If you don't want this to happen again, pressure your red representatives to stop demonizing mail-in/advance voting, and stop destroying the postal system.
Also called by ABC, NBC and the AP (https://twitter.com/AP/status/1325112826072084480). Congratulations, America.
Now I want the last 4 years of my life back.
It stayed up. Please show the same consideration.
Edit: I’m not saying US citizens should think of other nations when casting their vote. Just glad — as non-US citizen - that Biden won and that our national far-right politicians can finally shut up about Trump
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/upshot/networ...
Edit: There are now multiple pages of comments in this thread. If you want to see the later pages, click 'More' at the bottom of the earlier pages. Or get there like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=4
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=5
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=6
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=7
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967&p=8
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As many have pointed out, a dozen or so submissions on this topic were flagged by users. That's actually the immune system working as intended, but another component of the system is that moderators rescue the very most historic stories so HN can have a single big thread about them. We did that 4 years ago, also for Brexit, etc.
Since this was the first submission on the topic, it seems fairest to be the one to restore. (It's still on our todo list to have some form of karma sharing for situations like this, to make it be less of a race and/or lottery.)
I changed the URL from https://www.cnn.com/ since that is not the most useful link and the AP seems as close as one can get to a neutral source.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/11/04/the...
"On election night, it was unclear who had won, with the electoral votes of the state of Florida still undecided. The returns showed that Bush had won Florida by such a close margin that state law required a recount. A month-long series of legal battles led to the highly controversial 5–4 Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore, which ended the recount."
Can this happen again this time?
Just disable karma on topics like these. They are going to be submitted multiple times and very quickly anyway, nobody "needs" the karma and it doesn't matter if nobody gets it.
Url: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11641
The Electoral College: A 2020 Presidential Election Timeline
It’s fairly revealing of society’s general innumeracy, just as it was 4 years ago when Trump won.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Unit...
From this point to Dec 14th we're likely to see some interesting legal proceedings before the supreme court, such as whether or not ballots received without a postmark after election day can be legally counted (this might have impact in certain counties in Michigan and Pennsylvania).
Do people think this is isolated (because Trump is, well, Trump) or there’s a broader tendency here?
Politics aside, I would not wish a stressful job on any 77 year old regardless of their health and well being - there are biological realities to being a human.
I don't know what motivates these decisions but it seems to me the people of his own party either don't care that there is a non-trivial chance he will die, or they think the glory of being president, even if compromised is worth dying for, or something else.
All of the reasons I can come up with strike me as misguided - 'president' is not a mountain peak you reach with your dying breath, it is supposed to be a difficult job of serving others.
If someone has a take on what his party/he is thinking that's other than 'winning is all that matters', I'd really like to know.
The postmortem of the last 4 years should be analyzed deeply in order to identify the weak points in the infrastructure of our government in order to make improvements.
Trump has been a very effective chaos monkey.
It is 99.99% correct call but it is not the official result.
Unless DJT does the sportsmen like thing and concedes.
Given Hillary had told not to call concede under any circumstances DJT will probably not either.
It will be a totally unnecessary mess.
EDIT: I am no Trump fan. I just think the fact that he could be president in 2024 is interesting.
1. Select all ballots that were sent to the same address - or sent to the same Post Office (grouping all PO Boxes by post office). ^ Here you are trying to see if there is systemic voting behaviors out of the ordinary -- i.e. did 10+ ballots go to one address.
2. Select all ballots that were sent to an alternate address than the voter registration. ^ This is a general query -- select a sample set of these and confirm with the registered voter that they did indeed receive a mail in ballot.
3. If above is inconclusive, select all registered voters that requested a mail in ballot against the 2017-2018 Equifax Data to determine if correlations occur.
4. Select all ballots that were the voter did not vote in the last X elections (there are political consultancies that provide information on who NOT to waste your time on because they do not vote), did these people request a mail in ballot? Were these ballots sent to an alternate address?
For clarification [1], if one were armed with a SSN or DL and a previous address, one could request a ballot on behalf of another person AND have that ballot redirected to a location of their choosing... including a PO Box. The form is included here for reference.
[1] https://www.votespa.com/Register-to-Vote/Documents/PADOS_Mai...
EDIT: just so you know, I think both of them did things like this. I want my d%mn democracy back.
Where did all the intellect go?
The social dilemma documentary I think is very useful. It feels like social media bubbles are a large component, although of course there have been many contentious elections in the past.
Being centrist I can relate to parts of both sides but my experience is they both dislike centrists.
I had the impression, he can't do much without it, but news from yesterday implied he might get it too, then Biden could even do more than Obama if he has senate backing him.
It might be time to consider letting go of the democratic ideal that every person's vote has the same weight, and figure out some criteria for either voting eligibity or vote weight that would mostly exclude or give little weight to the votes of people who voted for a clearly unsuitable candidate.
Matt Yglesias's new book One Billion Americans has a good discussion of the issue: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/one-billion-american..., even if you don't buy his population-based premise.
Until we can free our land markets, we're going to have a lot of political problems caused by people who (correctly) feel they can't afford to live.
"Trump Twitter"
Obviously @realdonaldtrump is normally top, with preview.
What do I see changing? Not much:
- foreign policy: policy changes with Syria and Iran
- China: An end to tariffs
- local changes: No more federal opposition to safe injection sites in San Francisco
- federal taxes could still go up, the Senate has two liberal Republicans who could deliver tax increases to Joe
- expanded federal regulations that do not require changes to the law
- PR and DC becoming states is no longer plausible
- packing the Supreme Court is no longer plausible
- a green new deal or expansions to entitlements are no longer plausible
- state bailouts are now in question, which could force major structural reformshttps://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-no...
so the title should be amended to: "Biden wins White House, effectively vowing no new direction for US".
