Hardkill

We've talked a lot before about how most people in the US who are not very bright and are low information, lowly education voters don't really care about a political leader's policies or about how governance actually works in the system, especially in this day and age. They are more interested in how appealing and how aligned a certain's candidates cultural values are to most of his/her constituents: However, people do give credit or blame a politician and/or the party in power for how well the country is doing including the economy, foreign/military affairs outside of the country, what changes have been made in policy, whether or not an officeholder was involved in some kind of scandal, and the public order or tranquility in the country. The voters also vote based on how successful and cohesive the politician and/or the party in power has been politically: Does this mean that most voters do actually care about governance, but only from a broad or general point of view?

That is unfortunately not a realistic option at this point. How would you be able convince the Israeli government to agree to that?

There needs to be an immediate ceasefire deal that lasts at least 6 weeks ASAP.

In many respects, every religion seems to have failed in teaching people that.

If there have been fears of widening conflict in the Middle East over this war, then why hasn't that happened yet? I mean if Hezbollah and other countries like them have threatened to fight against Israel then wouldn't they have done it already?

I gotta hand it to you again, Leo. You called it right about her future as a politician or more so as a lobbyist. On the thread I made a while back on here, "Senator Sinema is no longer a Democrat" I said: Your response to that was: I then said: Your reply to that was: Just today she announced that won't run for re-election because of how toxic Congress and has stated that she knows that she has no clear path to winning her seat again: We're also pretty sure that she's going to be a lobbyist for some disgusting corporate elites who have been eating away more and more of our democracy. I mean to be fair, she did do a lot of good things during Biden's first two years as president. However, she turned out to be one of the least trustworthy Democrats in Congress. I actually would say that in a lot of ways she was less trustworthy than Manchin. At least Manchin was much more communicative and upfront about who he was and he also belonged to a very deep red state. Sinema was mostly incommunicado with the people and news reporters and belonged to an increasingly blue state. Why couldn't she have been more like her jr. Arizona Senator counterpart Mark Kelly? I know why. It's because unlike Mark Kelly she ultimately sold her voters out by deciding to constantly suck off her rich elite donor pigs. Now, even though this will leave her US Senate seat open, this is actually very good news for the progressive Democratic candidate Gallego, because Sinema will no longer become a spoiler for him. Also, Gallego will be going up against the psycho MAGA queen Kari Lake who already loss against AZ Gov. Hobbs in the 2022 AZ Gubernatorial election. So, this is actually looking really good for the Democrats in 2024 who need to both keep that Senate seat and replace Sinema with a more no-nonsense progressive such as Gallego. Don't get wrong, I am not expecting Gallego to keep his promises, but he certainly seems much more of a down-to-earth true left-winger who really wants to fight hard for his people, but in a pragmatic, reasonable manner like John Fetterman in PA.

