing and death threats. She is literally endangering her life, as well as her reputation, just like every woman who ever alleges rape. If she were proven to have lied, she could probably also get in serious legal trouble for making a false police complaint (the one she made a few weeks ago to the DC police). What is the incentive for her to make it worth that level of risk? Perhaps she's just a really, really committed Bernie or Buster... but then why not allege the rape sooner, when it might have actually made a difference in the race? Why start out with just one more harassment claim?

Maybe someone put her up to it. But now we've widened the supposed conspiracy to even more people, creating a shadowy backer whole-cloth. And do you really imagine that "Is she being paid by Republicans/does she have ties to Russia?" wasn't the very first thing Biden's people and the pro-Biden press looked into about her? Do you imagine that they would sit on that if they could prove it? We've seen attempts at recruiting women to make false rape allegations against enemies of Trump before (ie, Mueller), and they were quickly exposed as such.

Also, what about the call to Larry King, which is unconfirmed but likely her mother? Was that also fabricated, way back in the 90s? Were the seeds of this conspiracy planted way back then, then left to lie until now?

And regardless of who is telling the truth, pragmatically speaking, I think Biden's defenders would be better served by not trying to attack Reade's credibility (Biden and his team, at least, seem largely smart enough to realize this). Witness testimony is a tricky thing because memory is unreliable. But for the very same reason that witness testimony is often not considered absolute proof, inconsistencies do not prove deliberate deceit, or that the story is completely fabricated. You will never be able to prove that Reade is lying about being raped. By trying, you mostly just end up invoking a lot of the usual "There's a contradiction! The woman is lying!" arguments which are basically standard rape apologia and have been for forever, and looking like a massive misogynist, and also a hypocrite if you've ever said a word in support of MeToo. There is no win for you in trying to attack Reade's character.

You want to defend Biden, then you need to do it by means other than the traditional "Attack the woman's character" defense for rape. Because that defense has a history, a very ugly one which you are now part of.

[The Romulan Republic]

New York appeals to cancel primary:

https://businessinsider.com/new-york-ap ... lot-2020-5

Democratic members of the New York Board of Elections have appealed Tuesday's court decision to reinstate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Democratic presidential primary ballot, once again fighting to prevent the election from taking place.

The appeal was filed Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.

The Democratic presidential primary, slated for June 23, was originally canceled in April. The state's election board said the coronavirus pandemic made in-person voting too dangerous.

On Tuesday, the cancelation was reversed after former presidential candidate Andrew Yang filed a lawsuit against the board.

The Sanders campaign decried the initial decision to end the election as "a blow to democracy." Though Sanders suspended his presidential campaign in April as former Vice President Joe Biden became the presumptive nominee, he remains on the ballot to continue to rack up delegates for the party's convention.

In her court ruling Tuesday, allowing the election to move forward, US District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan called the initial cancellation unconstitutional.

"If all but one of the presidential candidates are removed from the ballot and the primary is not held, Delegate Plaintiffs will be deprived of the opportunity to compete for delegate slots and shape the course of events at the Convention, and voters will lose the chance to express their support for delegates who share their views," Torres wrote. "The loss of these First Amendment rights is a heavy hardship."

Douglas Kellner, co-chairman of the board and one of the defendants in the lawsuit, said last month that there was no reason to hold the presidential primary, since Sen. Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign on April 8.

"What the Sanders supporters want is essentially a beauty contest that, given the situation with the public health emergency that exists now, seems to be unnecessary and, indeed, frivolous," Kellner said.

No other state has canceled its presidential primary, though dozens have postponed them.

The Sanders camp disagreed with Kellner, noting that other New York elections would still take place, including dozens of congressional and state-level elections. The state has also expanded absentee voting in the middle of the pandemic.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent Sanders surrogate, decried the decision on Twitter.

"This decision is not informed by public health: the state is still holding elections for every other seat that day," she wrote. "So far the only way your ballot will 100% be counted in NY is to vote in person!"

The New York Board of Elections did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

I have a bad feeling this is going to end up either dragging on until its too late to safely implement the primary, or until it ends up in front of the Roberts Supreme Court, which seems to pretty much always rule against voting rights.

[Omega18]

So you think a logical explanation is that not only is Reade lying, but that multiple witnesses are lying on her behalf and in at least tacit coordination with her. And you apparently think this is a simpler, more plausible explanation than "human memory is sometimes fallible"?