Trump claims to have engineered the world's greatest economy, but in fact he has just benefitted from the Fed holding rates artificially low in spite of an ongoing economic expansion. In other words, he's taking credit for something he essentially had no hand in.
One of the more unpleasant truth about democracy is that it’s quite fragile. In any real sense, the US has only been a democracy since 1965. When large segments of the population are ideologically opposed to democratic governance - universal human rights, respecting fair elections, following the plain text of the law, and so on - mechanisms by which democracy sustains itself begins to fail.
One possibility is to amend the constitution to change first-past-the-post voting in all local-to-federal elections, to let never-Trump types speak out without facing electoral suicide, and to divert right-conservative attention away from a single “leader” figure. And obviously the electoral college needs to go.
But the fact that more than 65 million people voted for Trump at all speaks to a great sickness and nihilism in American culture. Trump himself might be put out to pasture. But Trumpism existed before he got here, and it isn’t going anywhere.
That said, the recent Sam Harris podcast really helped me understand his appeal. And I hope (but am not hopeful) that the left tries to mend their ways by refraining from pushing (mainly white, straight men, but also others, like the religious) many further from the Democratic party.
As a nonUS citizen from a country in which the head of state is being elected directly from the people, I find it very unsettling that there have been cases in which the president in US elections was running behind in popular votes and by a big amount of votes, which almost happened here. I've tried to research it a bit but I couldn't still understand why especially since the House and Senate members are elected by popular vote already
I'd appreciate any insights here
If the same situation persists in 2016 like the deep economical divide, we may even see another Trump like figure rising
I really do hope we can come together, and put divisions aside. In real life, people have more in common than we might think based on what happens online. There are actual differences, and a lot of anger, and resentment. But what makes America special is our reimagining of democracy, every generation — something we’re all a part of, if we choose to be.
Here’s to science and civility.
I do think that after such a president it behoves the winners of this election to have a long hard think as to why the result was so close.
Your nation's people deserve a rest from the division you are suffering. Go well and take the opportunity to set a course that is both good for you and worthy of your immense wealth and power.
It should be made easier to prosecute a president for illegal activity.
Things like showing tax returns should be formalized.
New regulation needs to be put in place to limit the spread of falsehoods and conspiracy theories over facts.
Social media currently benefit economically from this and that has to stop. The economic incentive to spread crazy and extremist ideas has to be removed.
I think these next few weeks is a time for reflection, so that all of us can work hard to create the future we want. Wishing everyone well and to breathe in and out regularly, it's been a stressful year.
Also: sign up your children for Chinese lessons, they'll need it.
There is almost nothing now that holds America coherent as a country. It has too much variance to form a sensible cluster. It went from a basically almost racially homogeneous, English speaking, Christian - with a lot of flavours I recognise but still - and ideologically united country to a multi racial, multi confessional, and now in some part multilingual with radically opposing views and interests country.
There is more in common on many points between Estonia and Ireland than between California and Arkansas.
Trumpism was not an outlier but an indication of how strong the centrifugal forces became...
In no sane world should it have been difficult for the Democrats to defeat Donald Trump in 2016. He had no history in political office, and he lost the popular vote to just about the worst candidate the Democrats could have put up. Had the Democrats put up anyone who was less divisive than Hillary Clinton then we are not where we are today.
Likewise this time around, nobody I have talked to seriously voted for Joe Biden on his own merits. They voted for him because he's not Donald Trump. I have had people tell me they don't care if there is fraud and cheating, it's worth it if Trump is defeated. Put up someone with more genuine appeal and you not only get the "anyone but Trump" vote but you get enough undecided votes that there isn't any room for questioning the result.
We need better candidates who generate real support and appeal other than just not being their opponent. Not sure how to get there.
Biden not only got more Black votes than Obama, he got a higher percentage of the Democratic Black vote (highest in history, in fact).
IOW, Biden is significantly more popular among Blacks than Obama was in 2008 (or 2012). Amazing!
Can someone explain that last sentence to a non-American? Doesn't it simply reduce the whole paragraph to 'first female VP'? Or does it mean 'first female senator to go on to government, but not the first including non-senators', in which case.. uh-ok, is that significant?
Just seems like it's slicing her up into as many 'firsts' as possible.
- Concerted attempts by press and others to create a filter bubbles
- An electorate that's unwilling to look outside their preferred bubbles
Those problems don't go away with a new president. What's the solution? How do we prevent the next election cycle from being worse?
When he was sworn in as a senator - after his wife and daughter died in a car accident after he won the seat. He said: “If in six months or so there’s a conflict between my being a good father and being a good senator, which I hope will not occur, we can always get another senator but they can’t get another father,”
As a father, I understand the feeling. It also shows me he is a fighter, he has always been. We need someone like him to unite us and move us forward.
- Dems already hated them because they were "complying" with the right/far right. Not enough removal, deplatforming etc.
- Reps also hated them because of all the removal and deplatforming, "free speech" problems etc. Then HN replies with the "They are a private company so they can do whatever they want" > which leads the conundrum when Google banning accounts and the whole site gets upset about it. [0]
Just the week before the election Vice had an article, "Facebook Has Always Been Right-Wing Media" [1]. It was aptly removed from here but shows the upcoming struggle which I think as I said above will be much worse for social media sites
Interesting times for sure.
0, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965432
1, https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7vvwq/facebook-has-always-b...
