Odds of conviction?

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What are the odds the Senate will find Trump guilty?

  • NONE

    Votes: 51 58.0%
  • <10%

    Votes: 29 33.0%
  • <50%

    Votes: 4 4.5%
  • >50%

    Votes: 3 3.4%
  • >90%

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Slam dunk.

    Votes: 1 1.1%

  • Total voters
    88
  • Poll closed .

compcons

Platinum Member
Oct 22, 2004
2,139
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As this thread dies away, you should be asking yourself if you were wrong about your prediction. I say this because if you thought for a goddamn second that the GOP was suddenly going to change it's tune and do the right thing, you need to re-examine your ability to assess just how fucking far gone the Republican party is.

You need to fully realize just how the opposition operates and act accordingly.

They don't deserve any more chances or the benefit of the doubt. They will side with their party 100 fucking percent of the time. Don't be goddamn Charlie Brown and go for the football again. They are not in it for anything other than keeping their seats and retaining as much power as possible. They have pushed past the gray areas of law and the constitution and are interpreting things to fit their goals to stay in power even when facts are blatantly clear. I am sorry to say this but f you don't get it by now, you are a fucking moron.

DO NO EXPECT ANYTHING DIFFERENT.
 
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eelw

Diamond Member
Dec 4, 1999
8,936
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If you don't want to partake in that aspect of the "closeness", than so be it, but don't accuse me of data manipulation. I'm using simple math and simple division here.
But you're still missing the point of NWRMidnight. The 3 states that turned in 2016, Mi, Pa and Wi was only decided by over 12,000 votes. So Biden winning those 3 states by over 150,000 makes the 43,000 moot. Like who would have thought Ga and NV would have flipped. Just gravy at this point.
 

nickqt

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2015
7,535
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But you're still missing the point of NWRMidnight. The 3 states that turned in 2016, Mi, Pa and Wi was only decided by over 12,000 votes. So Biden winning those 3 states by over 150,000 makes the 43,000 moot. Like who would have thought Ga and NV would have flipped. Just gravy at this point.
First, check your numbers.

In 2016 it was ~78,000 votes from PA MI and WI that Trump won.

~78,000 / ~136000,000 = 0.00057%

In 2020 it was 43,000 votes from AZ GA and WI that Biden won.

~43,000 / ~158,000,000 = 0.00027%

So, again, 2020 was closer. Less votes would have flipped the outcome.
 

woolfe9998

Lifer
Apr 8, 2013
16,188
14,090
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The vote totals are the vote totals.

If 43,000 votes over 3 states were flipped, Trump would have been re-elected in the House.

That's 0.003% of the total votes cast.

This was no "blowout". If Trump had actually closed the border and gotten behind masks, the death toll would have been far less and the economy wouldn't have taken as massive of a shit...and he would almost certainly have won the Electoral College, along with the Senate.

I'm aware that Biden won the Electoral College, but it was by ~43,000 votes out of ~158,000,000...whereas Trump won the Electoral College by ~78,000 votes out of ~136,00,000, as liberals liked to remind ourselves in November of 2016.

In terms of the number of votes that turned the Electoral College, 2020 closer than 2016.

Anyway you look at it, your original assertion that 2020 was "much closer" was hyperbole and I don't think you checked the numbers before saying that.
 

eelw

Diamond Member
Dec 4, 1999
8,936
4,261
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First, check your numbers.

In 2016 it was ~78,000 votes from PA MI and WI that Trump won.
Wait a moment, why do I remember so many sites saying the small margin? Googled and found this WaPo link. Margin was even higher than 78,000 o_O

Screenshot_20210215-173555.png
 

nickqt

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2015
7,535
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Anyway you look at it, your original assertion that 2020 was "much closer" was hyperbole and I don't think you checked the numbers before saying that.
Much closer, as in 43,000 votes required to flip it from Biden to Trump in 2020, compared to 78,000 votes required to flip it from Trump to Clinton in 2016. And in 2020, there were ~22,000,000 more votes cast total. Which explains...

Much closer, as in a total vote difference of 0.00027% of all cast votes to flip it from Biden to Trump in 2020, whereas it was 0.00057% of all cast votes to flip it from Trump to Clinton.

So, I'll stick with my accurate numbers and accurate description of how close each election was to having the opposite outcome.