I now know why it is usually a suicidal idea for the incumbent party holding the White House to have a divisive primary/contest for its party's presidential nomination. This probably applies to other kinds of races such as gubernatorial elections, congressional or senatorial elections, state legislative elections, and mayoral elections. The reason why the incumbent party gets terribly hurt electorally by having such a bloody, miserable primary is because by allowing that to happen it negatively influences the electorate to question the governance of the party in power to such a severe degree. I would say this would be especially true in this current day and age given how divided our country has gotten these days. Having a highly contested primary for the party out of power, in contrast, doesn't hurt the challenger nominee/challenger party because they haven't even had the chance to govern yet as the president or as a current officeholder of some part of the US government. So, how can a challenging candidate or the party out of power really ever be questioned or judged as much as the incumbent can be about running the country in some way? So, actually for the party out of power or challenger candidate(s) having such a heated contest can provide much media coverage for several candidates in the race, whereby each of them would have an opportunity to persuade the people as to why the current form of governance is maybe not working or why the president has perhaps failed the country or why the current officeholder of say a governorship or US Senate seat has possibly failed its constituents. Go straight to time 52:22, if clicking on the vid doesn't take you right to the question I asked the Professor pertaining to this subject and his answer to it. I brought this up because I know many people in the US have been urging Biden to drop to clear the field for the younger generation of talented Democratic stars such as Newsom, Whitmer, Shapiro, Beshear, Brown, Warnock, and so on and so on to fight for 2024 Democratic Nomination for president. Yet, I now realize for sure what a grave mistake that would've been not just for the entire Democratic party to do that, but also for the whole country. This now really reaffirms my belief that Biden has made the wise decision for both his party and the country to run for president again to stop Trump from ever coming back to the White House. We don't want to have a repeat of what happened in 1968: LBJ decided not to run for president. Consequently, Democrats lost the incumbency advantage. The party in power, which was the Democratic party at the time, had a brutal and chaotic primary for the Dem presidential nomination. Democrats were heavily divided, which caused most Americans to greatly question the Democrats' ability to run the country. The racist segregationist Dixiecrat (Southern Democrat) George Wallace further ran as a major 3rd party presidential candidate. That of course meant that that he became a major spoiler for the Democrats in the general presidential election. The Democrats failed to nominate either a once in generation charismatic presidential candidate or a once or twice in a century inspirational heroic war leader after Johnson declined to run for re-election. Now, just to be clear those weren't the only reasons as to why the Dems lost the 1968 presidential election. The other key factors that caused them to lose were The terrible midterm results that the Dems had in 1966, particularly with the US House seats they lost. The historic widespread social unrest that occurred at the time over the Vietnam war and nationwide racial riots. (Cost the Dems the social unrest key) Johnson's disastrous handling of the Vietnam War. (Cost the Dems both the military/foreign policy failure and the military/foreign policy success key) All together these factors ultimately became the death knell for the Democrats in the 1968 presidential election even though during Johnson's second term the economy was doing great all around and Johnson's policies were as transformational for the country as FDR's New Deal policies were. The Republican presidential nominee ultimately won that election and guess who that GOP nominee was? Nixon! By the way, It's really not clear at all that Newsom or any of these rising young star Democrats out there would be able to win that key for the party today. Bill Clinton himself never won that key for his party during each of his presidential runs because he was only charismatic to the Democratic/liberal base and to barely the majority of Independent/moderate (swing voters). To win that key you would have to be so exceptionally charismatic, that you not only generate such devotion and love from your party base, you also would have to be able to win a solid majority of Independent/moderate voters, and win over an unusually high percentage of those from the party/ideology that's the opposite of what that presidential candidate is for. Since 1860, only seven presidents in US history were truly able to achieve this include: Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. Also, given how incredibly polarized our country has gotten it has become that much more difficult for either major party to put up a presidential candidate who would be able to inspire or persuade such a broad political spectrum of voters. Moreover, there isn't anyone out there today who would constitute as an exceptional heroic war leader like Eisenhower or Grant who could run as the Democratic nominee for president. So, I would say that it would be extremely unlikely in this day and age that the Democratic party would be able to find anyone who could the charisma/national hero key for their key. That's another why I say that it's really not worth it for Biden to step aside. It's clear to me at this point that no Democratic star out there like Newsom, Shapiro, Whitmer, Moore, or Beshear is going to save us from Trump and the MAGA Republicans. In fact, all of those big name Dems have made it clear that they too have given their full throated support to Biden and have been working very hard to promote him and his administration as much as possible. Not even the OG legend Obama himself can save our county and he too has made it very clear that he and his entire network of important people he has been well connected with are doing everything they can to help the Biden-Harris ticket win in 2024. Every other Democratic campaign strategist/operative has or will fall in line behind Biden as well for the big election. Therefore, it's actually up to EACH ONE OF US or ALL OF US as the voters of the USA to UNITE TOGETHER as much as possible under Biden and to GET OUT THERE AND VOTE FOR HIM and the Democratic party in historic numbers once again to truly save this country from Trumpism in 2024 just like we did in 2020.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/biden-win-michigan-democratic-primary-election-rcna139691 Let me know what you all think after listening to Michael Moore's serious take on this.

SCOTUS has been slowly eating away at our country's democracy. The conservatives on the court are slowly becoming oligarchs.

I know, but it's dismaying how foolish these voters in Michigan might end up being. This is sadly another reason for all of us to lose more sleep over what might have by the end of this year. Damn it!

Oh yeah, he says that social democracy is dead and that we have been living in some kind of techno-fuedalism. I agree with him that social and political interventions are keys to improving economies around the world, but so is technology to some extent. The thing is though is that Yanis is a libertarian marxist and from what I understand about that is that kind of ideology is a form of anarchism or collectivism akin to socialism. I don't see how that kind of economic philosophy will ever realistically work for the foreseeable future.

This video talks about how policies such as the IRA, which was passed by Biden and the Democrats in Congress, have caused the global economy to transition from neoliberal globalization to a new economic world order involving a lot more industrial policy in America and will eventually force Europe and many other countries to enact industrial policies of their own going forward. Some have said that this will cause some kind of economic arms race between the US and every other major economy in the world that may have some kind of positive or negative unintended consequences for the world. I believe that this will be great for America and for the rest of the world in the long-run.