Sanders might be the real deal, but he's not going to represent a major party until donation and campaign spending limits (like we have in Canada) reduce corporate influence on U.S. politics. Sanders scares away the "big money" that U.S. elections depend so heavily on.
Trump has not proven to be a reform candidate in any sense of the word. As a political outsider with control over both the house and senate for his first two years in office, he had the power to deliver meaningful reforms, but didn't. Americans desiring reform should have felt deeply betrayed by Trump's first term.
The democrats had a smoother primary in 2020, but decided on an utterly bland candidate. Biden is a return to the status-quo. I predicted that, after the last four years, a return to the status quo would appeal to many, but this election proves otherwise. This should have been an easy slam dunk for the Democrats to win, but it's turned out to be a squeaker!
If the democrats ride the status quo for the next four years and both parties were to run the same candidates again, I suspect Biden would lose. The Democrats need to pay attention to what Americans want.
I would suggest that Biden's administration should, despite running on a thoroughly status-quo platform, embrace reform. Too many Americans mistrust their own political system, to the point that they're willing to picket polling stations because they think fraud is being committed. That must be fixed. Finding ways to reduce the influence of money on politics (e.g. campaign spending limits) would be a good start. It will also be an easy sell to devolve and distribute some of the powers that have accumulated in the white house over the last several decades. If you're not comfortable with some of the powers Trump wielded during his time in office, then perhaps those powers shouldn't rest with the POTUS.
Bottom line, if the democrats try to pretend Trump never happened and couldn't happen again, they're in for unpleasant surprises.
Nov 7 - News media called a winner (this is not an official act)
Dec 8 - Deadline for resolving election disputes
Dec 14 - Electoral college casts votes
Dec 23 - Deadline for receipt of electoral college votes
Jan 6 - Congress counts the electoral college votes
Jan 20 - Inauguration Day
I'm sure our stateside friends would be happy to acknowledge that US politics has a major effect on the whole world. I have had it pointed out to me before, however, that the USA can vote in whomever they please, and it is none of our business.
But American companies sell us our books and films (understatement), take cuts of our credit card payments, make us coffee, organize our taxis. All of this seems to be with preferential tax treatment. All of these things could be done without the US, but the US is our partner in peace, so it is tolerated.
And here is the rub, this works so long as the USA is a legitimate ally.
And then came Trump, telling us that we don't spend enough on Nato (with US defence companies) and threatening our peace. I believe this has lead to a situation where the US is seen less as a partner and more as a bully, a colonial overlord demanding tribute. I think the next 20 years will see a shift in this kind of trade to the EU and to the East.
The USA can be insular if it wants, but it can't do so and expect everything to be the same as it has been for the last 50 years. An insular US is a declining US. Your new President has a terrific amount of work to do to undo this damage...
On a basic level, we are all people and all run the same basic way, and have the same basic needs.
One layer up, we are Americans. Those of us who travel, or who communicate outside the domestic US, see many other nations and often a higher degree of solidarity as citizens.
Looks like a priority problem to me.
We all need to earn enough to make it, or we all end up paying the costs associated with chronic homelessness, for example.
We all need to see the doctor too.
Eating good food, and the other human basics are not hard to understand.
Often, I see "those other people" type arguments of various kinds too.
Lazy people. Different colored people. Weird people. Other people; namely, not people like us, or not in our tribe, group, and...
Ordinary people do not have very effective representation. Money talks. And it should, but that brings me back to priorities again.
No judgement, no blame here. Just observations.
I submit resolving these things to a more harmonious body politic is on us people. I am not convinced anyone, or entity can just swoop in and improve things.
That is just where we are today.
One other observation:
Nations older than us have been where we are. Their peoples have had to do the work to get past it, and have had to do that multiple times.
This tells me we aren't experiencing anything fundementally new, in human terms.
But it is new to America. New in the sense of the USA being young enough, and the pace of change in the world being rapid enough for the state of things to feel new, or like doom, or, or...
Given the burden of improving on our current state lies with us as people, citizens, I submit the following:
We all need to understand one another better. That starts by talking. Really talking and listening. This is best done sans judgement, and with deliberate intent to understand better.
We all are where we are in life, and we all have made choices, and relitigating the past does not appear to hold answers for our future.
This is about what we do now. It is about our priorities as humans and Americans too.
Take voting, for example.
People had the following options:
Vote Major Party
Vote other
No vote.
Everyone made their choice and had reasons, right?
If we apply the intent to seek understanding of one another and avoid judgement, that means having a talk about why people voted or no voted the way they did.
People no voting, often did so because they did not want to consent to, or endorse, approve of what they see as ineffective, corrupt governance. Or they did not connect a vote to a positive future for themselves and theirs.
Why is that? I think many, and include myself until recently, would rush to judge and blame.
A vote for non major party X really is a vote for major party Y. Same for staying home.
After talking some, the idea of candidates interviewing for a job comes up and poor or toxic representation means not approving them for the job, and with that we see lazy, or stupid aren't really valid as reasons why.
I will stop there, and urge you to think about how all of that is framed up as a duty, or burden and how people may reject all of that in light of what they may see as an irrational election.
Same goes for how people have voted or not before too. Those decisions are made, cannot be unmade and people had their reasons for making them.
Notably, after some real discussion, the reality hits: we can't tell people to approve of potential leaders, and we can't dictate what is best, nor their point of view.
We can talk to them and understand what they need to cast a vote. We can attract them to join a cause and all that too.
So why doesn't that happen more?
I submit this is a big part of the priority and mutual understanding and consideration discussion we all need to have.
