Election 2016

Mundane & Pointless Stuff I Must Share: The Off Topic Forum

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
angelfromanotherpin
Overlord
Posts: 9745
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by angelfromanotherpin »

DrPraetor wrote:Roughly speaking, ever *order of magnitude* by which you outspend your opponent in a general election is (extrinsic of other factors related to fund-raising, such as the fund-raising being a reflection of the level of support you have from your constituents who are giving you money) worth 0.5% of the vote.

Are the Koch brothers going to outspend the Dems by 100-fold? Because that would be enough to move the popular vote 1%, and Hillary still wins the election.
Huh, the version I read was every 2x spending moved the vote 1% , so a 100x spending gap would be like a 6.5% shift.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

The issue is that the smaller the election, the more money matters. So Republicans do much better in off cycle elections and corporate tools do well in primaries. But R Money only got 47 percent in 2012.

-Username17
User avatar
DrPraetor
Duke
Posts: 1289
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:17 pm

Post by DrPraetor »

angelfromanotherpin - it depends on how exactly you do the regression analysis and which elections you include. In primaries the effect is much bigger, so if you mix primaries and on-cycle general elections together you get a much bigger average effect size. But even a 8x funding advantage for team Pachyderms is unrealistic - a 3% shift still has the Pachyderms losing the popular vote, and with the electoral college set up that we have now, red team needs to win the PV by >2% to win the actual election! I'm not liking their chances, even with unspeakable buckets of Koch brothers money.

The Koch brothers poored a lot of money in the last cycle, and the consensus is that it made almost no difference. Their underlings, for example, spent an astonishing sum of money against a Zoo levy here in Columbus, OH. They did this because they knew they would win big and it would make them look good, but it was a complete waste of their resources.

Frank - I'm not sure it's the "size" of the election so much as the degree to which people are informed and motivated to vote regardless of advertizing and paid staff. Of course that would correlate with size, and it's just speculation anyway.
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
User avatar
angelfromanotherpin
Overlord
Posts: 9745
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by angelfromanotherpin »

So, my instinct is that the Republican presidential primary is going to be a lot like the last one: various hopeless wackjobs embarrassing themselves until the victory inexorably goes to the problematic establishment suit, which in this case would be Jeb. I don't think the dynamics on that side have changed at all.

On the Democratic side, the inexorable problematic establishment suit is obvs Hillary, and has been since 2008. While there are some hopeless wackjobs embarrassing themselves in competition with her (Vermin Supreme, I am looking in your direction), but those guys aren't going to get any press. The meaningful people look like Bernie Sanders, people who have no particular chance of victory but will use their campaigns to raise awareness of particular issues and try to move the general debate leftwards. I don't know who even could challenge Clinton in any meaningful way.
Shatner
Knight-Baron
Posts: 939
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Shatner »

So... how does this work if the current trend (Dems win big elections, Reps win small and gerrymandered elections, scorched earth opposition from Day 1) continues? Because that's more-or-less what people are predicting here.
User avatar
angelfromanotherpin
Overlord
Posts: 9745
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by angelfromanotherpin »

It works badly. Or rather, more badly than usual. The House has been more or less solely dedicated to doomed gestures that serve no purpose except to pad its members conservative cult credentials since 2010, and while the country has managed to soldier on with half the legislative branch in a derpative paralysis, it's not clear how long that can last.

Now, a big exciting Democratic wave like Obama got for his first election would do wonders to clear that up. The usual way gerrymandering works is to give one party many narrow victories and the other party fewer but more resounding victories, and a wave could flip a lot of those gerrymandered districts to blue. I don't know if Hillary can generate that kind of down-ticket enthusiasm, but it's certainly possible. Then people will get a reminder of what happens when the House Leadership doesn't throw its back out just trying to keep the lights on. The Senate is also very favorable for the Dems in 2016, where they're defending 10 seats to the Repub's 24. Control of that chamber could very easily flip as well.

If things just continue as they are, I think sooner or later there would be really dire consequences, if only because there hasn't been a successful budget in fucking years, and continuing resolutions can't cope with an increasing population. Crumbling infrastructure on its own will turn the U.S. into a third world hellhole, and we're facing a lot more issues than that. But Boehner's already shown an increasing willingness to work with the Democrats, because without them he can't get even the simplest shit done, so the scorched earth opposition may be petering out.
Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Keep in mind that the stalemate is driven entirely by the demographic composition of the Democratic and Republican coalition. So this is a pretty exhaustive list of things that can happen to end the stalemate that don't involve external factors like climate change or nuclear war or contact with aliens.