The problem is the witness claimed a clear memory to the reporter on what happened which can not possibly be matched with the later account. At an absolute minimum it appears the witness deceived the reporter about the clarity of his/her memories of the conversation which is a concern beyond merely having unclear memories. (If people claim they have clear memories, but actually are going to whatever Reade's current story is since they can't actually remember the conversation at all this is a problem.)

If so, what do they get out of it?

This frankly strikes me as a pretty silly question out of the bunch. There is a potentially really massive incentive to lie if you really feel strongly enough about the politics and you are talking about something like the Presidency which means it is far higher political stakes than other situations.

I already brought up the bogus claim against Obama for example, but just this week a nephew of Christine O'Donnell brought up a false claim regarding inappropriate conduct involving Biden with the former Republican Senate candidate also backing her as witnesses along with other witnesses, until it turned out to be impossible since Biden was not at the specific event they insisted this occurred in for multiple years while the nephew specifically claimed both the specific year and that she was 14 at the time.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/wo ... breasts-2/

The problem is the nephew's along with the witnesses claim of timing is utterly impossible since it has been established Biden was definitely not at the event, and it was impossible to have occurred a year earlier for example since Biden was campaigning in Iowa the whole day the event occurred.
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1257006356722323457

Basically in other words we have a clear example of people lying about this (in Christine O'Donnell's case claiming to be an eyewitness), or at least in other cases being told a false story by Murray apparently in the past, because in this case Biden simply was not at the event in question period.

In other words if you are saying it is impossible to get a few people to at least try to coordinate a false story, you are ignoring reality and plenty of cases where versions of this has happened. (Although I am not ruling out other scenarios including one in which Reade knows the specific witness does not remember what they discussed in the past, but will be willing to back the most recent damaging version out of loyalty if questioned, so she takes advantage of this while a couple other witnesses with stories that do not specifically back a rape accusation specifically may be accurately telling what they remember Reade discussing with them.)

One other possibility is doing so out of misplaced loyalty to Reade as a friend or for example brother. (Particularly with the friend he/she might believe Reade's basic story is true and by falsely claiming to have been told this in the past he/her is merely helping the rest of the world believe the real truth even if your personal claim is untrue.)

By the way, someone if not almost certainly multiple people at Biden's office definitely have to be lying if Reade's specific claims she has given about how she filed a complaint with the office are true. I would not rule that out that possibility in isolation, but it does come across as relevant if your argument is basically multiple people could not possibly be lying.

Also, what about the call to Larry King, which is unconfirmed but likely her mother? Was that also fabricated, way back in the 90s? Were the seeds of this conspiracy planted way back then, then left to lie until now?

The thing is the Larry King interview does not even mention what the issue was or even with whom. It also actually seems to if anything point against a specific rape claim because " she chose not to do it out of respect for him" is not the kind of thing you expect to be the case after a case of rape. Now you can argue Reade reacted strangely at the time like some other rape victims sometimes do or her mother was misstating her motives, but it still inherently does not seem to fit well with an actual rape case. Now I think it is plausible something like Reade's original accusation was accurate, but when it became clear Biden was not going to be sunk by the accusation and other issues and looked like Democratic front-runner, she embellished her account which is why her original account fits better with some of the evidence which has come out.

And regardless of who is telling the truth, pragmatically speaking, I think Biden's defenders would be better served by not trying to attack Reade's credibility

You're taking an unreasonable and frankly ugly position yourself which will given people free license to take down political candidates in the future if a few details line up and they are willing to make a false claim of rape. (I.E. someone else sexually harassed you in the Senator's/ other type of politicians office and you talked to a couple people but kept it vague who did this and precisely what they did, and can now find 2 additional people motivated to outright lie about what you told them in the past for political or other motives.) Since usually rape accusations come down to mostly one person's word against another, the idea you can't actually evaluate their credibility is ridiculous and makes it basically impossible for most who are falsely accused to clear their name or even attempt to. In cases (regardless of the specific type of accusation or dispute) where it is about eyewitness testimony and only two people were at the event in question, it is always going to come down to credibility if forensics or similar evidence is not available. I.E. if two people are suing each other over a verbal contract which would be legally valid if one individual's claim is true, obviously each side is going to be trying to attack the other's credibility if what was agreed to is in dispute.

