The Race For 2024

[Elixir]

In round figures, I'll guess that the probabilities over a partition of future cases are roughly as follows:

• 2% . . . . Biden drops out, Trump loses
• 15% . . . . Biden wins decisively
• 10% . . . . Biden wins a very close election, riots are subdued
• 14% . . . . Biden wins a very close election, severe riots ensue
• 4% . . . . Biden wins a very close election, a sort of Civil War follows
• 2% . . . . similar to preceding but Trump would have won w/o RFK
• 14% . . . . Trump wins (Biden would have won w/o RFK)
• 17% . . .. Trump wins in a close election (Biden wins popular vote)
• 10% . . . . Trump wins (close popular vote)
• 5% . . . . Trump wins, and wins popular vote
• 2% . . . . Biden drops out, Trump wins
• 2% . . . . Nikki Haley wins
• 3% . . . . Other

Disclaimer: I spent several minutes trying to make reasonable guesstimates I might be satisfied with. But I've no doubt the estimates have many flaws. I appeal to fellow Infidels to help improve these guesses.

Close what? Electoral count, presumably, since Trump will almost certainly lose the popular vote, maybe by 10+ million even if he “wins”.

 

[TomC]

In round figures, I'll guess that the probabilities over a partition of future cases are roughly as follows:

• 2% . . . . Biden drops out, Trump loses
• 15% . . . . Biden wins decisively
• 10% . . . . Biden wins a very close election, riots are subdued
• 14% . . . . Biden wins a very close election, severe riots ensue
• 4% . . . . Biden wins a very close election, a sort of Civil War follows
• 2% . . . . similar to preceding but Trump would have won w/o RFK
• 14% . . . . Trump wins (Biden would have won w/o RFK)
• 17% . . .. Trump wins in a close election (Biden wins popular vote)
• 10% . . . . Trump wins (close popular vote)
• 5% . . . . Trump wins, and wins popular vote
• 2% . . . . Biden drops out, Trump wins
• 2% . . . . Nikki Haley wins
• 3% . . . . Other

Disclaimer: I spent several minutes trying to make reasonable guesstimates I might be satisfied with. But I've no doubt the estimates have many flaws. I appeal to fellow Infidels to help improve these guesses.

Close what? Electoral count, presumably, since Trump will almost certainly lose the popular vote, maybe by 10+ million even if he “wins”.

I wish I were that confident.

Putin and the Teaparty and the Muslim terrorists are all busy undermining democracy in the USA. And it looks to me like they're winning. Trump is still a chart topper for the POTUS in this year's election. And even if he loses both the popular vote and the Electoral College, he's got a bunch of violent people who don't care and will start a civil war to get their way.
And the SCOTUS, and Aileen Cannon, and the majority in Congress, and billionaires...
Tom

 

[Derec]

In round figures, I'll guess that the probabilities over a partition of future cases are roughly as follows:

• 2% . . . . Biden drops out, Trump loses
• 15% . . . . Biden wins decisively
• 10% . . . . Biden wins a very close election, riots are subdued
• 15% . . . . Biden wins a very close election, severe riots ensue
• 3% . . . . Biden wins a very close election, a sort of Civil War follows
• 2% . . . . similar to preceding but Trump would have won w/o RFK
• 14% . . . . Trump wins (Biden would have won w/o RFK)
• 17% . . .. Trump wins in a close election (Biden wins popular vote)
• 10% . . . . Trump wins (close popular vote)
• 5% . . . . Trump wins, and wins popular vote
• 2% . . . . Biden drops out, Trump wins
• 2% . . . . Nikki Haley wins
• 3% . . . . Other

Disclaimer: I spent several minutes trying to make reasonable guesstimates I might be satisfied with. But I've no doubt the estimates have many flaws. I appeal to fellow Infidels to help improve these guesses.

You do not foresee "severe riots"/"a sort of Civil War" if Trump were to win a close election? Even after all the rioting (aka "fiery but mostly peaceful protesting" according to CNN Newspeak) by the Antifa/#BLM in 2020?

And even if he loses both the popular vote and the Electoral College, he's got a bunch of violent people who don't care and will start a civil war to get their way.

To be fair, so does the left. We have seen that during the 2020 riots. We have seen it with their tactics against the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center (aka Cop City) that involved arson, shooting a state trooper, and other violence. We have seen it in Portland, where police cars were set ablaze because the Left was upset over police being called on anti-Israel protestors.

 

[lpetrich]

I have no comment on Swammerdami's probability estimates, since I have no clue as to how they were obtained.