A.) The Democratic Party catches a bad black swan during a Presidential Election year that sweeps the Republican Party into power, where they spend two or more years putting in an unbowed conservative agenda.

A1.) The Republican Party sets the world on fire bad enough to end the human race (cough cough war and climate change) or put the United States into permanent gottdammerung. Yay for Spanish-style fascist coups.

A2.) They bungle things so badly that the GOP gets smashed into a million pieces for the next Presidential Election and the Democratic Party either rises to the challenge of fixing the damage with a New Deal 2.0 or fails to deal with the crisis in time and loses legitimacy like a EU member state centrist party -- causing A1 to happen.

B.) The Democratic Party catches a good black swan (like an economic boom or a popular war or the GOP being hit with a major scandal) in 2016 or 2020 especially which allows it to wield outsized legislative power and reshape the judiciary how it feels like. This prematurely ends the current incarnation of the Republican Party and they're forced to dive into the pockets of the Obama Coalition to rebuild.

C.) One of the two parties finds a way to pick up a coalition that allows them to govern as an electoral majority. If the Democrats can get or at least ameliorate one of a significant hunk of the white working class or the Republicans manage to pry or at least ameliorate one faction of LGBTers, racial minorities, or urban professionals then the stalemate is broken and it forces the other party to regroup. This is not very likely for the Republican Party because the current incarnation of the Democratic Party is a lot more ideologically coherent amongst all factions than the New Deal Coalition and Post-Reconstruction Coalition; however, it can still happen if, say, a President ends up being a flaming racist.

D.) Stalemate happens with neither party making major changes to its coalition, allowing the march of demographic change to break the logjam. This march currently heavily favors the Democrats. Which is why even if the Republicans successfully fight things to a draw in Congress despite losing the Presidency they're dead meat by around 2024. See the last sentence of 'B'.

E.) The unthinkable happens and the United States gets so irreconcilable that a constitutional convention is called or an outright secession happens that vastly changes the political makeup. In case of the former, it won't be anywhere near as clean as the first American Civil War because the Democratic/Republican split is more urban/rural than regional. You could have the very odd map of the West Coast + East Coast + Great Lakes + isolated pockets in Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and North and South Carolina in one nation. This is the least likely possibility to happen, but it is a way that the stalemate breaks due to nationally internal factors.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

Shatner wrote:So... how does this work if the current trend (Dems win big elections, Reps win small and gerrymandered elections, scorched earth opposition from Day 1) continues? Because that's more-or-less what people are predicting here.
This, pretty much.

I don't know what can be done. Money is so entrenched that they can keep buying local elections and even congress apparently. Can't stop it since they control congress and now the senate. All we can do is keep them from getting the executive branch since that lets them fill the judicial branch and perform the coup de grace on democratic government in the U.S.

Basically keep the Presidency out of the hands of Republicans until demographics render them unable to buy their elections. It would be nice for a grass-roots internet-connected populist movement to form, but I thought it would have already happened. OWS was a sad fucking joke because they prided themselves on their biggest point of failure, lacking leadership. Mayday PAC just isn't succeeding. I want them to but they lack traction. They haven't had a press release for over 4 months.
Last edited by erik on Wed Mar 25, 2015 12:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
DSMatticus
King
Posts: 5271
Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:32 am

Post by DSMatticus »

Yeah, the United States is in the middle of falling apart, in the literal sense that our infrastructure is collapsing and in the metaphorical sense that we have massive crippling social problems that are not being solved. This is what a failing state looks like.

Law enforcement across the country is being turned into a privatized, militarized for-profit enterprise (with a love for targeting African Americans). That's not an exaggeration, that's the report from the Department of Justice on Ferguson.

Our private debt situation is out of control, because we are incapable of managing even minimal restrictions on predatory lending practices, and there are people paying dozens of times over their original loan in fees and interest and still managing to wide up in jail in debtor prison fashion over failure to pay remaining sums.

Elected state officials are openly defying federal courts all but short of "a stand in the schoolhouse door" style (see court rulings on homosexual marriage) and nothing's fucking happening.