Without that talk being a fundamental part of our body politic, we appear to be divided into factions, blocs who understand others, "those other people" increasingly poorly as pressure to avoid the worst continues to rise.
With that discussion, it becomes much easier to see what we may consider an obvious, rational choice, say lesser evil as an example, really is not so obvious, or may even be harmful, not a lesser evil, but perhaps just a different kind.
No matter how this all goes, at any given time our future is about the decisions we make together, the actions we take together, and the outcome we live with together.
The election is past us now, but please do consider it was about the votes people were about to cast, not the ones they may have cast in the past.
Talking about all that is much easier and can be far more effective when people are not also fending off negative, and frankly until we understand one another better, uninformed personal judgements too.
We are divided to a harmful degree despite all of us having the same basic humanity.
I urge you to talk, and I mean really talk with others very indifferent from you, who live differently than you do and understand one another better.
I do not know how we get our priorities in order as people otherwise. And without that, we rub the risk of our future continuing to be an increasingly mixed bag for increasing numbers of us.
Finally, consider this idea:
When we make the discussion about what we oppose, it is not going to be about what we need, or want that is good.
Think about trying to lead a team by only telling them what not to do. They will get somewhere, and it won't be anything anyone opposed either.
We all benefit from an explicit, public good. That means the basics are in order leaving people with free agency to get after better, or what they want.
Understanding one another better will make that explicit, public good more clear.
It will improve our basic solidarity as people, reduce division.
I submit one final idea:
There will not be a net public good we all benefit from and depend on, unless we make the discussion, body politic, about it.
And that is how I am playing it now, and have been for a while now.
I want and need to be voting FOR good, not AGAINST bad, or evil.
You probably do too, and I encourage you to make more of the discussion about that explicit, public good and demand our leaders do the same things; namely, understand the people they need votes from better, and to apply that understanding to propose policy people can vote FOR, not just default to people voting AGAINST the very worst.
A national divorce needs to start being talked about more seriously. It's at least peaceful and amicable, and better than the other alternatives (civil war, foreign conquerors, authoritarianism, etc).
This isn't "giving up" on the problems per say, but instead, accepting reality and thinking of solutions going forward. Thinking the left and right can be unified again is as wishful as thinking Artificial intelligence won't displace anymore workers.
Mail-in voting has existed for a long time, but it is being done at a larger scale and in new ways and new places. It was a mistake to do it during such a contentious election. Covid is not a good enough reason: it's easy enough to drop the ballot in a county box so the secretary of state has a chain of custody for all valid ballots. I would actually prefer voter ID as well as people standing there to do a brief check. In addition to preventing fraud, it also helps remind voters if they forgot to sign or something.
Also, I think it needs to be said that a lot of people hate Trump. Hate can cause people to do things that they would never imagine doing otherwise, like election fraud. It doesn't need to be a conspiracy... just a lot of individuals doing small stuff (post office employees throwing away likely Trump ballots, etc.).
And it doesn't help that the map looked quite red on the day of the election, and that the poll numbers were WAY off, and that the media was rooting for Biden. It all just erodes confidence.
(Of course, if that's news to you, then you're probably not in the US right now)
Biden is PROJECTED to win the White House, because that's how US elections work. It looks for all the world that he'll win, but he might not depending on the electoral college: you don't win because the most people voted for you. That's not how elections work in the US.
And before someone goes "what are the odds": this isn't 2016 when people still pretended to honour the system. We have 4 years of established corruption, exploits, and literal criminal behaviour to draw on. Until elected by the electoral college, Biden has not won. And remember that many states merely put a monetary fine on being a faithless electors: it's not even illegal. $1000 to pick the guy who'll pay you back bigger, instead of who the state voted for? Scandalous! But also: entirely legal.
Republicans = neo-feudalism
So since that's the only choice you get you might as well vote for dems and at least get some food stamps.
I'll be submitting my resume and cover letter just as soon as the transition team site opens.
Federal Election records indicate that the leadership of technology companies overwhelmingly supported a set of values that their employees appear to just as overwhelmingly reject. That dissonance is really quite remarkable.
I see one of the fundamental challenges facing the new administration is how to address this. I am not a fan of government regulation, more of a "let the markets decide" kind of guy. I recognize however there is a systemic risk where the technology "owner" can exploit it to harm society in a way that was previously impossible.
While the country has focused on disinformation and hate speech, consider a company that controls, in real time, the self-driving software in a car. Such a technology, if weaponized, to could kill hundreds of thousands of people. Or it could be weaponize to kill select people who were in the intersection of riding in a self-driven car and in disfavor by the company that really controls that car.
Early on in my career I chose not to work for military contractors who were the "big" employers in Los Angeles at the time I graduated from college. They were clearly engaged in finding clever, or at least more effective, ways to kill people and that wasn't where I wanted to spend my time. But what about someone working on self driving? It saves lives by avoiding some of the things end up resulting in crashes. But it also provides an opportunity for great evil.
Do we trust the person in charge to not be evil? Companies change and while they might declare their intentions when they are growing, what happens when they are on top? Sometimes those quaint notions get cast aside when being a little bit evil makes what you're trying to do that much easier or maybe that much more profitable.
What is the appropriate response, in a democracy, to a small number of people controlling a potential weapon that can destroy that democracy? Sadly this is no longer an idle question.
I don't have any answers here, just more questions.