Fortunately, the cynicism of Trump and the MAGA Republicans has already started to hurt them politically:

Biden and the Democrats on Congress were totally onboard with passing a very tough, very conservative border bill that they negotiated with the Republicans Congress, particularly with the GOP senators including Mitch McConnell and James Lankford, in a bipartisan manner. It seemed like this was all done in good faith with the Republicans in the Senate as those Republicans really worked on it crafting the bill and urged all of their colleagues in their conference and the House Republicans to all sign onto it because of the current border crisis and given that this was the very bill that the Republicans could ever get. They even said that this would be their probably their only chance to pass a major border bill as they know that they won't be able won't be abel to get a better immigration deal under Trump if gets elected president again unless they also get a total of 60 GOP senators (which will never happen). Yet, Republicans in Congress reneged on the deal because both Speaker Mike Johnson and Trump made it clear that they and most of their base are totally against the bipartisan Senate border deal. This goes to show that Republicans don't give a shit about the country including southern border. They only care about serving their Dark Lord Donald Trump bringing him back to power at all costs. Biden and the Dems need do a constant PR on this. Biden already has called out the cowardice of the right-wing and MUST continue to do so: They also clearly want Ukraine to lose and for democracy to die not just in our country, but around the world.

I am skeptical about that. I'd like think that my looks would amplify my game by that much and I used to think that tons of women would come onto me aggressively by the time was about 18 years old, but that clearly did not happen to me. Even after gaining a lot more muscle, getting a lot more fit, and becoming more athletic in my 20s, my results with women didn't really change much. I would only get some more women, especially those whom I dated, complimenting my looks. I mean I think my looks have made me feel very confident about my sex appeal and there were some girls during my high school and college years that were into me even when I didn't try to get at them. but I still suck at game. However, after learning A LOT about game, it eventually became clear to me by my late 20's to early 20s that women generally are sexually turned on a lot less by looks than men are. From what I understand now, the style of the clothes and shoes that he wears, the style of his haircut and facial hair, and what accessories (rings, earrings, tattoos, chains, necklaces, etc.) he wears or doesn't wear seem to matter a lot more to women.

NBC news poll showed that 47% of voters in the US now say Trump's presidency was better than expected. Also, Trump has been leading Biden in the polls at both the national level and state level for many months. Also, Biden's approval rating is lower than Trump, which is crazy. Biden just hit with another disgusting political attack from the special counsel about how he's a poor old man, which has given the GOP more ammo to use against Biden for their messaging on how Biden is unfit to be president and needs to step down. Now, there is renewed talk within the Democratic party as to whether or not Biden should drop out of the race, even though it probably is already way too late for that to happen at this point. This is really dismaying and depressing in terms of what may very well happen in 2024. I still don't understand how Leo is able to stay so calm and be like "meh, business as usual" when many people in this country are freaking out about Trump and have already lost faith in our country's institutions coming back into power. I get that if there nothing you can do about then it's not worth worrying about. I also get that none of us still have any idea yet as whether Biden and the Democrats or Trump and the MAGA Republicans will win in 2024. Yet I can't stop having such terrible anxiety over it and I just can't make this feeling go away no matter what I do to try cope with it as best as possible. I've everything I could to put this into a more logical reasonable perspective and try to see things in a much more optimistic manner, but this anxiety is still killing me. I don't know how I will be able to live with another PTSD moment if Trump wins again, like what happened in 2016 when we all got so traumatized from that.

Trump is seriously threatening to rip apart the entire US constitution and be a Dictator starting from Day 1.

I know, but at least Biden's achievements and policies have truly helped most Americans. he already is like a hybrid of Truman and LBJ, both of whom have been considered to be ranked in the top 10 or top 15 best presidents in US History. Trump, on the other hand, was an absolute monster of a president and has been ranked by historians and political scientists and many other experts out there as having been undeniably one of not if the worst presidents ever. You know that. Most people never felt this way about either side to this degree during the 1900s. I feel like Trump and the right-wing echo chambers have doomed us to living this insufferable culture war for their rest of our lives. The Democrats are also partly to blame by not fighting back hard enough before Trump ever became president. The Democrats, liberals, and progressives used to be a lot more like badass fighters for the people during the early to mid 1900s.

I don't know how I would be able to deal with the pain of that for another 4+ years. Many people I've talked to including my parents are already losing sleep over this.