Monday's Most Active Threads

For the second day in a row, all of the most active topics were posted in the "Political Discussion" forum and all but one are related to the presidential debate. The shortest of these threads is 12 pages and the first one is over 50. So I am unable to read all of the posts in the threads and will only provide an overview of the topics. The most active thread yesterday was titled, "The President is Above the Law". This thread was started back in January after oral arguments before the Supreme Court regarding the question of whether former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump has immunity for his actions related to the January 6 insurrection attempt. During the hearing, Trump's lawyer was asked whether a president could order Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political opponent and enjoy immunity for the act. Trump's lawyer argued that Congress would surely impeach a president who did such a thing, but short of impeachment the President would have immunity. This led to the original poster creating this thread. Yesterday, the Supreme Court released its decision in the case, granting considerable immunity to the President. In her dissent, Justice Sonya Sotomayor returned to the example of Seal Team 6 being used to murder a political opponent, claiming that the majority ruling granted immunity for such an act. The majority ruled that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for "core constitutional powers", those duties specified in the Constitution. In addition, the Court ruled that presidents have presumptive immunity for "official acts", actions undertaken in the course of acting as president. Finally, the court confirmed that presidents enjoy no immunity for private acts. On the face of it, this sounds fairly reasonable. But, as they say, the devil is in the details. The Court also ruled that evidence involving acts for which the President is immune cannot be used against him. This presents a significant hurdle to prosecuting a president for crimes that were unofficial acts and for which even the Court agrees, there would be no immunity. As Sotomayor explains in her dissent, imagine that the President gave an official speech during which he stated his intention to prevent a political rival from passing legislation by any means. That would be an official act for which the President would have the presumption of immunity. If the President later hired a private hitman to murder the rival, that would be a private act, but the President's public admission of intent could not be introduced as evidence to support a murder charge. As things stand, the case against Trump has been remanded to the lower court where Judge Tanya Chutkan will have to review the case in light of the Supreme Court's decision. If the actions for which Trump has been charged appear to core constitutional acts, he will have immunity. It is very unlikely that any of Trump's January 6-related actions will fall in that category. However, there will certainly be an argument that the actions were official acts for which Trump should have the presumption of immunity. It will be up to Jack Smith to demonstrate that the acts were, in fact, private. One thing that is already clear is that some evidence, such as that involving Jeffrey Clark, will no longer be admissible because it involved official acts.

The next most active thread, of course also from the "Political Discussion" forum, was titled, "Poll shows the debate only changed 7% of people's minds...". The original poster linked to a poll showing that prior to the debate, 65% of those polled already saw President Joe Biden as being unfit for office. After the debate in which Biden performed poorly and caused many observers to question his mental competence, that number rose to 72%. The original poster goes on to say that the race is still tight, meaning that a significant number of people are willing to vote for someone who they view as cognitively unfit for the office. Finally, the original poster concludes — I'm not sure how — that DCUM posters are among the most extreme of this group. The first thing I will say about this post is that the original poster linked to the Daily Mail as a source. In 2017, Wikipedia banned the Daily Mail as "a source, citation, or proof of notability" due to "poor fact checking, sensationalism, and flat-out fabrication." I am always surprised by the huge number of DCUM posters — including many liberals — that seem to rely on the Daily Mail for news. The Daily Mail rarely does its own reporting. Rather, it trolls the Internet for stories and then sensationalizes them for its own publication. In the case of this article, the Mail relied on an article from CBS News about a poll which was conducted by CBS News/YouGov. It would have been more responsible to link to the CBS News article which, in any case, is much more informative. The main point being made by the original poster is really indisputable. A significant number of voters are prepared to vote for Biden despite their belief that he is not fit for the office. While many, such as the original poster, seem surprised by this, they really shouldn't be. Among the supporters of former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump are a group of true believers who will support Trump no matter what. But, there is another group, many of whom post on DCUM regularly, who admit that Trump has significant flaws and that they have major criticisms of him. Nevertheless, they are prepared to vote for him. In both cases, voters — whether for policy reasons or simple tribalism — are willing to vote for a candidate that they viewed as heavily flawed. Among the first posters to respond was one who explained that DCUM posters are more likely to prioritize policy outcomes. Whatever cognitive issues Biden may have, they didn't just develop overnight. Biden's age and mental acuity have been questioned for some time. Nevertheless, Biden and his team have managed to pass historic bipartisan legislation. Voters such as this poster don't care if Biden has the occasional bad day, or even many bad days, as long as he can maintain this record. Moreover, Trump is not exactly the epitome of cognitive prowess. His reliance on his ability to recite "Person, woman, man, camera, TV" and to correctly point to a picture of an elephant to show his mental capabilities would be funny if Trump were not so serious about it.