How do you even begin to "meet in the middle" or have reasonable conversations with people who believe in that stuff?
edit: Don't really understand why this was de-nested from the original parent comment down to the third-fourth page :/
I was on the phone with my mom earlier and one of her friends called her up. She's a republican, but they avoid politics. She asked her, genuinely afraid, if she thought that Harris would steal the presidency and convert the country to socialism. She's not an idiot. She's a physician, but was still so caught up in fear mongering that she genuinely believed that the government would steal her income and that there would be riots in the streets as we turn into a third world nation. I'm going to think about her differently after hearing that.
This is probably the first time in my life where I am going to look at people differently based on who they voted for and I hate that. However, I can't get it out of my head that they voted for a president that has so disgraced the highest office in our country and that they did it because of a fear of the future burning so far inside them that they felt another four years of Trump was preferable to even as bland of a change as a Biden presidency will be.
No one has yet won. No one will have won the election until states certify their counts. It'd be nice if the counts, and recounts, were already completed. (Florida, of the "hanging chad" debacle, actually finished its count within hours in this election. Why did these less populous states move so quickly, and then slow down so much, once it became apparent who was winning? Scroll down on this page: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/... to see the timeline in the battleground states)
No state (out of all 50) has yet certified their count, and certainly no battleground states have certified their counts. In fact, many of them have still not even finished counting the votes.
To assert otherwise, over a weekend when none of the recounts or court cases are resolved, is literally spreading misinformation that many of the same media outlets are claiming to be stopping. Instead, they're shaping the narrative and rushing to crown a victor so that it becomes a fait accompli.
Succeeding administrations failed to gain additional peace and instead leaned on regime change in an attempt to oust unstable governments and seat US-friendly, stable regimes. This approach failed in principle: Regime change itself did not lead to stability. But instead, led to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and ultimately, it was the protracted presence of US troops in those nations that provided stability. That stability was paid for with the lives of US soldiers put in harms way of militants from both within those nations and from outside of them.
Under Obama, two threats emerged: ISIS and an emboldened Iran. ISIS went from a 'JV Team', to controlling an area the size of Pennsylvania, spanning Iraq and Syria[3]. Iran was granted an agreement to suspend weapons-grade nuclear research until 2031 [4]. Iran may or may not be complying with the agreement, but it was known that they were causing instability throughout the Middle East, funding ISIS, Hezbolah, and planning and funding ambush attacks on US troops throughout the region[5].
This was the situation in January 2017.
Reviewing what the current administration has done since taking office, the coordinated and deliberate steps, and the results, have been astonishing, given the intractable and largely unsuccessful efforts to stabilize the region over the last 50 years:
a. Established 'energy independence' by modifying US regulations on production of oil, natural gas and coal. The US became a net exporter of energy, reducing the leverage that the Middle East states have over the US[6].
b. Moved the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and recognize the Golan Heights as Sovereign Israel territory. This worked to gain trust from Israel, improving their willingness to participate in peace agreements. [8]
c. Coordinated with Russia to eliminate ISIS. It was completely eradicated, including US Special Forces killing the leader and founder, Al-Baghdadi[10].
d. Withdrew from the Iran Nuclear accord, and renewed sanctions against Iran. The funds provided by the accord likely were used in part to fund their terror activities.
e. Killed General Soleimani, who was know to be the mastermind and source of funding for terrorism throughout the Middle East, directed not just at US, but other Arab States as well. [7] d. and e. illustrated to the Arab States that the US was willing to take decisive action to quell the regional threat that Iran posed.
f. Withdrew troops from Syria, extricating the US from that war zone, after ISIS was defeated.
g. Begin withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Most Arab countries want the US out so they can self-govern again.
h. With the above puzzle pieces in place, the administration rapidly concluded peace agreements between Israel and three Arab states: United Arab Emirates, Bahrain [9] and later, Sudan. Other countries are said to be joining soon.
i. Earned 2 Nobel peace prize nominations for the peace agreements (for 2021, winners will be announced next September).
Reviewing this timeline, and the magnitude of this achievement, it's hard to square the approach and its success against the claims of ineptitude leveled.
[0] https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/oil-embargo
[1] https://www.history.com/news/jimmy-carter-camp-david-accords...
[2] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2002/carter/facts/
[3] https://abcnews.go.com/International/isis-years-jv-team-inte...
[4] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/122460/full-text-of-t...
[5] https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2...
[9] http://tiny.cc/mideastpeace
[10] https://www.njhomelandsecurity.gov/analysis/tag/Abu+Bakr+al-...
* If Biden will be weak on China, do we expect Chinese tech companies to perform well and if so, how can we get exposure to that? Some China tech ETF?
* Biden will likely support a lot of green endeavors, and so Green ETFs could be a good BUY.
* If there is a blue sweep, then there could be a massive stimulus, which would mean lots of money slushing around in the market. Maybe QQQ is a good BUY.
The growing divide and threat of civil war ( not going to happen btw ) are nothing compared to what will happen in the next 50 years of we do not have a green new deal.
Climate change, and its little brother over fishing and unchecked exploitation of our environment, is an existential threat to the human race. Bernie took it seriously. Warren took it seriously. I'm not convinced the new establishment takes it seriously. We need radical action YESTERDAY. More business as usual is not going to cut it.
Furthermore, the new administration doesn't believe in Medicare for all. They plan to do nothing about the currently broken system which causes 40% of people who are diagnosed with cancer to spend their entire life savings and often go bankrupt as a result of something that is not at all their fault.
Democrats down ballot got massacred, well progressive policies like decriminalization of drugs, and raising the minimum wage passed with large margins.
I'm glad we won but this was a mess and we're still not getting towards where we actually need to be: preventing the apocalypse
This election was so polarizing I am very afraid the country can recover from it.
