Of all the reasons this is whole conversation is so infuriatingly stupid, this is probably #1. If Trump cared about the wall, he had full control of the government for 2 years. He chose now as the time to throw a hissyfit over it? It is not actually about the wall. It was never actually about the wall. It’s about picking a fight. Trump wants a big flashy fight, because that’s basically all he’s good at. Except this time it’s so transparent, stupid, and harmful that the vast majority of people aren’t buying it.
Again, pass a clean continuing resolution and bring the democrats to the table by actually offering something they want in return. Don’t just hold the functionality of the government hostage if they don’t give into your demands.
A bit of game theory. Ditka, Magellan, let’s say the dems give Trump the wall funding to end the shutdown. What happens next time the democrats decide that they don’t want to pass a bill the republicans want? What, exactly, stops Trump from pulling the exact same shit again?
What are you talking about? The existing barriers were built where the border patrol thought they would do the most good. Same for the additional 240 mile the the $5 billion is for.
In babby’s first science and social science classes we learn about cause and effect. The bulk of the funding was appropriated in 2007. Meanwhile, apprehensions along the SW border had already fallen from 1.64 million in 2000 to 0.86 million without extensive fencing. Then the recession hit, which is to blame for the bulk of the decrease over the next few years.
It’s not like there isn’t already literature on this:
Most of the meager impact seems to have been in high-traffic areas, e.g. in border cities, which were already 60% fenced by then. I remember when they added fencing in El Paso. People used to walk across the river (doesn’t have water in it most of the year), drop something big in the road (Paisano Dr.), and hold up cars that stopped. Hell maybe that only happened once but people sure talked about it a lot. But out in bumblefuck? Which is most of the border. Meh.
There were no such polls, or at least no such polls tracked by those who are good at it (i.e. Nate Silver and his team). Nate Silver and his team believed that Trump had a very significant chance to win, based on the polling, even if they thought it was slightly more likely that Hillary would win. That’s what the polling said, and it was very, very slightly off. About the same magnitude as it was off in 2012, except that in that case it was off in the other direction (i.e. predicting a small Obama win when it was actually a large Obama win).
You. Not in this thread. But you do so repeatedly. Want to know what to think about climate? Listen to the experts. Want to know about any issue concerning black people, listen to black people. You deny this?
You’re the one asking for 5.7 billion of our tax dollars, you’ll have to do better than “I dunno google it”.
All this is about is Trump is mad he lost the House, so he took his ball and went home, and he is refusing to cooperate out of pique. That’s it. He’s trying to find a way to force the House to bend to his will so that he can keep making them bend to his will. That’s why they can’t just give the baby what he’s screaming for.
I’m not interested in discussing such an irrelevant personal topic in this thread.
I’m interested in discussing the factual sequence of events of this shutdown, in which Trump and his GOP allies made demands while offering nothing in return, executed a shutdown when those demands were not accepted, and are continuing to do nothing, and offer nothing, while the Democrats in the House pass bills opening the government at previously accepted bipartisan funding levels.
The NYT had HRC at 85%. HuffPo had her at 98%. PEC had her at 99%. They all were supposedly tracking the polls. I’m open to the possibility that they’re not very good at it though.
I remember PEC had that ridiculous confidence – proving that their analysis was seriously flawed. NYT is actually pretty good, IMO – not as good as Nate Silver’s 538, but perhaps the 2nd best major poll tracker. If they said 85%, that was obviously too high a confidence level, but 15% things still happen relatively frequently (about 1 in 6 times, in fact).
But Nate Silver remains the gold standard, above and beyond everyone else, and he’s been (virtually) right on the money in 2008, 2012, and 2018, while being very close in 2010, 2014, and 2016, IIRC. And he says the polling was actually pretty good, in general, in 2016. It was just off by more than a small amount in a few states, which isn’t that unusual.
“Let me play baseball with you.”
“No were playing already and the teams are set.”
Grabbing the baseball. “Let’s compromise. I’ll give you your baseball back if yo ulet me play.”