Funny thing is that's how Trump thinks, but not ironically.

Generally their playbook is open, it just doesn't work. Their strategy is to let rich people do whatever they want and hoard as much wealth as they can, and that prosperity obviously will trickle down to everyone.

However when taxes are relatively higher on the rich and regulations do things like punish them for poisoning a water source, they spend their resources gaslighting the populace into thinking economy is just terrible and if your personal experience does not bear that out, well your just lucky and you'll be out on the streets in a few months unless you vote right.

How about the way you walk?

I would suspect never.

Either they are obsessed with their "work" and do it far more than that, or they do nothing.

Musk still counts as someone who likes Musk. Perhaps more than anyone else. So it still works.

Agreed, and further to point out they even have private schools if they feel so compelled to indoctrinate every day of the week, we let them do that too and even allow them to claim equal credentials to a publicly regulated institution.

I think the third party is a valid thing to keep in mind. The Republicans are a bit more "ends justify the means", which translates to not letting themselves get distracted by "perfect is the enemy of the good". So they might even prefer a third party, but they are less likely to because they tend to be a bit more coldly strategic in their voting.

With respect to they can ignore the results of the primary vote... but that's exactly the sort of thing that people accussed them of when they put Hilary Clinton up as their candidate. So the right can tear into them for 'coronating' their candidate instead of doing an election.

While they can put up someone else, it would be a pretty desperate act, and it's hard to know which bad option is the worst of the options.

I would say that Jill Stein's platform is broadly impractical. It's largely a wishlist of "things that would be cool if they were the case" generally bereft of "how it will be acheived" and ill equipped to deal with harsh realities.

The most pervasive issue is her platform asserts that it will do things that are beyond the authority of a presidential administration. Much of what she promises are the responsibility of congress, not the executive branch. She promises ranked choice voting but that's not even the authority of the federal government, that's the states. She even goes so far as to declare that foreign nations would basically act the way she tells them to. Meanwhile the Green Party despite fielding a presidential candidate is utterly missing in enough down ballot elections making it a guarantee that such a hypothetical presidential win would be lame duck from inauguration.

There's also some inconsistencies. Like allowing the UN Security Council to hold Israel Accountable, but at the same time wanting to abolish the UN Security Council.

Then the flat-out bad ideas, like disbanding NATO. Her platform reads like she believes Russia would just be nice if NATO didn't exist, that the US and NATO is the cause of the invasion of Ukraine. Maybe there was an opportunity there in the 90s if the world had helped Russia differently in the wake of the USSR collapse, but that opportunity, for now, has passed. Fairly sure if she had her wish that we'd probably see Taiwan fall to China, South Korea fall to North Korea (with Chinese and Russian help), and Russia take much of eastern Europe.

because he wouldn’t have fucked up COVID so spectacularly and likely would have won a second term.

I think that, frankly, COVID would have fucked up any president. I mean, we had some damning rhetoric and piss poor moves, but on the other hand there weren't good moves really to be had. The best response would have still been an economic catastrophe that would not have recovered. We might have had fewer deaths, but we'd still have a lot of them. I think if it had been COVID-11 then even Obama would have lost his second term.

do some really sketchy stuff. Simply put “war”

Note that as bad as that is and as evil as it has sometimes been, it is "legal", and thus not subject to criminal prosecution. It is specifically legal for the president to do that sketchy stuff.

For an "official" act to be illegal, but not subject to prosecution just makes no sense. It shouldn't be possible for an illegal act to be "official".

Extra bonkers is the 5/4 opinion that you can't even mention official acts, like if you accept a bribe in exchange for an appointment, you can't mention the appointment while trying to prosecute the bribe.

The third party situation currently is inherently going to draw candidates that are not practically minded. Any one that might align with a third party platform but have any hint of practicality go participate with one of the two likely parties.

In some areas, it's not even two parties, it's just one of the two. In those areas, you'll see both left and right candidates in the primary for the practical choice, and the other mainstream party devolves into the same state as "third parties", with far out impractical people trying to run.

Election reform to make third party candidates viable would lead to more practical sensibilities in those third parties

Perhaps an oversimplification, but I'd say it's the one point that progressives are so pissed that they would tend to forget that the other likely choice would rather see more genocide. On other points I'd say progressives may wish for better, but are willing to be more pragmatic for now.

There's a fair question of "would it ever be practical to do such large constructs". As far as energy capture, between advances in energy efficiency and solar capture, one could imagine having energy beyond our greatest ambitions with no or minimal space based solar energy collection. The resources involved to construct such a thing would involve a mass equivalent to an entire planet to make a super thin shell, and we'd want to be pickier than just any old matter.

Similar to people dreaming of Mars colonization as a workaround for climate change. Anything we could do to make Mars livable would be even harder than engineering Earth's climate. Now maybe population growth may demand more area one day, or non replacement birth rates become so normal that population just starts shrinking.

There is the possibility that no one can "win" against the physics, and things didn't get much more advanced in space for any species than they are today for us. If that's the case, then we shouldn't be surprised that other hypothetical civilisations cannot be found.

Or there are plenty of societies at least as advanced as we are, but we can't find each other because space is big and our stars tend to drown out our own puny EM emissions.

Sunday school is not a public institution, which is why it gets a pass. Similarly private schools are free to do this all week long.

I think even this supreme Court would rule the correct way. I wouldn't be surprised if it were even unanimous, but at worst I'd expect the 6/3 split with Thomas, Goraych, and Alito. There's only so far they can go when the Constitution was very blatantly clear on this matter.

This is my thought. I could imagine Biden announcing that Obama was coming in to play a very key role in his administration and that might give him a boost. That while technically the buck stops with Biden still, that Obama is very close to contribute.

This would sidestep the "annointed one" problem, avoid skipping the primary, and while it's short of a new candidate, it gets a very popular person near the presidency who couldn't have been the candidate.

I couldn't imagine them starting from scratch at this point, couldn't imagine who they would pick that people would already resonate with.

Given the timing that nearly all the primaries are done, his replacement would necessarily be someone no one even has the chance to vote on. This is a tremendous risk.

However, if he announced someone like "announcing my new chief of staff: Obama"...

I suppose that would make sense. Trump doubled down on tax cuts for the wealthy and burning the hell out of fossil fuels. So even if someone were oblivious to his lying, and Trump was able to "perform" more confidently, the end result were policies with grave implications. Also, on the one weak point with progressives, falling to protect Palestinians, Trump's criticism was that Biden wasn't pro Israel hard enough...

I was thinking the debate rules actually saved Trump from his worst impulses. Biden was allowed to speak at full length and Trump gets to appear like he can participate in a civilized conversation while Biden would sometimes go off the rails while trying to fill his time. A lot of his embarrassments started in a decent place, but pivoted badly in the middle.

Trump confidently lied repeatedly without consequences, and so long as someone is unaware that it's lies, I could imagine them finding Trump's rhetoric credible that night.

I'll agree, but he was at the same time more bold, like saying everyone wanted to overturn Roe v Wade. Confident and competent lying can get you far, but if you lie about how the people watching would feel, you undermine all your other lying.

There are few things more maddening than claiming you know how someone feels more than they themselves do. A very credible liar can be undone if they lie that well on a matter the audience personally knows better. Suddenly all the benefit of the doubt purchased by the confidence is erased.