I am worried enough we have bug out bags packed, with critical documents, as I expect this could easily escalate to a civil war as both sides are convinced they are right; and more worrisome is that the other side is so completely corrupted that they are not Americans or humans and should be taken out like the trash.
We have Trump who will not concede and will fight this to his last moment; and then will continue to fight it from the side lines.
We have AOC on twitter asking people to send names for her registry of Trump supporters for future retribution. You know who else kept such lists? Hitler, Mao, Mussolini.
Really scary times down here. Much worse than when Trump won in 2016.
The US needs all the help, prayers, and luck it can muster right now to find it's way through this.
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Uniting the country is definitely a commendable goal, though it is easier said than done. The election results across all levels clearly illustrate just how divided and polarized this land is. Thus, it will take quite a lot of time and effort to see a reasonable progress on this front. We all can play our part in it by a polite and constructive dialog with opponents and first finding common ground on such pressing and all-encompassing issues as coronavirus pandemic, environmental protection, social justice and health care reform.
In the meantime, let us not forget that, in order to restore the heavily damaged moral fabric of this country, relevant measures should pass through the Congress. And while Democrats retain control of the House, the opposing party might retain control of the Senate. Which most certainly will lead to a significant gridlock in moving forward with the democratic and, in some cases, progressive agenda unless Democrats retake control in the Senate. Remember, winning a battle is not a guarantee for winning a war. That is why the U.S. Senate run-off elections in Georgia to be held on January 5 (https://georgia.gov/vote-2020-runoff-elections) are crucial.
This seems like the logical end of cancel culture and deplatforming, which is to assemble a list of people and organizations to target or shame or blacklist. I find this to be a very disagreeable suggestion given that people simply are exercising their constitutional and political rights and this furthers division, encourages extremism, and has a chilling silencing effect on civil discourse.
To me this reeks of authoritarian Leftism, like the violence seen in past revolutions in China or Russia. There is also a great deal of irony as well, since AOC and her supporters are certainly not calling for a blacklist of Marxists, despite Marxism being the cause of over 100M deaths in the 20th century.
We are a divided nation: people trying to make the best of their situation, and the Senate, a fantasyland where we pretend that every state is equally relevant.
The "2 per state" rule worked back in 1776 because the states were roughly the same size, everyone was a farmer, and fertilizer had not yet been invented.
Today, senators should be allocated based on the GDP of each state.
I couldn't help but think, in looking at various TV news channels this past week, that this is all sport. Big numbers on the score board and the play-by-play constantly flashing on the screens. We're the spectators, and the politicians are players on the field. Trump played the field better than anyone.
I hope that a new president and a new administration can show the USA that the division is not as deep and worrisome as is portrayed. We're actually all rooting for the same things here.
And approximately seventy million people have voted for that candidate.
Okay, so with all of that in mind, please provide the nuance you want to talk about. I’m very interested in this nuance that you claim will move us away from “crazy extremist”.
Anywho, I digress. I believe those in here to be intelligent and educated so I would ask you to take your partisan hats off for a minute if you're honest and consider when AZ goes Trump this is the time for you to start freaking out.
The mainstream media has been extremely irresponsible and the forthcoming riots when this is overturned are going to lay squarely on their feet. I would also ask those of you who have a conscience to be less irresponsible than journalists over these coming weeks until December in an attempt to reduce said damage.
I say this because if you think Biden is going to be your president you haven't been watching carefully enough.
Also dang if you will please change the title. Biden hasn't won anything yet - as you know the media doesn't declare winners esp not given their woeful conduct and bogus calls (AZ), states have to certify before a winner is declared. Also please ask PG to be more responsible with his tweets if he will listen. This will reflect badly on all involved.
Thankyou.
Edited to add: I don't see Next Page at the bottom of the pages in this story, I'm not sure if it's bugged...
So, this is received as Very Good News.
Tough times ahead!!
There has been a lot of gaslighting around this issue, but the fact is that the United States has been protected by two vast oceans for its entire history, but it opened a conduit into its heartland for foreign mischief-makers through Facebook and Twitter. Whether it helped Trump or not in 2016 (frankly, I think it probably did but it's exhausting to debate this so I won't) it does represent a gaping hole in America's defenses.
Until this election, there seemed to be a clear pattern (in the English speaking world anyway) that allowed one to reliably predict the winner of an election by seeing which side the trolls supported.
There are no First Amendment protections for Russian/Iranian/Macedonian click or troll farms. Detecting VPNs and other attempts to conceal traffic is not an insurmountable technical challenge, yet it isn't done consistently.
The seductive "Arab Spring" approach to letting free speech run rampant on social media turned out to be a mirage. Not only was the Arab Spring reversed in Egypt, based on my discussions with Egyptians, Facebook was turned into a tool of repression after the counter-revolution took hold.
(Yes, the irony of posting this from a throwaway account doesn't escape me, but there's a difference between clearly anonymous speech, and speech that misrepresents its source).
No one ever expected Trump to get more votes than Biden. Even the Republicans were well aware of this. In fact, 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections have ended with a Democrat getting more votes than a Republican.
Yet even with a 3.5 million vote lead, the perception was the election was on a knife edge.
This is ridiculous. The EC is an anachronmism and needs to be abolished. It made sense when it was established, but it's clearly not working.
Same for the Senate. 70% of people are represented by 30% of Senators.
You desperately need to fix your broken electoral systems.
