Garland was only a small part of it. And he probably knew that any case he brought would ultimately lose in the SCOTUS. That's why the Biden administration went along withe the kangaroo court cases in state courts, only to shoot themselves in the foot politically with their lawfare.
And Democrat blunders went far beyond that. Otherwise, Kamala would not have lost so decisively, which I bet surprised even you, Leo.
@Thinkerbell "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and few find it." Matthew 7:13-14
@Thinkerbell I wouldn't call losing 49 to 51% "decisively." The EC makes it look worse than it is. A "decisive" loss was McGovern's in 1972 or Mondale's in 1984. We're never going to see numbers like that again.
The swing state polls were all within the margin of error, and as it turns out, the margin was in Trump's direction. I never said she was going to win; I said it would be a tossup. I admit that I was fooled by the last-minute Selzer poll. So much for her being the gold standard of Iowa polling. I'd love to hear her explanation for how she screwed up that much.
How likely is it that a fair coin will come up heads seven times in seven tosses, Leo?
The chances of that are about .0078, less than 1%. Sounds pretty decisive to me. If a baseball team wins the World Series in four straight games, isn't that a decisive win? And the probability of that happening is about 6%, considerably higher than Trump winning all 7 swing states.
And Trump also won the national popular vote, another unlikely occurrence. And worst of all for Democrats, it stifled one of their favorite talking points.
Allan Lichtman said it was "the billionaires" that threw off his prediction. 🙄
@Thinkerbell Again, the polls underestimated Trump's support. However, no one will take Lichtman seriously again. Is he going to add "billionaires" to his keys? My own view is that Key #5, the economy isn't in recession, isn't the right way to look at it. Yes, the stock market is setting records and unemployment is low, but housing costs are out of control and the perception is that inflation is terrible because grocery store prices haven't gone down. It doesn't mean much to tell someone whose rent went up 50% from a few years ago and is paying $7 for a box of Wheaties "but prices aren't going up as fast as they were." So that key needs to be adjusted.
#10 also needs to be reevaluated. No, we're not in a foreign war, but fairly or not, Biden is blamed for Ukraine and Gaza because they occurred on his watch. So maybe change that to "foreign wars that the current administration is blamed for."
I'm also not sure about #13. No, Trump isn't a charismatic figure like JFK or Reagan, but he is very charismatic to his followers, more so than past Republicans like McCain and Romney who didn't have anywhere near the same level of appeal to their voters. Maybe change that to a "charisma gap," like comparing Clinton to George H.W. Bush.
It should be a concern that Trump ran so far ahead of other Republicans. Many voters marked Trump and left the rest of the ballot blank. In Arizona, Trump got 165,000 more votes than Kari Lake. That wasn't just vote splitting. It raises the question of whether these people will vote at all if Trump isn't on the ballot.
51% to 49% isn't a mandate. Trump didn't increase his support; Harris lost support. We can blame people staying home because of Gaza or inflation or just not being inspired. The Democrats have a deep bench, and will have a full-on knock-down drag-out primary in 2028. The last time that happened was 2008. You guys were right - it was a mistake to anoint candidates like Hillary, Biden, and Harris. I thought a brokered convention would have been a mistake, but if Harris had emerged as the victor out of that, I think she would have been in a stronger position.
" However, no one will take Lichtman seriously again."
Knock-knock. "Who's there?" "Lichtman." "Lichtman who?" "See, you forgot him already."
Political Science ranks even lower than Economics, the original 'dismal science.'
I agree with your points. But Kamala was never presidential material (nor was Walz) in the first place. Biden ultimately painted the Democrats into a corner when he made that deal with Clyburn to save his floundering primary campaign in 2020.
@LeopoldBloom when the polls are skewed to the democrats side of the spectrum it will always underestimate the republicans, if you look at most the polls they poll dems at a higher rate. What they did was underestimate the black male and Hispanic votes, you can only pander to those communities for so long and do nothing for them until they realize that you’re not helping them at all
@Prison1203 Pollsters don't just use the raw numbers. They apply an algorithm to correct for biases in the sample. The problem is that they can only use the data from the last election. Nobody predicted all of the Gen Z male voters who went for Trump. Also, apparently there are a lot of white women who voted in favor of abortion rights, then turned around and voted for Trump anyway.
@LeopoldBloom Yet kackler also had that deer in the headlight look when asked off the cuff questions then babble out word salad, even CNN's David Axelrod cracked a joke about her doing so. My oldest stepsister also went to law school, got her degree, and retired as a county prosecutor, she told me many times she had classmates at the university that partied more than studied, constantly wondering how they passed the LSATs in the first place.
"She graduated from law school; she's smarter than the average person."
She graduated from a second-rate law school and failed the bar exam the first time she took it, when 72% of first-time takers passed. That put her in roughly the bottom quarter of prospective lawyers. So maybe her IQ is above average, but if it is, not by much.
@LeopoldBloom I think Trump's problem isn't so much the relatively low IQ, it's his concomitant stunning level of Dunning Kruger effect that drives him to reject most of the advice from his betters.
June 2015: “There’s nobody bigger or better at the military than I am.” July 2016: "So a general gets on, sent obviously by Obama, and he said, 'Mr. Trump doesn't understand. He knows nothing about defense.' I know more about offense and defense than they will ever understand, believe me. Believe me. Than they will ever understand. Than they will ever understand." Nov 2015: "I know more about ISIS than the generals do." Nov 2015: "I know more about courts than any human being on Earth." Mar 2016: "Nobody knows more about trade than me." Apr 2016: "I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth." May 2016: "I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world. Nobody knows more about taxes." July 2016: "[L]ook, as a builder, nobody in the history of this country has ever known so much about infrastructure as Donald Trump." Feb 8 2017: "I understand things. I comprehend very well. Ok? Better than, I think, almost anybody" Dec 2018: "Technology — nobody knows more about technology than me." Jan 2019: "I know more about drones than anybody. I know about every form of safety that you can have."
Want video evidence Trump said these things? [media=https://youtu.be/sR3f95BGIiA]
Considering kackler got 15 million less than BinBiden
Biden won 81,283,098 in 2020. Harris is at 74,026,485 and counting. https://www.cookpolitical.com/vote-tracker/2024/electoral-college You are off by a factor of two; over 7.5 million votes. We expect a bit better accuracy from a guy with an IQ of 148🤣😂