Welcome To The ‘Turbulent Twenties’ - NOEMA - September 10, 2020 - Jack A. Goldstone and Peter Turchin
noting
A bipartisan group secretly gathered to game out a contested Trump-Biden election. It wasn’t pretty - The Boston Globe

“All of our scenarios ended in both street-level violence and political impasse,” said Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and former Defense Department official who co-organized the group known as the Transition Integrity Project. She described what they found in bleak terms: “The law is essentially ... it’s almost helpless against a president who’s willing to ignore it.”

Especially someone who never seems to run out of money for litigation when challenged on his misdeeds.

Using a role-playing game that is a fixture of military and national security planning, the group envisioned a dark 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day, one in which Trump and his Republican allies used every apparatus of government — the Postal Service, state lawmakers, the Justice Department, federal agents, and the military — to hold onto power, and Democrats took to the courts and the streets to try to stop it.

The Trump Admin didn't quite go that far, however. It was content with filing 62 lawsuits -  Post-election lawsuits related to the 2020 U.S. presidential election - despite losing almost all of them. But then came the counting of the electoral votes on January 6, 2021, and Donald Trump invited his followers to attack the US Capitol. It was a very unexpected sort of move.

They warn:

A close election this fall is likely to be contested, and there are few guardrails to stop a constitutional crisis, particularly if Trump flexes the considerable tools at his disposal to give himself an advantage.

Tools that are now in the Biden Admin's hands, but Joe Biden is a firm institutionalist.

“He doesn’t have to win the election,” said Nils Gilman, a historian who leads research at a think tank called the Berggruen Institute and was an organizer of the exercise. “He just has to create a plausible narrative that he didn’t lose.”

So he did, with his Big Lie. Then about Donald Trump calling mail-in ballots an enabler of election fraud. When asked if he will accept the election results, he told Chris Wallace of Fox News “I’ll have to see.”

To some participants, the game was a stark reminder of the power of incumbency. “The more demonstrations there were, the more demands for recounts, the more legal challenges there were, the more funerals for democracy were held, the more Trump came across as the candidate of stability,” said Edward Luce, the US editor of the Financial Times, who played the role of a mainstream media reporter during one of the simulations. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

This time, it's Joe Biden who's the incumbent.

In multiple scenarios, officials on both sides homed in on narrowly decided swing states with divided governments, such Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, hoping to persuade officials there to essentially send two different results to Congress. If a state’s election is disputed, a legislature controlled by one party and governor of another each could send competing slates of electors backing their party’s candidate.

That didn't happen, but Trump's campaigners tried to recruit some slates of fake electors.

Both sides turned out massive street protests that Trump sought to control — in one scenario he invoked the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use military forces to quell unrest. The scenario that began with a narrow Biden win ended with Trump refusing to leave the White House, burning government documents, and having to be escorted out by the Secret Service. (The team playing Biden in that scenario, meanwhile, sought to patch things up with Republicans by appointing moderate Republican governors, including Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, to Cabinet positions.)

Trump didn't go this far, however.

As to the Jan. 6 attacks, I recall that some anti-Trump activists decided to stay home because they didn't want a fight with the Trumpies that Trump invited to DC on that day. They didn't want some pretext for a police / National-Guard crackdown, even if they were the ones attacked.

The scenario that produced the most contentious dynamics, however, was the one in which Trump won the Electoral College — and thus, the election — but Biden won the popular vote by 5 percentage points. Biden’s team retracted his Election Night concession, fueled by Democrats angry at losing yet another election despite capturing the popular vote, as happened in 2000 and 2016. In the mock election, Trump sought to divide Democrats — at one point giving an interview to The Intercept, a left-leaning news outlet, saying Senator Bernie Sanders would have won if Democrats had nominated him. Meanwhile, Biden’s team sought to encourage large Western states to secede unless pro-Democracy reforms were made.

 

[lpetrich]

Presidential candidate RFK Jr had a brain worm, has recovered, campaign says | Reuters

ndependent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.

Citing a 12-year-old deposition, the Times said Kennedy stated that a doctor had told him an abnormality on his brain scan "was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died."

Kennedy "traveled extensively in Africa, South America, and Asia in his work as an environmental advocate, and in one of those locations contracted a parasite," Kennedy spokeswoman Stefanie Spear told Reuters.

"The issue was resolved more than 10 years ago, and he is in robust physical and mental health," she said.

 

[lpetrich]

But what kind of brain worm? A common speculation is the larval cysts of the pork tapeworm, Taenia solium.

An adult tapeworm lives in the intestines of a human host, releasing segments with eggs - taeniasis - and it usually makes mild or non-specific symptoms. With poor sanitation, pigs may end up eating some of these eggs. In the stomach, they hatch, and they head to the muscles where they make cysticerci (sg. cysticercus) for themselves. They can survive for several years in that form. When one of us eats some undercooked pork with a cysticercus, it hatches and makes a small adult tapeworm in our intestine. It then grows and releases egg segments.