And again, THE REPUBLICANS PICKED UP HOUSE SEATS.

While the Democrats "took" the Senate, it is only by the barest margin, which is to say, ONLY because Harris is the VP and has the tie-breaker. And even here, Ossoff and Warnock together outgained the Republicans by 150,000 votes, out of about 9,000,000 votes total.

Had Trump won re-election through the House with the Democrats still picking up both GA Senate seats, the Senate would still belong to ol' Mitch.

The 2020 election for the White House was closer than 2016. How much closer, whether "a whole bunches", or "supery-dupery bunches", or whatever, is irrelevant to the fact that less votes would have flipped this thing to a House re-election of Trump. With all things being equal, would have left the Senate in Control of the Republicans, and with the Republicans having gained House seats, would have made the 2020 election an almost complete failure for the Democratic Party, in a year where the Republican President literally stood back and stood by half a million Americans dying from a pandemic.

Anyone who looks at 2020 as some fucking slam-dunk win is delusional in regards to how close this country came to doubling down on insane outright fascism being it's operating system going forward.

Or: It doesn't matter if the Democrats win 400,000,000 votes out of California.
 

NWRMidnight

Platinum Member
Jun 18, 2001
2,922
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Much closer, as in 43,000 votes required to flip it from Biden to Trump in 2020, compared to 78,000 votes required to flip it from Trump to Clinton in 2016. And in 2020, there were ~22,000,000 more votes cast total. Which explains...

Much closer, as in a total vote difference of 0.00027% of all cast votes to flip it from Biden to Trump in 2020, whereas it was 0.00057% of all cast votes to flip it from Trump to Clinton.

So, I'll stick with my accurate numbers and accurate description of how close each election was to having the opposite outcome.

And again, THE REPUBLICANS PICKED UP HOUSE SEATS.

While the Democrats "took" the Senate, it is only by the barest margin, which is to say, ONLY because Harris is the VP and has the tie-breaker. And even here, Ossoff and Warnock together outgained the Republicans by 150,000 votes, out of about 9,000,000 votes total.

Had Trump won re-election through the House with the Democrats still picking up both GA Senate seats, the Senate would still belong to ol' Mitch.

The 2020 election for the White House was closer than 2016. How much closer, whether "a whole bunches", or "supery-dupery bunches", or whatever, is irrelevant to the fact that less votes would have flipped this thing to a House re-election of Trump. With all things being equal, would have left the Senate in Control of the Republicans, and with the Republicans having gained House seats, would have made the 2020 election an almost complete failure for the Democratic Party, in a year where the Republican President literally stood back and stood by half a million Americans dying from a pandemic.

Anyone who looks at 2020 as some fucking slam-dunk win is delusional in regards to how close this country came to doubling down on insane outright fascism being it's operating system going forward.

Or: It doesn't matter if the Democrats win 400,000,000 votes out of California.

Quick question, do you argue about the closeness of games in sporting events in the same manner? "Yeah, it was a close game, even though X team beat Y team by 28 points, but if you take away the 2 interceptions from the X team, Y team would have won because they would have scored both times without those interceptions. That and X team gained A player, where Y team lost B player. So the game came down to 2 interceptions vs 3 interceptions the last game. So it was a closer game.. Everything you are arguing about is hyperbole.

It doesn't matter if Biden took a state by 1 vote, or by a million votes. (it's like horseshoes, it's not how close you where to getting that ringer, it's how many ringers you got total in the end) The closeness of the election is not decided on how many votes it would have taken to turn multiple states EC numbers. It's decided on the spread between the EC votes earned. We could stick Texas into the argument as well, since The republican's heavily gerrymandered the state to their advantage and yet, Blue gained a huge amount of votes in 2020 even with the gerrymandering BS. If Republican's actually stopped suppressing votes, stopped gerrymandering, and actually allowed honest fair elections, they would never win.. that right there alone shows that this election, or any other elections in modern times has every been close. They have rigged it to appear that way thru such actions.

Also, to sit and argue your position, you are removing 100's of factors that effected both elections, mainly the candidate Trump faced in each one, not to mention the un proven accusations and falsehoods Trump used in both elections to manipulate and fear monger people into voting for him. Which isn't all on Trump, that is mostly on the stupidity of the citizens of this country, Trump just took advantage of it. He's still doing it. The only reason Trump did as well as he did in both elections is because of that stupidity.