It should be explicitly emphasized again that Reade indisputably deceived the public concerning what specifically did or did not occur between her and Biden, the only question is when and how many times this occurred. If you read the Vox reporter's story, this is another person Reade specifically told the older version of her story to a year ago, so it is not a matter of Reade chickening out or being misunderstood once when explaining what happened to her with respect to Biden in the past. The absolutely most favorable scenario is Reade was afraid she would not be believed, so she intentionally altered her story to make it more easily believable since it fit with the story of other accusers, but this still means she intentionally deceived people which should reasonably make it harder to trust her now. When you have multiple supposed to be supporting witnesses saying things that don't match with Reade's last account or in one case dramatically changing what they are claiming Reade told her in the past in about a year, this should also be relevant evidence which should be considered. You may not like this reality, but the idea you can never question the credibility of a rape accuser is going to clearly lead to ridiculous outcomes if this truly always always applied.

[The Romulan Republic]

Ken Buck, Congressperson and Chair of the Republican Party in Colorado just got caught on audio ordering a party official to illegally report false election results in a State Senate primary:

https://salon.com/2020/05/08/top-colora ... ked-audio/

US. Rep. Ken Buck, who is also the chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, was captured ordering a local party official to report false election results in a primary race for a state Senate seat in a leaked audio recording released earlier this week.

Eli Bremer, the Republican chairman for state Senate District 10, alleged to The Denver Post that Buck had tried to "bully" him into violating the law.

"You've got a sitting congressman — a sitting state party chair — who is trying to bully a volunteer — I'm a volunteer; I don't get paid for this — into committing a crime," he said. "To say it's damning is an understatement."

Buck told the outlet that he had simply asked Bremer to "abide by a committee decision."

The state Senate Republican primary pitted state Rep. Larry Liston against GOP activist David Stiver. The candidates needed at least 30% of the primary vote in order to qualify for the general election. Liston got 75%, and Stiver received just 24%.

Buck told The Denver Post that Stiver claimed the election was "unfair," and the state central committee agreed. The committee voted to put Stiver on the November ballot, even though he had failed to reach the 30% threshold.

Buck later asked Bremer in a recorded call obtained by The Denver Post if he would comply with the decision. The recording was released Wednesday.

"Do you understand the order of the executive committee and the central committee that you will submit the paperwork to include Mr. Stiver and Mr. Liston on the ballot, with Mr. Liston receiving the top-line vote?" Buck said in the recording.

"Uh, yes, sir. I understand the central committee has adopted a resolution that requires me to sign a false affidavit to the state," Bremer responded.

"And will you do so?" Buck asked.

"I will seek legal counsel, as I am being asked to sign an affidavit that states Mr. Stiver received 30% of the vote," Bremer said. "I need to seek legal counsel to find out if I am putting myself in jeopardy of a misdemeanor for doing that. "

"And you understand that it is the order of the central committee that you do so?" Buck pressed.

"I will consult with counsel. Yes, sir. I understand the central committee has ordered me to sign an affidavit stating that a candidate got 30% who did not," Bremer said. "And I will seek legal counsel and determine if I am legally able to follow that."

Buck, who has repeatedly pushed bogus allegations of voter fraud by Democrats, claimed to The Post that he was not asking Bremer to commit a crime.

"What I was asking Eli to do was not to commit fraud. I was asking Eli if he understood the decision of the central committee and if he was willing to follow the request of the Republican central committee," he said. "It wasn't like I was asking him to do something because I have a personal stake in the process."

Buck argued that the primary, which was held as the coronavirus spread across the state, was "unfair."

Bremer said that he never filed the paperwork but was hit with a "friendly lawsuit" from the district's vice chair three days later that would prevent the office from having to comply with the committee's decision.

District Court Chief Judge Michael Martinez ruled Monday that the request made by Buck and the committee would violate the law, because Stiver failed to reach the legally required threshold. The state's Republican Party sought to appeal the ruling, but the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear the case.

Experts slammed Buck's efforts after the ruling.

"There are plenty of examples within Colorado and elsewhere of party leaders pressuring subordinates to sort of fudge results or to change their views on things, but it's very rare you see someone directly ordering someone to commit a crime," Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver, told The Post. "This is something his colleagues probably don't think highly of — but I can't imagine it's about to flip his district blue or anything like that."

Joe Webb, the former chairman of the Jefferson County Republican Party, which includes District 10, said he was furious at Buck's request.

"Eli was being asked — and this is very serious — to attest to something as true when he knew it was false," Webb said. "There's a word for that in the legal jargon — it's called perjury."

Bremer called for Buck to apologize for allegedly trying to pressure him to violate the law.

"How in the heck is the Republican Party going to go out and say, 'We're for the rule of law except when it applies to us' — we can do whatever we want to?" he said. "That's not my Republican Party."

[Gandalf]

And your point is?

Sorry for the slow reply. Stuff is nuts right now.

