Topic: US Presidential Election 2020 - page 12. (Read 6237 times)

Charlie Warzel: Sure. Mr. Vice President, in October, your campaign sent a letter to Facebook regarding an ad that falsely claimed that you blackmailed Ukrainian officials to not investigate your son. I’m curious, did that experience, dealing with Facebook and their power, did that change the way that you see the power of tech platforms right now?

No, I’ve never been a fan of Facebook, as you probably know. I’ve never been a big Zuckerberg fan. I think he’s a real problem. I think ——

CW: Can you elaborate?

No, I can. He knows better. And you know, from my perspective, I’ve been in the view that not only should we be worrying about the concentration of power, we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you’re not exempt. [The Times] can’t write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he can. The idea that it’s a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms.Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act says that online platforms aren’t held liable for things their users post on them, with some exceptions. In July, The Times’s Sarah Jeong weighed in on proposed updates to Section 230, arguing that “we should reopen the debate on C.D.A. 230 only because so much of the internet has changed,” but “the discourse will be improved if we all take a moment to actually read the text of C.D.A. 230.”

CW: That’s a pretty foundational laws of the modern internet.

That’s right. Exactly right. And it should be revoked. It should be revoked because it is not merely an internet company. It is propagating falsehoods they know to be false, and we should be setting standards not unlike the Europeans are doing relative to privacy. You guys still have editors. I’m sitting with them. Not a joke. There is no editorial impact at all on Facebook. None. None whatsoever. It’s irresponsible. It’s totally irresponsible.

CW: If there’s proven harm that Facebook has done, should someone like Mark Zuckerberg be submitted to criminal penalties, perhaps?

He should be submitted to civil liability and his company to civil liability, just like you would be here at The New York Times. Whether he engaged in something and amounted to collusion that in fact caused harm that would in fact be equal to a criminal offense, that’s a different issue. That’s possible. That’s possible it could happen. Zuckerberg finally took down those ads that Russia was running. All those bots about me. They’re no longer being run.In October, a 30-second ad appeared on Facebook accusing Mr. Biden of blackmailing Ukrainian government officials. The ad, made by an independent political action committee, said: “Send Quid Pro Joe Biden into retirement.” Mr. Biden’s campaign wrote a letter calling on Facebook to take down the ad. He was getting paid a lot of money to put them up. I learned three things. Number one, Putin doesn’t want me to be president. Number two, Kim Jong-un thinks I should be beaten to death like a rabid dog and three, this president of the United States is spending millions of dollars to try to keep me from being the nominee. I wonder why.

I believe because of the 2016 elections we are not going to actually know what is going to happen until it is too late and we see the results, right now it is not possible to make a prediction.

If it was any other candidate versus Biden or just two random any candidate, I would have said that Biden will win 100% sure without a single shred of doubt, I would have put all my money, I would have sold my house and go all in (okay not really just making a point) and bet on Biden.

However this is Trump we are talking about, he has this cult type of followers that will vote for him no matter what, republicans became party of old people for the longest time and Trump manage to get young people to vote and speak their racist and xenophonic and sexist thoughts freely. Dude had zero chance to win 2016 and I didn't even consider him, yet he won. So, just because it is Trump and not someone else, I will not declare Biden winner until last vote is counted.

@bryant.coleman while illegal immigrants can’t directly vote but they can always alter electoral college results to hand advantage to the Democrats, and that’s why Trump was keen to change the laws relating to illegal immigration. Furthermore in 2019 he had even threatened to release illegal immigrants in Americas sanctuary cities, to strike a political blow. Lastly it’ll be really interesting to see, what kind of effect will these voters actually have on the upcoming elections.

Illegal immigrants can't vote. That's true. But anchor babies can vote when they become 18 years of age and then they can sponsor their parents as well. Eventually, the entire family becomes US citizens and everyone can vote in the elections. The current wave of illegal invasion started in the 1970s. Most of the first generation illegals have become US citizens by now.

And I don't agree with the argument that illegals need to hide their status. There are sanctuary cities all over the United States (hundreds of them), where it is not possible for the immigration authorities to detain or deport any of the illegals.