What can happen to a pig can happen to us, and we may get cysticerci in our muscles - cysticercosis - though we don't usually notice them. But a tapeworm larva may decide to reside in our brains - neurocysticercosis - and that may have happened to RFK Jr. It doesn't eat our brains, just pushes a bit of it aside, and it can cause headaches, dizziness, and/or seizures.

 

[barbos]

I heard that brain worm had better rating than Biden, is that true?

 

[Swammerdami]

You do not foresee "severe riots"/"a sort of Civil War" if Trump were to win a close election? Even after all the rioting (aka "fiery but mostly peaceful protesting" according to CNN Newspeak) by the Antifa/#BLM in 2020?

Your information sources are so severely flawed that it boggles the mind. 57% of GOPsters still think Trump won the 2020 election. Many top GOP politicians pretend to believe this also.

The attempted J6 coup was by Republican Trumplickers. Democrats simply do not do such things. Political or racist violence, disrespect for the Constitution and for democracy, raw stupidity encouraged by their leaders -- These are all Republican traits.

In another recent post you wrote some garbage like "Kyle Rittenhouse ... self-defense ... End of story." It is unusually stupid, even for you, to believe that's the whole story. Kyle was an immature brat who was gifted an assault rifle while still a teeny-bopper, an "actual" child. He then went out to play vigilante. @Derec -- Do you think these acts were appropriate? Acquittal might have been appropriate, but that doesn't make the gift or Kyle's behavior proper. To write "End of story" as you did is hogwash. Kyle is now a right-wing celebrity; while Tamar Rice -- the "actual" child with a toy gun -- is dead -- a murder-by-cops that I suppose you supported.

I thin it's fair to call Kyle a right-winger. In your understanding, I suppose you treat AOC and MTG as "same-same." But rational observers are quite aware that there is a HUGE gap today between the behavior of Redshirts and Blueshirts.

At one point, the "go-to" example for Antifa misbehavior was the video showing the petite Yvette Felarca pushing a big strong Nazi with the palm of her hand and being charged with assault.

Your comment is so imbecilic I'll celebrate it by using a larger font:

You do not foresee "severe riots"/"a sort of Civil War" if Trump were to win a close election? Even after all the rioting (aka "fiery but mostly peaceful protesting" according to CNN Newspeak) by the Antifa/#BLM in 2020?

No, I do not "foresee" such a hugely unlikely result.

 

[Swammerdami]

I have no comment on Swammerdami's probability estimates, since I have no clue as to how they were obtained.

They are simply my off-the-cuff "guestimates," though I use the "predictions" at Polymarket as a starting point.
The current numbers there aren't happy to look at: 47% to 45% Trump's favor. The numbers at Betfair are even worse: 48½% vs 39½%. And those are the chances Trump actually wins the electoral vote. There is also a big chance that a narrow Biden win will plunge the country into chaos. Fascism may be coming to America very soon.

"Fascism" is a word whose very definition is controversial. I gained insight about this word when I read Madeleine Albright's so-titled book, though the following is not anything she specifically said.

The Italian word "Fascio" means "Bundle." Both Mussolini and Hitler bundled together rich and poor, left and right. This bundling therefore is NOT ideological -- it is based on the adoration of a cult figure. Despite that the semi-literate Trump is pitifully inept in many ways compared with Mussolini and Hitler, Trumpism is clearly a brand of Fascism.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Even after all the rioting (aka "fiery but mostly peaceful protesting" according to CNN Newspeak) by the Antifa/#BLM in 2020?

That was because of race related frustration, which was amplified by the Global Pandemic. Those protests weren't partisan. The damage was also not partisan.

We have seen it with their tactics against the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center (aka Cop City) that involved arson, shooting a state trooper, and other violence. We have seen it in Portland, where police cars were set ablaze because the Left was upset over police being called on anti-Israel protestors.

Trump won, there weren't riots by the Left. Trump lost, there was a riot after Trump (among others) incited violence in one of his last acts as President. The main difference between 2016 and 2020, the loser of the election accepted that they lost in 2016, while the guy who knew he lost in 2020 tried to overthrow the results and conspired with many to do so.

 

[TSwizzle]

Trump won, there weren't riots by the Left.

No but there was much gnashing of teeth. And Madonna wanted to blow up the Whitehouse. And who can forget the laughable "pussy hat" nonsense?



Hilarious!!

 

[Harry Bosch]

Trump won, there weren't riots by the Left.

No but there was much gnashing of teeth. And Madonna wanted to blow up the Whitehouse. And who can forget the laughable "pussy hat" nonsense?



Hilarious!!