At the end of the day, you are trying to compare apples to oranges when trying to claim one was closer than the other. It's a bullshit argument that has no relevance other than something to argue about. Hell, you might as well say 2020 was closer because Biden only flipped 5 states compared to Trump's 6 states he flipped in 2016. And lets not get into the popular vote argument.. -3 million vs +7 million. So by one meaningless manipulated metric (meaning you are removing multiple factors to derive to that conclusion) it was a close election when in fact it wasn't. Specially when you look at the votes gained by the democrat's in each state, giving Biden the win, compared to last election.
 
Last edited:

nickqt

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2015
7,535
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Quick question, do you argue about the closeness of games in sporting events in the same manner? "Yeah, it was a close game, even though X team beat Y team by 28 points, but if you take away the 2 interceptions from the X team, Y team would have won because they would have scored both times without those interceptions. That and X team gained A player, where Y team lost B player. So the game came down to 2 interceptions vs 3 interceptions the last game. So it was a closer game.. Everything you are arguing about is hyperbole.

It doesn't matter if Biden took a state by 1 vote, or by a million votes. (it's like horseshoes, it's not how close you where to getting that ringer, it's how many ringers you got total in the end) The closeness of the election is not decided on how many votes it would have taken to turn multiple states EC numbers. It's decided on the spread between the EC votes earned. We could stick Texas into the argument as well, since The republican's heavily gerrymandered the state to their advantage and yet, Blue gained a huge amount of votes in 2020 even with the gerrymandering BS. If Republican's actually stopped suppressing votes, stopped gerrymandering, and actually allowed honest fair elections, they would never win.. that right there alone shows that this election, or any other elections in modern times has every been close. They have rigged it to appear that way thru such actions.

Also, to sit and argue your position, you are removing 100's of factors that effected both elections, mainly the candidate Trump faced in each one, not to mention the un proven accusations and falsehoods Trump used in both elections to manipulate and fear monger people into voting for him. Which isn't all on Trump, that is mostly on the stupidity of the citizens of this country, Trump just took advantage of it. He's still doing it. The only reason Trump did as well as he did in both elections is because of that stupidity.

At the end of the day, you are trying to compare apples to oranges when trying to claim one was closer than the other. It's a bullshit argument that has no relevance other than something to argue about. Hell, you might as well say 2020 was closer because Biden only flipped 5 states compared to Trump's 6 states he flipped in 2016. And lets not get into the popular vote argument.. -3 million vs +7 million. So by one meaningless manipulated metric (meaning you are removing multiple factors to derive to that conclusion) it was a close election when in fact it wasn't. Specially when you look at the votes gained by the democrat's in each state, giving Biden the win, compared to last election.
That's a whole lot of arguing to say that I'm just arguing for arguments sake.

Nice.
 

Perknose

Forum Director & Omnipotent Overlord
Forum Director
Oct 9, 1999
46,009
8,640
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@NWRMidnight, @nickqt

Ok, gentleman, make a clean break and return to your respective corners. Let the other kids have their say now, k?

Perknose
Forum Director
 

pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
12,970
7,888
136
Wow.

The numbers really aren't this difficult.

I don't care that Biden flipped Michigan. And I don't care that he won 400,000,000,000 votes out of California either.

Both are irrelevant when we're discussing by how much Biden won the EC, the only thing that matters.

For the Electoral College, Biden won because he won ~43,000 votes in AZ, GA and WI. Had he lost those three states, the Electoral College would have been tied, regardless of Biden winning 20,000,000 votes in MI or whatever you keep alluding to. At 269-269, the House re-elects Trump. Regardless of Biden winning MI, or Biden getting 400,000,000,000 votes out of California.

I'm not manipulating anything. The 2020 election was won on the back of 43,000 votes in 3 states. The election was extremely close...because just 43,000 votes changing columns and Trump wins.

If it makes you feel better that Biden flipped MI and PA along with AZ GA and WI, then so be it. But it doesn't change the FACT that had 43,000 votes been different in AZ GA and WI, Trump wins re-election via the House. Which is why I think it is absolutely incorrect to believe that 2020 was some kind of blowout or rebuke to the Republican Party.

The Republican Party PICKED UP HOUSE SEATS. Donald Trump PICKED UP 11 million votes after the past 4 years of hilarious own-goaling the entire country.