- the delays in Nevada - the early calls in Arizona - the delayed, large swing in pennsylvania - the glitches in Wisconsin and Michigan - the military vote coming in 4:1 Biden in Georgia
Are we allowed to talk about that here or is it verboten?
I've noticed the same phenomenon with political views.
People on the left think that anyone on the right is a lunatic, and everyone on the right thinks the same thing about the left. I, as most people do, lean in one direction politically, so naturally any comment I see coming from my side seems reasonable to me. In fact, it seems impossible that a reasonable person could think any other way. But since I grew up in a family that leaned in the opposite direction, and I shared their same mindset in my younger days, I can now draw on that experience, and I can take a political tweet that everyone on my side thinks is insane, and I can stare at it, and just as with the spinning dancer, I can flip it in my head so it seems reasonable.
To me, it's a testament to the power of the tribal instincts within us. We think it's the other side that's crazy, but we're all under the same spell.
It is no wonder, the likely result is 400k+ deaths and a worst downturn in a century. And one doesn't need to look further than Taiwan or South Korea, to see that it was not inevitable and preventable by good governance.
A wish for good governance. Less cynicism. And a shift of culture in both politics and corporate world that doesn't allow for such disasters.
1. The US, by the most generally accepted definition, has had continuous governance as a democracy since 1788. Just one more election, and not the most contentious or momentous by a long shot.
2. Current reported spread in votes between D and R are pretty slim, 75.0M v. 70.7M Wikipedia 11PM EST 11/7.
3. Whatever your partisan opinion, at least 70M American adults, 48.5% of those voting, disagree with you and think you’re an idiot. Try not to confirm the fact with your comments.
4. Challenging the validity of the voting process is a time-honored tradition during tight races. Stop sounding like newbies. This is the only time that the validity of the electoral process gets enough visibility to figure out if anything’s broke. Seriously broke? See 1.
5. A paper trail is a beautiful thing.
6. And what a wonderfully fertile field these comments are for use as examples of propaganda, inflammatory rhetoric and logical fallacies. Wish I was teaching a course right about now. Timely for the application of manure on fields too...
7. It would be nice if the mods kept the discussion away from an r/politics-ization of HN. The sides are pretty obvious and enforcing an arbitrary quota of half blue hurrah/half red hurrah would lead to a better flow and balance. Heavy-handed, but appropriate in these few cases IMHO.
The brilliant, stupid, wise, foolish, angry, mellow, old, young, rich, poor, naive, cynical, kind, nasty, sophisticated, brutish American people have spoken. Whether you agree with the results or not, it’s a beautiful thing.
I find it interesting that four years of Trump's usual blame-shifting, together with his fan base, has resulted in Trumpists blowing way past the Leftists in their distrust of all US institutions. This is far beyond the Tea party's displeasure with government spending. Sure, Republicans distrusted scientists before, but now Trump supporters distrust the following for partisan reasons:
Media
Polls
Election
Scientific establishment
Medical establishment [1]
Universities
Courts (so-called judges[2], Mexican heritage[3] etc.)
FBI
CIA
IRS
and much more.
Are the institutions perfect? No. Is there fraud and corruption? Sure, but comparing to other countries relatively little, and probably less than in the past. But destroying Americans' trust in these institutions can be dangerous. I can understand dissidents doing it, but the President?
1. https://ctmirror.org/2020/10/18/inside-the-fall-of-the-cdc/
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/04/tr...
3. https://www.politifact.com/article/2016/jun/08/donald-trumps...
This is far from over. You could have votes invalidated. This is only over when the electors travel to DC and 270+ vote for one person. That could be halted. You could see the house delegations vote, you could see state or federal courts rule, you could even see some state legislative bodies make decisions on it.
It takes a lot more than a claim of victory and a news organization calling it for an election to be over, and I'd expect a bunch of very smart people to know that.
The perception is that Trump was too dump to start new wars and wasn't subtle - so you could at least know what he's thinking w.r.t. your (non-American) interests. On the other hand, most American presidents are nice & courteous at face value while raining drone bombs on unsuspecting non-Americans, spreading Freedom (with a capital F).
As a non-American, I would rather Americans endure a bit longer and the remaining (7B-0.3B) world citizens have 4 more years of (relative) US non-involvement. Selfish, I know, but the world needs a breather.
Los Angeles is nothing like Wichita. Beverly Hills is nothing like Miami. Multiculturalism produces many great subjects such as art, food, music, dance, poetry and great looking kids. But with amazing advantages comes equal disadvantages. These include racial tensions, religious tensions, political tensions, and gender identity strife.
Biden will probably fail at unifying our country though I hope not. How do you unify those who appreciate civil war monuments and "Dukes of Hazard" reruns with BLM supporters and Cardi B music videos?
The only way the United states would come together would be by way of a terrible unifying threat that scares the hell out of the nation or a "Grand White Swan" payout like universal basic income.
This less than 1% do disagree among themselves, and that disagreement is the fundamental source of essentially all the political fighting.
For the other 99+%, there isn't much to fight about.
What the other 99+% want can be summarized in one word -- more. For more detail, they want the two biggies, peace and prosperity. For more, they want "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", financial and emotional security, love, home and family, good health, happy, successful children. There's not a lot to fight about there.
So, again, the fighting is from the less than 1% who want to use their money and power to get more money.
Of course, way more than 1% of the voting population are highly concerned about politics, are fighting, but, sorry, guys, they are foot soldiers, pawns, for the less than 1%.
As an example, let's take one of the issues, say, health care. Glancing at history, US health care has come a long way since the lone country doctor with a one horse carriage. In terms of current US medicine, he was not very good. Point: Health care has changed a lot and is still changing, rapidly. So, what solution we come up with should accommodate such change.