One women screaming is all you got!?? The big deal here is that Trump tried to overturn the election. The fake electors scheme was a plan to overthrow the electoral college. As an aside, I actually don't like the EC either. I'd far rather have a majority vote system. Our existing voting system is too slow, not transparent enough, not uniform. I'd be in favor of election reform. However, if we reform the system, it should be done BEFORE the election! Not after.

 

[ZiprHead]

I'd far rather have a majority vote system.

So would Donald Trump. He keeps saying he got more votes than Biden.

At least he should support it if that's what he truuly believes.

 

[Derec]

But what kind of brain worm? A common speculation is the larval cysts of the pork tapeworm, Taenia solium.

That would be this guy.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Trump won, there weren't riots by the Left.

No but there was much gnashing of teeth.

Yeah. There was gnashing of teeth, lost sleep, etc... but no riot. There was a riot when Trump refused to publicly admit defeat, well actually he publicly claimed the election was stolen.

The goalposts keep shifting, I have no idea where they are now.

 

[TSwizzle]

Trump won, there weren't riots by the Left.

No but there was much gnashing of teeth. And Madonna wanted to blow up the Whitehouse. And who can forget the laughable "pussy hat" nonsense?



Hilarious!!

One women screaming is all you got!??

It's not a case of "all I got", I'm just pointing out the general hysteria over Trumps win by many, particularly the luvvies in Hollywood who threatened to leave the USA and I don't think any of them followed through on that. And all the dullards that showed up outside the White House in their silly "pussy hats".

The big deal here is that Trump tried to overturn the election.

The important thing to try to remember here is that he was unsuccessful.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Trump won, there weren't riots by the Left.

No but there was much gnashing of teeth. And Madonna wanted to blow up the Whitehouse. And who can forget the laughable "pussy hat" nonsense?



Hilarious!!

One women screaming is all you got!??

It's not a case of "all I got", I'm just pointing out the general hysteria over Trumps win by many, particularly the luvvies in Hollywood who threatened to leave the USA and I don't think any of them followed through on that. And all the dullards that showed up outside the White House in their silly "pussy hats".

The big deal here is that Trump tried to overturn the election.

The important thing to try to remember here is that he was unsuccessful.

Thats about the worse excuse for a crime that I've ever heard! But do you think that after having failed to overturn the election the first time, that he'd equally fail the second the time?

 

[TSwizzle]

Trump won, there weren't riots by the Left.

No but there was much gnashing of teeth.

Yeah. There was gnashing of teeth, lost sleep, etc... but no riot.

A couple of dozen people went walk about in the Capitol building. Mostly peaceful so I would say, not really a riot.

There was a riot when Trump refused to publicly admit defeat, well actually he publicly claimed the election was stolen.

He says a lot of daft shit. So does Brandon.

 

[TSwizzle]

Trump won, there weren't riots by the Left.

No but there was much gnashing of teeth. And Madonna wanted to blow up the Whitehouse. And who can forget the laughable "pussy hat" nonsense?



Hilarious!!

One women screaming is all you got!??

It's not a case of "all I got", I'm just pointing out the general hysteria over Trumps win by many, particularly the luvvies in Hollywood who threatened to leave the USA and I don't think any of them followed through on that. And all the dullards that showed up outside the White House in their silly "pussy hats".

The big deal here is that Trump tried to overturn the election.

The important thing to try to remember here is that he was unsuccessful.

Thats about the worse excuse for a crime that I've ever heard!

Crime? What crime? Committed by who?

But do you think that after having failed to overturn the election the first time, that he'd equally fail the second the time?

Yes, of course he would fail.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Trump won, there weren't riots by the Left.

No but there was much gnashing of teeth. And Madonna wanted to blow up the Whitehouse. And who can forget the laughable "pussy hat" nonsense?



Hilarious!!

One women screaming is all you got!??

It's not a case of "all I got", I'm just pointing out the general hysteria over Trumps win by many, particularly the luvvies in Hollywood who threatened to leave the USA and I don't think any of them followed through on that. And all the dullards that showed up outside the White House in their silly "pussy hats".

The big deal here is that Trump tried to overturn the election.

The important thing to try to remember here is that he was unsuccessful.

Thats about the worse excuse for a crime that I've ever heard!

Crime? What crime? Committed by who?

But do you think that after having failed to overturn the election the first time, that he'd equally fail the second the time?

Yes, of course he would fail.

Oh gotcha! You didn't know about the fake electors scheme? Check out:

What you need to know about the fake Trump electors

Several weeks after the 2020 election, groups of electors gathered in state Capitols to sign certificates affirming whic

www.politifact.com

When Trump took office in 2016, he took an oath to follow the constitution. And yet he clearly violated in the above. Why should we believe that he'd follow it the second time?