When President Trump threatened to release throngs of illegal immigrant detainees into America’s sanctuary cities last week, the media and Democrats went bonkers. While the scheme may not pass legal muster, it was “pure genius” as a political ploy.

No, illegal immigrants aren’t allowed to directly vote for the commander-in-chief yet, but in vast numbers they can dramatically alter the Electoral College to favor Democrats for at least a decade because a state’s electoral votes are based on the number of people residing within that state, not the number of citizens present when the Decennial Census is taken.

"Illegal immigrants" can't vote, they are illegally there, hell they practically can't even let anyone know they are there, they have to keep quite about it, in order to vote you have to register to vote, how can an illegal immigrant can register to vote if they are illegal?

Electoral college may not be the perfect solution, but it is much better than those popular vote-based elections. It prevents the deep-blue states such as California and New York from stealing the election by allowing uncontrolled invasion of illegal immigrants.

Let's look at an example. In 1950, California had a population of 10.7 million. Back then, Oklahoma's population was 2.2 million. Since then, the population of California increased by almost 4 times, but that of Oklahoma increased by less than 2x. The reason is that California allowed a lot of illegal immigrants to stay. Now Do you want to give more power to California, just because they broke the law and invited the illegals? I am against that idea. And that's why I always say that electoral college-based system is much better when compared to any popular vote based election systems.

However, in America the presidency is won not because of the popular vote but because of the electoral college. It takes a different type of campaign strategy to win, I reckon.

I remember last time even Trump didnt think he'd win or that was the impression and maybe that did him good because apparently people believed every vote counted and they had to goto the polls or 'their candidate' wouldnt win.   You need people who are heavily attached to that cause and they'll vote no matter what not tactically or because others are.    So I dont find its especially proven.   Trump ran a term similar to how he ran his candidacy, quite bizarre at times and yet he remains and might be there another four years.   If people feel as strongly to vote the democrat candidate then I guess he would not survive that, if people aren't motivated the default win goes to the guy in power the last four years.   Happens in lots of countries that way I think.

Heres a good chart to show how population distribution varies to terrority, its not showing the electoral collage really but shows how the polls just showing raw numbers isnt enough.   Besides that stats are about probability and possibilities, it cant tell you what will happen just the best guess.

Heres a good chart to show how population distribution varies to terrority

I do not trust surveys after all because not all of it are legit and they are just surveying specific people and not random people. Trump will gonna win in the next election for sure even Joe Biden is leading in online polls and survey because most of the polls and surveys are fixated and controlled by some people or even organization, so basically it is biased. I do not know why there are a lot of American citizens do not appreciate what Trump did in their country.  Trump is really a good leader and in order to proved it, he have a lot of books that been published in the past.

I'm not keen on the Cato Institute, but the survey result sounds reasonable. Trump is in many ways a one-off, but in other ways his performance is much as we'd expect from a right-wing demagogue. The key to gaining and retaining power is to set various categories of 'poor' people against one another. Blaming everything on immigrants is the most common approach, but stoking racial tensions within a nation is also popular. After 4 years of Trump, we can't be surprised to see that the situation within the society is more tense.

A new Cato national survey finds that self‐​censorship is on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds—62%—of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.

only the dumbest of the dumb ever believed that. bookies had odds ~75% in favor of hillary, with polls tending towards the 80% mark---some higher, some lower.

for all we know, 75-80% chances was correct. that means trump would have won 1 out of every 4-5 times. and maybe that's exactly what happened.

keep in mind that biden only has a 6-10 point lead in the polls. there is no comparison to 98-2 in 2016.

Odds and statistics play too little in politics. Do you remember Hillary had 98% winning chance and Trump only 2%?

trump's prospects are tied to the economy and markets much more than biden. he represents pro-business policies and an end to stimulus packages that directly benefit the middle class, who is probably getting accustomed to all these coronavirus handouts. with biden in office and a democrat majority in the senate, the handouts will keep coming---some of them will be made permanent and some will also be expanded too.

that's something to consider. trump represents austerity at a time when such policies are very dangerous politically. the economic data can only be manipulated so much, and his tweets hyping poor numbers can only go so far. and that's one of the most unpredictable things about this election---how bad will things get in the next few months due to the coronavirus madness?