Health care can be really expensive, and we need a solution for that. We need in some sense to level out the costs, make them predictable. Ways have been private medical insurance, health care membership organizations, and government provided health care.
So, here are the main concerns: Private health insurance is too expensive for a major fraction of the population, so those people look to other options. Then for the other options, concerns are quality of care (it might be too cheap and not very good -- loved ones could die), waiting times, and big tax increases. Point: These are all issues, but some examples can show that we should be able to do quite well on all the issues of quality, waiting times, costs, etc., well enough that we should not have much to fight about.
And there has been the issue of private insurance and "pre-existing" conditions. We can all agree that it would be nice for private insurance companies to ignore such data, conditions. And the richer US states did have laws forcing the insurance companies to so ignore. But maybe now the US is wealthy enough to so ignore for everyone. Hopefully. So, we can all agree or nearly so. Not much to fight about.
So, what is the cause of the the fighting? With some approaches and situations, for less than 1% of the voting population, there is or can be a lot of money involved, or a lot of power and then a lot of money.
My view is that we can go down the list of main political topics and conclude the same -- for 99+% of the voters, there's not much to fight about except some people, less than 1%, want to fight to make money, big money.
But for various policies, operations, programs, etc., it really is possible just to make a mess, to create waste. At least the 99+% can be against the waste!
E.g., for the $trilions W and Obama spent on Gulf War II, was that from (a) people who were in line to make money from the effort or (b) just waste? I'd say, some of (a) but mostly (b). Point: Not all the issues are about the less than 1% seeking money and, instead, there can also be ordinary waste.
Bottom line: The 99% should throttle the less than 1%, settle differences, and get on with life.
For Hong Kong, I do not have much hope but given it is not much of hope to begin with, fight on beyond the last stand.
Best wish for USA and Taiwan, whilst I can still send message.
Joe's appeal today to "let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end here and now!" seems disingenous given the past 4 years, but I do hope that our public discourse improves, for everyone's sake.
So... same as every president after election everywhere. Watch as Biden doesn't undo any of the things he promised to undo. Same as Obama.
A fundamental cause of political polarisation is social media. Tech platforms incentivised by advertising to increase engagement have (probably mostly inadvertently) become manipulation engines that have destabilised democracies.
I think at this moment in time the tech community should take pause to consider what we have done. We started with heady ideals and hopes, especially for the internet, but we have veered a long way from that vision.
As engineers, we have great power in this world. For the foreseeable future, our skills will be highly in demand and shape the future of humanity, in every area of society - from finance to health, from entertainment to politics.
If you work for a social media company, or a search engine, or any company that is reliant on adtech or high engagement for its income, then I implore you to think long and hard about how your actions may have contributed to bringing us to this point, and whether it is possible to change the course of your organisation or it would be better to leave.
More positively, the large social media networks are now entrenched corporations, and they have lost the advantages that startups confer. With sufficient imagination and hard work there are many opportunities to disrupt those companies with the compelling mission of making the world a better, not a worse, place.
I'd love it if the names of common logical fallacies were known by everyone and anyone lying to the media or making unsubstantiated claims would be immediately shut down e.g. "that's just a character attack, you're not answering the question".
And what I ask here, is that I expect someone here to be straight forward and eg. Just mention when they just want lower taxes, for example.
( I'm not an American, just curious about other perspectives, since the groups I'm in are more liberal based, from a US perspective)
2016-2020 has been a time of seeing just how dangerous misinformation is in the world of mass social media. All it takes is the spreading of false rumors through various means of the internet and social media for people to lose their minds and question their own democracy. I think both social media, advertising agencies, and the modern media is largely responsible for this. Also, us in the tech industry, who have over these last 4 years began to see the truly ugly side of what we're building. In our constant need to hit KPIs, drive up SEO rank, drive virility, we've slowly fed a monster that is now making itself known, and disrupting the very fabric of democracy.
However, let's not forget that on election night the current US president clearly proved his staunchest critics right.
What might have happened if Fox News had adopted his "stolen election" narrative?
This is, quite literally, how autocratic strongmen destroy their countries for personal gain. There's more than enough historical precedent from around the world to know the playbook.
The election process is still ongoing, the media is simply saying Biden is their guess.
Allegations of cheating will be investigated before we get the final result.
The US is -not- going to be run by the modern uncle police[1]. 2020 is just getting interesting.
I predict Trump legally gets a 3rd term.
[1] http://v6y.net/unclepolice.mp4
[2] https://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/video/pret...
Most of these comments imply that the division is just ideological. I guess everyone here is so financially well off as to never having been too poor to afford health insurance but just above the cut off to get free health insurance. Families with kids and high living costs, and then being forced to pay over $2000 as penalty for not affording healthcare, it broke many spirits.
It was the ACA "Individual Responsibility Mandate" and it is the reason why all the hispanics in Florida without health insurance that I know, voted for Trump in 2016--because he said he'd get rid of that depressing $2000+ fine. Which he finally did.
Simple as that, and certainly not as idealistic as these comments imply. Those who don't see that did not have to pay that ACA "Individual Responsibility Mandate" while being poor in an expensive city.
A "new direction for divided US" would mean that these politicians stop pretending people vote idealistically versus based on finances. Reading these other comments, one would think all the brown Floridians who voted for Trump are white supremacists. I thought Hacker News was above that simplistic rhetoric.
It almost seems like if this isn't tackled head on instead of being ignored, that there might be scant progress on other issues like climate change.
4D chess. Thats how he plays.
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