The LP's main stated issue is that Trump is a danger to the sainted US constitution, which is fair enough. But they don't go into a whole lot more detail.

Given the resumes of the founders has various GOP party luminaries, most notably Steve Schmidt, I'm left wondering if they were similarly bothered by such extraconstutional excesses when the Bush junta was a thing. If they've grown in the time since, then that's awesome, and I applaud that wholeheartedly. But if they haven't changed those core beliefs, then it just looks like a bunch of people who are grumpy that it's not "their guy" in the limelight, which has left them on the outer of the party.

I get that Trump era Republicanism has people looking back to GWB with rose glasses on, but best not to forget the guy who invaded a country for the benefit of oil companies.

[Darth Yan]

There is that. People also looked back fondly on Ian Smith because Mugabe was a monster even though Smith was a white supremacist asshole

[The Romulan Republic]

I get that Trump era Republicanism has people looking back to GWB with rose glasses on, but best not to forget the guy who invaded a country for the benefit of oil companies.

And, see, lines like this are where I stop taking you seriously.

"Iraq was just for oil" is an oversimplistic reduction. There were likely several major reasons for the war: Bush and company wanting to finish the job his father started, profit for both oil companies and the military-industrial complex in general, possibly a move to counter Iran, spreading American values, probably some Christian neo-crusader sentiment from some of the more Bible belt types, maybe even hoping that a successful war would boost Bush's reelection prospects, if you're cynical enough... Most or all of the reasons are bad reasons, but its a bit more complicated than the simplified pop culture narrative of "Blood for oil".

Do note that I am NOT defending the decision to invade- it was a needless war sold to the public on lies (and then incompetently conducted at best). But I do think the reasons for it were more complex than you're acknowledging, and that reducing the causes to a one-line protest slogan simply encourages oversimplification and damages your own credibility.

[Darth Yan]

Again that is true. Gandalf as a whole seems to have rather strident opinions about the US.

[Soontir C'boath]

Do note that I am NOT defending the decision to invade- it was a needless war sold to the public on lies (and then incompetently conducted at best). But I do think the reasons for it were more complex than you're acknowledging, and that reducing the causes to a one-line protest slogan simply encourages oversimplification and damages your own credibility.

Bruh, seriously?

[Dalton]

And your point is?

Sorry for the slow reply. Stuff is nuts right now.

The LP's main stated issue is that Trump is a danger to the sainted US constitution, which is fair enough. But they don't go into a whole lot more detail.

Given the resumes of the founders has various GOP party luminaries, most notably Steve Schmidt, I'm left wondering if they were similarly bothered by such extraconstutional excesses when the Bush junta was a thing. If they've grown in the time since, then that's awesome, and I applaud that wholeheartedly. But if they haven't changed those core beliefs, then it just looks like a bunch of people who are grumpy that it's not "their guy" in the limelight, which has left them on the outer of the party.

I get that Trump era Republicanism has people looking back to GWB with rose glasses on, but best not to forget the guy who invaded a country for the benefit of oil companies.

I've read both of Rick Wilson's books. In them he takes ownership for smoothing the path for monsters like Trump. I think after a lot of soul-searching they've started to learn. The LP has endorsed Biden. They didn't do that for shits and giggles.

[The Romulan Republic]

Do note that I am NOT defending the decision to invade- it was a needless war sold to the public on lies (and then incompetently conducted at best). But I do think the reasons for it were more complex than you're acknowledging, and that reducing the causes to a one-line protest slogan simply encourages oversimplification and damages your own credibility.

Bruh, seriously?

Was that supposed to be a response? Oh, right, I forgot empty mockery is the inevitable go-to of trolls with nothing to say.

But you're right, I guess I should have reduced the causes and motives of a major historical event to a one-line protest slogan like Gandalf in order to demonstrate my ideological purity.

Or maybe recognize that insisting "The Iraq War was completely and entirely about oil and absolutely no other factors" is not taking a strong anti-war position. Its just being a simple-minded idiot who's substituted protest slogans for actual history and ignoring the many other factors which ALSO drive American militarism. Understanding something is not the same as condoning it, and those who do not recognize the multiple causes of American militarism cannot mount a cogent argument against it.

Edit: By the way, I just love how you cut out half my post, including all the other reasons for the war I listed. Maybe next time quote the whole thing instead of shamelessly lying by omission.

[Gandalf]

Before I address the rest of your points, I need to ask; why do you state that I'm trying to demonstrate some sort of ideological purity? It's not the first thread in which you've done it, and curiosity is building.

