Bit of a highjack, but, yes, many of us did dismiss the SDI in 1984. It was technologically infeasible. It would have required computational power beyond what was obtainable at that time. It was a fantasy idea, just like Trump’s wall with Mexico. It could not have worked.
(Computing power, and space technology, have improved: it might be possible today. It would also cost 500 billion. So it’s still politically impossible.)
Mince, I was 14 years old in 1984, and a founding member of a county-wide teen organization to educate the public and Congress on the futility, danger, and waste of the Reagan administration’s SDI initiative. Sorry you and your ilk were so late for the bus.
Heh, good luck with that, Mike. You have as much of a political future as Christie.
Arizona’s in play, for real. Texas is only kinda sorta on the edge of being in play, since one poll showing Hillary only 4% back doesn’t mean she’s really 4% back. (Ipsos has her 25 points behind in Texas in a poll taken Oct. 7-13.)
Tell you what: if Texas goes for Hillary, I’ll be so overjoyed that I’ll let Dopers vote on which charity I should direct a $500 contribution to. I can probably get a mod who knows me IRL to verify that I’ve made the contribution, if that should happen. But I expect my money’s all too safe.
I would make the same promise, and I live in Texas and will be voting for Clinton. She won’t come close to winning here, but hopefully Trump will win by significantly less than the last few R candidates.
I disagree. Pence has gotten props from the GOP rank and file for his VP debate performance, and has generally played the good soldier out on the campaign trail. If/when Trump loses, even badly, on Nov. 8, I suspect Pence will be the de facto GOP front-runner for 2020.
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I agree with your point that Pence will get insider brownie points for being a good soldier and fighting the good fight. Not the food fight.
IOW, Pence is China to Trump’s North Korea.
Where you and I part company is on 2020. History in both parties has not been kind to the heir apparent picked immediately after the previous campaign ends. Clinton is almost unique in being the nominee this time as well as having been the heir apparent for the last 4 years. And even she had to fight a surprisingly intense fight w Sanders to hold on.
Couple that with the yuge wildcard that the R party is now pulled in three very different directions: alt-right, Tea Party, and the ordinary conventional Rs. As such we have room for massive amounts of “interesting” politics in the R tent between now and 2020. Pence is IMO unlikely to prevail; his positional advantage is small and his liabilities are large.
Why don’t you just earmark it for* Trump/Whoever 2020 * right now as a gesture of gratitude?
The basic objections remain, and technology has not obviated them. I’ll let Wikipedia summarize Bethe’s objections to the program:
In a deeper sense, asking whether it would be possible today is wrong-headed: We’re not in a Cold War today. We’re not bound to the game theory which makes a purely defensive weapons system an amazingly dangerous creation which might provoke an immediate and overwhelming attack.
That said, we haven’t solved the decoy problem, and we haven’t solved the “just shoot down the satellites” problem, either. Theater-scale missile defense systems are feasible, for some definitions of feasibility, but a global missile defense system is too hard in a purely technical sense.
All I can say is, as a Texan, voting Democrat is going to feel slightly less futile this time around. Which feels nice.
Here’s how the spin will look, I predict:
"It’s not us inciting violence, it’s the left with their non stop media campaign to misrepresent the Republican candidate. Non stop, ‘He’s a liar, a danger, a predator!’ This is all on them!
And perhaps it will work? Perhaps the coverage of the Don will be tempered?
Two million isn’t enough.
And the “shy Tory” thing is baloney.
Is that anything like trickydick’s “Silent Majority”?
Also known as the “Bradley effect” or the “Wilder effect” for Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley and Virginia governor Doug Wilder. But that was specifically for polls that were supposedly skewed because respondents wouldn’t admit that they planned to vote against a black candidate.
Thing is that I remember that the effect was also pointed out as a reason why Obama was likely to lose.
Did not work out that way.
Nixon’s “Silent Majority” was very real, as evidenced by his massive landslide in 1972: They were the working-class whites who weren’t making noise about ending Vietnam, were largely supportive of Vietnam, and were certainly opposed to the social changes brought about by the later 1960s. Of course, Nixon made the famous speech in 1969, the same year he began to draw down our troop levels in Vietnam and [del]declare defeat[/del] hand over defense of South Vietnam to the South’s own military, as part of the Vietnamization policy.
The modern version of that Silent Majority is a lot smaller. It failed to get McCain elected in 2008, failed to get Romney elected in 2012, even in the face of Obamacare and another four years of That Muslim running things, and is largely not voting Trump, given his dismal polling numbers. They may not like the social changes the previous decades have seen, they may even believe that we’re all going to Hell due to Obergefell giving Those People the right to marry, but supporting Trump is a bridge too far.
The newer Silent Majority is a lot browner, and a lot more open to progressive ideas. The Democrats are already in a position to garner their votes. The Republicans are actively pissing them off. You don’t need a degree in Political Science to see where this is going in the immediate future.
I wonder how long Trump’s toxicity-by-association will last. We’d like to think that those who stood by him will poison candidates forever, but I don’t know that I trust the electorate to keep too long of a memory. The next midterms? Sure. 2020? I’m dubious.
At some point, Democrat attempts to play video of so-and-so defending Trump or campaigning with Trump will just look like desperate attempts to avoid current issues.
Of course that depends on Trump changing his ways…
Nah, not going to happen.
Okay, what the hell is Daily News Bin? Do the sprinkle satire or distortion into some of their stories? Many of the headlines on the main page look legit, but Trump tears apart his word-machine at a rally just seems weird. I mean they do not even speculate that he must have been upset to discover that it was out of croutons.