Joe Biden Presidency thread *Please read OP - Threadbanned Users Added 4/5/21*

Speaking of that, Fox & Friends spent airtime complaining that the WHCD ‘treated Biden differently than Trump’

But of course they did: Trump treated the WHCD than any president in 36 years, by never attending a dinner despite annual invitation and instead he broadcast stochastic terrorism against the free press. Calling the free press the “enemy of the people” resulting in Mail bombings to outlets etc.

But for the echo chamber they had to act as if Biden getting the relationship between the WH and the WHC/WHCD back to normal was an attack on the country. Constantly under siege by progress

One CNN analyst does not equal CNN.

If it is CNN why havent you even linked to CNN... how come?

Well?

as much of a primary as republicans did in 2020 or 2004 I imagine

The presidential election is the point where it becomes democratic. There is the issue that the US is forced into a two party system by the electoral process but people get annoyed if you try and change that these days without consulting George Washington who has remained pretty silent on the issue for a few centuries. The nomination process for both parties is wildly undemocratic.

In any case as outlined they will if they have a challenger which does not appear to be the case. It is a little hard to have challengers argue their case if they don't exist.

That’s a whole different era, before 24/7 News and social media. Politics was a completely different animal. Nowadays both parties seemingly agree that it’s nothing much more than erosive to have a primary against their own incumbent.

If either of those candidates (or another candidate) gains traction, reaching a certain figure in the polls or gaining a noteworthy percentage in the initial primaries then the contest is on. The networks will demand debates, they'll give airtime to these candidates etc.

It's not that a contest doesn't happen (in effect it always does) - it's just that generally no-one serious takes part. Like probably 95% of people think Obama was uncontested in 2012, but actually there was a rather pathetic race which no-one paid much attention to.

2012 Democratic Party presidential primaries - Wikipedia

Kind of. Political parties are basically private clubs, and get to choose who their nominee is pretty much however they want. As to the election of the President being democratic, not really. The people don't elect the President. The states do. Each state has a number of votes equal to their representation in Congress. 1 vote for each Senator and Representative they have. Most states give all of those votes to whichever candidate gets the most popular votes in their state. For instance in the 2020 election Texas had 38 EC votes. 52% of the population voted for Trump, which meant that all 38 votes went to Trump. California had 55 votes, Biden got 63% of the vote, and so he got all 55 EC votes.

This is how it was possible for Trump to win in 2016, even though he only got 46.1% of the vote compared to Clinton's 48.2%. Trump actually got a slightly higher percentage of the popular vote in 2020 at 46.8%. But Biden got 51.3%. And more importantly Biden also got more EC votes than Trump, by roughly the same margin that Trump had over Clinton in 2016.

The fact that the states actually control who is appointed to the Electoral College for their state is what the Republicans have been looking into in the states that they control the government of. Looking in to legislation to allow the state legislature to override the popular vote in the state and appoint the electors that they want if they don't like the results.

Yup. A lot of the problems in US politics could be solved, or at least helped, by getting rid of the EC and replacing it with the people directly electing the President via a ranked ballot. But doing that would reduce the power of both the Democrats and Republicans, and would effectively require they both assent to it. Which will never happen.

After yet another bank bailout caused largely by poor management of the bank in question by... no doubt wealthy people that enjoy good credit ratings and don't want for much.

And, if loans are risky, umm.... why I seem to remember this was a thing not all that long ago.

Nope lol