Penalties and fines for most regulatory offenses are in practice so minimal that there's really no reason to give a shit about most of them until you are caught, and our regulatory bodies are so underfunded "getting caught" is almost certainly such an extreme rarity it doesn't even matter. There is so much fraudulent corporate legal action you can't even begin to talk about, and in practice there are zero consequences for standing before a judge and spewing bullshit when your client is a billion dollar enterprise.

Wages have fallen so far behind the cost of living that being full-time employed is, for tens of millions of people, not a livable wage. And tens of millions more are either only partially employed or not employed at all. Meanwhile corporate profits are at all-time highs and poverty assistance programs are not being revised or expanded and a bunch of states are crippling unions to make sure the country's pool of slave labor doesn't get any ideas about being uppity.
Koumei
Serious Badass
Posts: 13871
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: South Ausfailia

Post by Koumei »

So... are we excited about a Clinton vs Bush election? I swear that sounds awfully familiar.
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
User avatar
angelfromanotherpin
Overlord
Posts: 9745
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by angelfromanotherpin »

No, because it's going to cause a lot of people to spout off about political dynasties in an extremely tedious and inaccurate way.

Yes, because I'm pretty sure that's a clear win for team less-bad. The Clinton legacy is still peace and prosperity, and the Bush legacy is still a shit sandwich without the bread.
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

erik wrote:Mike Pence (R-Tea Party), Governor of Indiana is seriously thinking about running for president, which strikes me as ego since there's no way he's getting elected. To work with his Republican super-duper majority in our state congress and his Tea Party (Koch) backers he has to be a social conservative douchebag and sign stupid laws that will get struck down by the supreme court and do nothing but cost our state money as they waste resources supporting it in court. Anyway, Pence is a joke looking for a punchline.

http://www.indystar.com/story/news/poli ... /22759821/

http://www.indystar.com/story/news/poli ... /70336706/
Aaand now Indiana gaming may have consequences due to our super-super republican majority and dipshit governor.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/geek ... lgbt-bill/

I just wish they used more adamant language in the threat to move GenCon if the bill is signed.
Concise Locket
Apprentice
Posts: 86
Joined: Thu Oct 03, 2013 2:42 pm
Location: The Midwest

Post by Concise Locket »

GenCon is locked in until 2020 but they may move after, regardless of the bill, as they've outgrown the Indianapolis Convention Center space.
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

Which is a big part of why the convention space is being expanded at considerable cost to the government.

But yeah Pence doesn't give a shit. He'd sign it if it cancelled GenCon 2015 even.
Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

So, new batch of polls out recently for Clinton, from PPP (Dailykos) and Bloomberg.

I predicted awhile ago that her popularity wasn't rooted in anything concrete and those numbers wouldn't last. However, it's still not a good sign that her numbers have come down that much. It looks like she'll mostly be getting the same proportion of voting in the 2016 election that all Democratic candidates since Dukakis got, adjusting for racial democrats each cycle.

So much for the 'just think of the coattails!' argument.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Literally nothing has changed. Democrats still want there to be a robust primary where people actually campaign for issues they care about and they have the semblance of choice. Pie in the sky, they'd rather they got a candidate they liked better than Hillary.

But... there still isn't a better candidate available. There isn't anyone other than Hillary who can seriously threaten her in the primary. For fuck's sake, remember when Chafee put up a notice that he was exploring a presidential bid and no one noticed for two weeks? Oh, you didn't notice that? That's because no one fucking cares, and Chafee is not going to be the President.

And Hillary still mops the floor with any Republican challenger, even hypothetical ideal Republican "other candidates."

Democrats genuinely do not like the fact that Hillary is inevitable. And that's why you're whining about it now. But so fucking what? Her health care plan was to the left of Obama's. She'll probably be the best president we've had since I was born. We'd all like something better, but fucking show me a better option or stop whining about it.