[The Romulan Republic]

Before I address the rest of your points, I need to ask; why do you state that I'm trying to demonstrate some sort of ideological purity? It's not the first thread in which you've done it, and curiosity is building.

My point was more that people see me as pro-war, or not really Left-wing, because I don't take as simplistic a position on the war as you do. And so I was trying to ridicule that.

I do think some of your positions, shall we say, lack nuance. For example your constant refrain of how Trump isn't really different from any other American government.

[Dalton]

TRR, dude, really, chill out.

[The Romulan Republic]

Polling shows Biden's lead is the most stable on record:

https://cnn.com/2020/05/10/politics/bid ... index.html

(CNN)Poll of the week: A new Monmouth University poll finds that former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump 50% to 41%. When Rep. Justin Amash is included as the Libertarian Party candidate, it's Biden 47%, Trump 40% and Amash 5%.

The poll is largely in line with the average poll since April that puts Biden 6 points ahead of Trump nationally.

What's the point: Biden's lead is about as steady as it can possibly be. Not only is he up 6 points over the last month or so, but the average of polls since the beginning of the year has him ahead by 6 points. Moreover, all the polls taken since the beginning of 2019 have him up 6 points.

The steadiness in the polls is record breaking. Biden's advantage is the steadiest in a race with an incumbent running since at least 1944. That could mean it'll be harder to change the trajectory of the race going forward, though this remains more than close enough that either candidate could easily win.

To know this, I went back and looked at how all the national polls deviated from each other during January to early May of the election year.

This year, 95% of all the individual polls so far have shown a result within 6 points of the average. That's basically what you'd expect if you took a lot of polls and the race wasn't moving (i.e. the only shifts are statistical noise from sampling). It's a ridiculously small range historically speaking.

The previous low for a similarly constructed 95% confidence interval was 8 points (2012). The median cycle featured a 95% interval of 13 points from the average of polls. In other words, about double the range of the polls we have seen so far in 2020.

Sometimes, of course, the range of results can be even wider than the median cycle. Lyndon Johnson had anywhere from about a 35-point advantage to a more than 60-point lead over Barry Goldwater in the early months of 1964. Jimmy Carter opened 1980 with a 30-point or greater lead in some of the polls over Ronald Reagan. By early May, his lead was down to single digits, and he even trailed Reagan in a few polls.

The 1964, 1980 and 2004 campaigns are of particular interest because they both had shocks to the system within a few months of the beginning of the election year. John Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Iranians took Americans hostage in November 1979 and the US captured Saddam Hussein in December 2003. The first two were especially volatile, while 2004 saw some change. George W. Bush's polling edge climbed into the double digits and sometimes north of 15 points in early January 2004. By the end of April, he was trading leads with John Kerry.

This year, we've seen pretty much none of those shifts in the national polls, even as we've had a once-in-a-lifetime health pandemic. That might make you doubt that the polls will move a lot going forward in 2020.

Indeed, there does seem to be some relationship between early poll movement and how well the early polling predicts the results. In cycles with smaller than normal early movement, the average difference between the polls during those four months and the final results has been 5 points. In cycles with larger than normal early movement, the average difference between the polls during that time and the final result has been 14 points.

In other words, it would fit prior patterns if the polls right now are generally close to the results. This matches what you would expect, given that more voters hold a strong view of Trump than any other incumbent since at least 1980 (when the question was first asked), as I have previously noted.

The obvious catch here is that a 5-point difference between where the polls have been and the November result could be huge this year. Biden's up by only 6 nationally on average. A 5-point shift in Trump's direction would mean a 1-point win by Biden in the popular vote. This could very much leave him on the wrong side of a popular vote and electoral college split. Remember, Trump lost by 2 points nationally in 2016 and still pulled out a victory in the electoral college.

And we're just talking about the average here. The 1956 campaign, which saw limited shifts early, had Democrat Adlai Stevenson doing 10 points better than his early polling pegged him.

The bottom line is that while steadiness in the 2020 race so far projects forward to minimal movement from here on out, it doesn't in any way guarantee Biden a win. There's still a range of results possible.

Hard to imagine a 5-point shift in Trump's favor with coronavirus and recession on-going, but I suppose stranger things have happened.

Also of note here is that Amash does appear to hurt Biden more than Trump-but not by enough to change much, unless its really close. I would be curious to know how the picture changes if Ventura as Green candidate is added in as well.

Also of interest, one of the links in the article is about how the Democrats are now narrowly favored to win the Senate. Honestly, getting Moscow Mitch out as majority leader would be almost as satisfying, and almost as beneficial to the country, as unseating the Donald.