2020 wasn't a blowout. It was a close call. 43,000 votes for the White House.

55,000 votes for Ossoff, and 95,000 votes for Warnock, means 150,000 votes for the barest majority possible Senate. Out of how many hundreds of millions of votes for Senate seats?

Y'all keep whistling past the graveyard about this 2020 blowout/rebuke if you want.

It was a fucking nail-biter.

And we have to succeed EVERY TIME to prevent the full slide into Republican Party Authoritarianism. All they have to do is win once.


I don't really understand what this argument is about, Tried tracing the chain of responses backwards from this one and still can't grasp what the underlying point of disagreement between you is.

The election was 'close' largely because of the crap electoral system, surely? That's going to make all elections 'close' unless (and until) the Republicans completely collapse. They don't have to even try to get a majority to vote for them, they can win with much less than that, so there's no reason for them to be anything other than extremist.

(Seems that, theoretically, if the votes fall in a wildly skewed geographical distribution, even in a two-party race, someone can win the Presidency despite losing the national vote by 23% to 77% Though that probably requires an even more eccentric distribution of voters than the current partisan-self-sorting (that clearly favours the Republicans) is capable of achieving, I imagine that's the ultimate ideal outcome that the Republican party are shooting for)
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
83,716
47,399
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Much closer, as in 43,000 votes required to flip it from Biden to Trump in 2020, compared to 78,000 votes required to flip it from Trump to Clinton in 2016. And in 2020, there were ~22,000,000 more votes cast total. Which explains...

Much closer, as in a total vote difference of 0.00027% of all cast votes to flip it from Biden to Trump in 2020, whereas it was 0.00057% of all cast votes to flip it from Trump to Clinton.

So, I'll stick with my accurate numbers and accurate description of how close each election was to having the opposite outcome.

And again, THE REPUBLICANS PICKED UP HOUSE SEATS.

While the Democrats "took" the Senate, it is only by the barest margin, which is to say, ONLY because Harris is the VP and has the tie-breaker. And even here, Ossoff and Warnock together outgained the Republicans by 150,000 votes, out of about 9,000,000 votes total.

Had Trump won re-election through the House with the Democrats still picking up both GA Senate seats, the Senate would still belong to ol' Mitch.

The 2020 election for the White House was closer than 2016. How much closer, whether "a whole bunches", or "supery-dupery bunches", or whatever, is irrelevant to the fact that less votes would have flipped this thing to a House re-election of Trump. With all things being equal, would have left the Senate in Control of the Republicans, and with the Republicans having gained House seats, would have made the 2020 election an almost complete failure for the Democratic Party, in a year where the Republican President literally stood back and stood by half a million Americans dying from a pandemic.

Anyone who looks at 2020 as some fucking slam-dunk win is delusional in regards to how close this country came to doubling down on insane outright fascism being it's operating system going forward.

Or: It doesn't matter if the Democrats win 400,000,000 votes out of California.
To be clear, Republicans lost the house vote decisively, just less decisively than in 2018.

The issue is and always has been that Democrats need to not just win, but win by 5+ points every single election. That’s what we need to turn our attention to fixing. Kill the electoral college. Abolish gerrymandering, and add several states.

Our issue is not that America wants fascism, it’s that a radicalized minority does and the system helps them do it.
 

Perknose

Forum Director & Omnipotent Overlord
Forum Director
Oct 9, 1999
46,009
8,640
136
Our issue is not that America wants fascism, it’s that a radicalized minority does and the system helps them do it.
^^^ That's it. That's what we face, said as clearly and simply as it can be, the ongoing issue before us all.
Fayto6t.gif
 

nickqt

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2015
7,535
7,660
136
To be clear, Republicans lost the house vote decisively, just less decisively than in 2018.

The issue is and always has been that Democrats need to not just win, but win by 5+ points every single election. That’s what we need to turn our attention to fixing. Kill the electoral college. Abolish gerrymandering, and add several states.

Our issue is not that America wants fascism, it’s that a radicalized minority does and the system helps them do it.
Our issue is that a radicalized super-minority wants fascism, a plurality doesn't, and our electoral system is designed to give the super-minority a handicap.

Again...that 43,000 votes in 3 states could have changed the entire outcome of the election, despite Biden winning by 7 million total votes.

My. Entire. Point.

2020 wasn't a rebuke, it was a near miss.