President Joe Biden hosted a small group of scholars and historians for lunch on Wednesday as he gears up for a speech framing the upcoming election as a battle for the nation’s democracy.
The discussion revolved around “ongoing threats to democracy and democratic institutions both here in America and around the world, as well as the opportunities we face as a nation,” the White House said in a statement.
Princeton’s Eddie Glaude Jr. and Sean Wilentz, Harvard’s Annette Gordon-Reed, Yale’s Beverly Gage and Boston College’s Heather Cox Richardson were among the attendees, as well as presidential biographer — and occasional Biden speech writer — Jon Meacham.
Attendees were tight-lipped about what was discussed at the gathering. One would only go so far as to say they “talked about American history and its bearing on the present — a lively exchange of ideas.”
Another person in the room, who like the others was not authorized to speak publicly about a private meeting, said the historians urged the president “to call out the moment for what it is.” In blunt terms, the academics discussed looming threats to the nation’s democracy and warned about the slow crawl of authoritarianism around the globe.
In a certain kind of way, NOT voting for the party you support in a two-party run-off does amount to a fractional vote in favour of your opponent.
I can’t draw a 2x2 table here, but I’ll try to describe it. In the population of voters, you have 20 supporters of party A and 20 supporters of party B. So, there is 50% support for each party in the population of 40 potential voters. During the actual vote, 10 people in party A vote and 15 people in party B vote. The vote spread is 5 votes in favour of party B. Using proportions, that’s 40% for party A and 60% for party B. Using these proportions on the original 40 people, this is the equivalent of a 16 people voting for party A and 24 people voting for party B, even though there are only 20 actual supporters of party B in the population! So, differential voting rates result in a higher proportion of votes going to the party with the higher voting rate, which means that staying home is not neutral. It is effectively a fractional vote for the other guy, where that fraction is a function of the differential voting rate among the two parties’ supporters.
Of course, if enough left-wing supporters stay home, it might go so far as to lead to a win for the radical right under Trump. If that happens, all those on the left who refused to show support for Biden will be just as guilty as the MAGA idiots.
I’ll give you that that is a fair point, but the impact of my action doesn’t outweigh my conviction.
Hopefully more people aren’t like me I guess?
There is no way Israel would’ve had the balls to go as hard as they did. If they did not have us sitting there to make sure no one else got involved.
We supported the bully, or at least someone it turns out it was just as bad as the fucking other guy, and then we continue to do it after we saw all the dead children.
I’ve said it before I’ll say it again, I understand where they’re coming from but they’re still wrong, they’re still the bad guys in this, it just turns out there’s no good guys, but they keep calling themselves the good guys.