-Username17
MGuy
Prince
Posts: 4774
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:18 am
Location: Indiana

Post by MGuy »

I would like for Bernie Sanders to be president.
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.
Morat
Journeyman
Posts: 118
Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2011 4:36 am

Post by Morat »

MGuy wrote:I would like for Bernie Sanders to be president.
That is not going to happen, and even if it did it wouldn't do all that much because the left is stupid and only cares about the presidency. He'd still have the same damn Congress.
User avatar
angelfromanotherpin
Overlord
Posts: 9745
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Bernie Sanders has an extremely powerful populist message, and I think it could generate a very significant down-ticket swell. I also think that the best he can hope for is to convince Clinton to take some of that message and add it to her own. If he was younger, I could see him as a VP pick.
MGuy
Prince
Posts: 4774
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:18 am
Location: Indiana

Post by MGuy »

Morat wrote:
MGuy wrote:I would like for Bernie Sanders to be president.
That is not going to happen, and even if it did it wouldn't do all that much because the left is stupid and only cares about the presidency. He'd still have the same damn Congress.
I know he wouldn't make it. A MAN CAN DREAM! I was just talking about who I'd like to fill the POTUS position.
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

Now, if Bernie were to run as an Independent I wonder how much that would shrink the shorts of the Democratic party. I don't know him well enough to know if that's something he'd do, but I hope that he's not as crazy as Nader was.
sandmann
Apprentice
Posts: 92
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2011 11:08 am

Post by sandmann »

Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

FrankTrollman wrote:We'd all like something better, but fucking show me a better option or stop whining about it.
First, let me outline my position. The United States is only a few years from having its chickens on the economy come home to roost. All the signs are there: EU fucking up, record high household debt and income inequality, oncoming wave of retiring boomers, increased workforce automation, and most damningly the declining deficit as a result of the sequester. Hell, it's still not guaranteed that there won't be a recession during Obama's term. And of course there are still the sudden fuck-me-in-the-asses that can appear out of nowhere such as another financial crash or the Fed deciding to raise interest rates for no good raisin.

Now, disaster is still avertable. However, it requires both the will and the ability to implement economic leftism. By will, it means someone who realizes that even though right now status quo centrism looks like something that they can get away with they're going to have to really rock the boat if they don't want to face disaster in 2016-2020. And I don't think that's Hillary Clinton. She's about where Obama is on the economy, that is someone who believes that horsepucky that deficit and debt reduction is a good thing, that business needs a light guiding hand instead of a bitchslap, and that programs like TPP and chained CPI are the wave of the future.

Second, there's ability. No matter how leftist a particular President is, their ideology will be meaningless if they don't have the Congress. Which is where Clinton gets most of her legitimacy. I'm not buying it. I have a structuralist view of American elections, meaning that I think that elections are mostly baked into the cake years in advance barring realignment or significant black swans such as scandals, economic calamity (but not economic prosperity), and failed (but not successful) foreign policy. Factors like good campaigning and charisma can move the needle, but only by small amounts. Like 2% of the vote at the absolute most. Every U.S. Presidential election since 1988 has mapped to raw demographics + tiny variance for shit like campaigning and gaffes + allowing for a megaton black swan such as the 2007 financial crisis and Ross Perot's entry. The latter of which I feel could be reduced to a brute demographic analysis if he had lasted as a significant force for more than two cycles.

It's almost assured that Hillary Clinton is going to be running the Obama Coalition playbook -- which should actually be called the Clinton Coalition playbook, as their maps would've looked similar were it not for the entry of Ross Perot. That is, she's going to run on a platform of multicultural identity politics while keeping mostly mum on foreign policy and the economy unless she senses an opening. This formula will be enough to win the White House, but not Congress, because while the march of demographics will favor the current incarnation of the Democratic Party for the Presidency for a few more cycles, it's not going to be enough to break the Congressional logjam.

A lot of people are tempted to believe otherwise, pointing to sky-high polling and 'think of the coattails!', but I predict a regression to the mean like all of the other previous post-Reagan elections. Or even more to the point, post-Southern realignment elections. Her lead right now is like Dukakis's +20% lead after the Democratic convention or, more saliently, Obama's 8% lead over Romney in September. Unless she does something significantly different with the party platform or the Obama administration gets an (almost certainly negative) black swan, it's going to end up being like Obama's 51% + 1.5% for a modest margin for economic improvement + 1.5% for the onward march of demographics. Factors like the historicity of voting for a female President are cancelled out by Obama's charisma advantage + excellent campaigning. Enough to comfortably win the White House, but not enough to win Congress.