Next was a thread titled, "Republicans are over-confident right now.". The original poster is glad that Republicans seem so confident of wining the presidency because she believes this will cause them to become complacent and not put in the necessary effort to win the election. The original poster goes on to urge Democrats to put their energy into get-out-the-vote efforts, registering voters, and donating money. She points out that in all recent special elections, Democrats have outperformed the polls. Moreover, despite the gloating of Republicans following the debate, the fundamentals of the election have not changed. For the most part, I agree with the original poster. I have thought for some time that the state of the country is such that Biden could win, he just needed to do a more effective job at publicizing his achievements. All over the country, public officials are being photographed holding poster-sized checks as they announce a new project that is being funded by a law initiated by Biden. This includes many Republican figures who actually voted against the legislation and, despite that, are now taking credit for the projects that it funded. Biden has a host of accomplishments, he just needs to make sure that voters know about them. However, he is now hindered by questions about his cognitive abilities. Trying to focus attention on his achievements will be even more difficult. Moreover, Biden's fitness for office is not the only hurdle he faces. His handling of the Israel-Gaza war has alienated him from Arab and Muslim Americans and many young people. Far from being resolved, that conflict continues to be bloody with no end in sight. Making things worse, a war between Israel and Lebanon may be in the offing. But, things are not completely bleak for Biden. As the original poster pointed out, the polls have repeatedly been shown to underestimate Democratic strength. Former president, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump has been spending most of his campaign money paying his legal expenses. He completely revamped the Republican National Committee, replacing experienced operatives with a new team whose abilities remain to be seen. Even the vaunted conservative media is in decline with traffic to right-wing news sites collapsing in recent months. It is not clear if the Republicans are going to have the necessary infrastructure in place for this election. I have a real fear that heightened expectations among Republicans coupled with a Republican underperformance will lead to widespread January 6 type violence and Trump-led efforts to subvert the election. Even more so now that the Supreme Court has appeared to condone such actions.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted, just like all other threads in today's post, in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Media allowing another but her emails", the original poster argues that the media is treating President Joe Biden's cognitive fitness the same way that they treated the scandal over Hillary Clinton's emails. In the end, the email controversy didn't really amount to much. A small number of emails were found to have been classified as "secret" retroactively after they had been sent to Clinton. An even smaller number were found to have been mishandled. No compromise of her email server was ever discovered. Yet, this meaningless controversy was used to cause very significant harm to her campaign. Days before the election, Fox News reported that foreign intelligence agencies had hacked Clinton's server and that she was going to be indicted. These allegations, which were not true, later had to be retracted. Clinton supporters have long blamed the media obsession with the emails as a major reason for her loss to now former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. The original poster argues that this is recurring with the media's focus on Biden's fitness for office, attention that the original poster does not believe is warranted. Other posters disagree with the original poster, saying that they saw Biden's lack of fitness with their own eyes. I wrote about this a bit yesterday and, as I said then, I would not bother to listen to what I have to say on this topic. I am probably naive, biased, and uninformed. But, what I saw during the debate was a man whose voice was impacted by a cold, who was clearly overwhelmed — at least initially — by the pressure of the event, and who sometimes lost his train of thought and confused the message that he was trying to deliver. Because most of this occurred early in the debate, I assume that it had the most impact on viewer impressions. Most damaging, the performance directly fed into the Republican criticism of Biden. As I wrote yesterday, the risk for Biden is that these impressions will snowball into an exaggerated media narrative that will be impossible to dispute regardless of the facts. For my part, I do not consider an ability to debate to be essential to being President. I am more concerned about whether Biden will hire qualified people, whether he will be presented with realistic and constructive options for policies, and whether he maintains a first class ability to make good decisions. I have no doubt in Biden's ability to understand policies. My only question is whether or not he can run the government and this point I feel confident that he can. Moreover, I am certain that a cognitively-challenged Biden — if in fact that is what he is — will perform better on every factor that matters to me than Trump. I agree with the original poster that the media is going overboard on their coverage of Biden's mental lapses. Even more damaging is the media's failure to critically report on Trump. During the debate, Trump barely said a true word, lying about almot everything. He demonstrated the narcism and authoritative tendencies for which he has been known. He repeatedly failed to answer questions, most likely because he didn't know the answers. Trump is completely unfit to serve as president and the media is doing the country a massive disservice by failing to report adequately on his deficiencies.