Get all that? IMNSHO, she's predicted to be neither able nor willing to do what what it takes to avoid economic calamity between 2016 and 2020. I feel that a Hillary Clinton administration that operates like she's predicted to run (slightly to the left economically on Obama in the best case scenario) augurs an unavoidable disaster short of getting the mother of all lucky breaks like, oh, the Republican Party leadership being caught diddling little kids.

So here's a pretty exhaustive list of my alternatives to just sucking it up and voting for her.

[*] If Hillary Clinton wises up and shows that she realizes that the United States is badly overdue for a new round of financial regulation and non-rich pick-me-ups, most of my misgivings about her will be assuaged and I'll be happy to vote for her in the primary or general election depending on how things rolls. I don't think that this is likely to happen, though, because politicians are conservative (small-c) by nature and in absence of oncoming disaster place an undue importance on their intuition and superstition. I think that she would rather continue on her current path of a near-certain White House victory that doesn't involve any risk rather than taking the riskier path of significant economic populism which will almost certainly antagonize the donor base and the corporate elements of the party.

[*] If Hillary Clinton doesn't show she has what it takes, then I'm still voting Martin O'Malley. He's a long-shot, having less than 5% recognition right now, but he has shown that he realizes what the country needs economics-wise, isn't a joke candidate like Warren or Sanders, and is pretty much doing the only thing that I think will break the Congressional logjam. See, economic leftism isn't just good policy, I think that after the disaster that was the 2014 Congressional Election, it's also good politics. After all, shit like the easy passage of gestures like state minimum wage increases were the only bright spots then. The Obama Coalition can win, but its victories will be Pyrrhic (especially during off-year elections) unless it can find a way to break ground into the White Working Class. Economic leftism is the only real way proven to do this. I'm not expecting miracles here, but I feel that a platform of student debt forgiveness, huge minimum wage increases, non-rich tax cuts, Social Security expansion, etc. can peel off the 5-10% of White Working Class voters needed to get the Democrats Congress while adverting the worst of it in 2018.

[*] If Hillary Clinton doesn't show she has what it takes and wins the Democratic primary, then it's time to make the ultimate sacrifice: put a Republican in the White House while doing my best for downticket voting. See, when it comes to economic calamity the typical voter doesn't blame things like political philsophies or activist politics or even does a basic empirical analysis. No no, they just reflexively blame the most visible figure in charge and then vote in the other guy. If this is to happen -- and I think it will with an unreformed Clinton in the White House -- I would rather have a Republican in the White House soaking up the blame so that we can mount a counter-attack in 2020. Rather than having our asses handed to us in 2018, which will happen even if the economic chickens don't come home to roost, and giving the Republican Party 2020-2024 all the time in the world to do unimpeded governance with all three houses.

[*] If Hillary Clinton wins the general election while still mostly running the Clinton-Obama Coalition playbook, then... fuck. I guess there's nothing left to do but hope for the best. Maybe a recession won't happen despite all of the awful economic indicators and the Republican Party got clobbered enough to win us Congress anyway. Maybe Clinton ends up being like FDR and the campaign rhetoric on deficits and class collaboration and business fellatio was just VSP cover she plans to throw off once the corporate class have outlived their usefulness. Or maybe we're just in for a very long nine years.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
User avatar
angelfromanotherpin
Overlord
Posts: 9745
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:if Hillary Clinton doesn't show she has what it takes and wins the Democratic primary, then it's time to make the ultimate sacrifice: put a Republican in the White House while doing my best for downticket voting.
This right here is insane. Advocating giving someone in opposition tangible power of that magnitude in order to win some sort of intangible blame game is so crazy that I can't take the rest of your rant seriously.

When the shit hits the fan, the person you want in charge is not an incompetent enemy who will look bad while, for instance, a major city drowns. The person you want in charge is someone who will actually handle shit, because actual people's lives are at stake.
Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Here's a hypothetical for you then, angelfromanotherpin: say that John Kerry actually won the 2004 election. Please tell me how you think that 2004-2012 would've gone. And be sure to include the financial crisis of 2007 in your answer.

Would that time period have been better or worse than what we actually got? I'm going to say worse, because it's 2015 and we haven't gotten the Ryan budget and we're out of Iraq. Yeah, Hurricane Katrina wouldn't have been so devastating if Kerry was in charge, but still: Ryan Budget.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Post Reply