While he blithely conflates nations with states as if that's the only natural arrangement.

(To be fair I do not expect comic book writers to understand those kinds of differences)

We're fast approaching the point at which there are no more bad ideas. But yeah for now, it's best to try and prevent any major incident while not letting the authoritarians win. Countries do not come out the same way when either of those things happens. And the chance that it's a change for the better is remote.

Michigan isn't the problem. Pennsylvania is the problem; there's an extremely narrow path to victory for Biden if Trump wins Pennsylvania. Basically without PA, they need to flip Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, or Kentucky. And then they need nearly every other state that's up for grabs.

Then we're already screwed. Because that puts Trump into landslide territory.

Okay, and I'm telling you that's not something you can do quickly. There's a reason new dictators usually stand up a separate force.

This is absolutely a game to the wealthy. They win no matter what.

I'm sorry but "charisma" is not a data point you can put into a model. The truth is everything in the modern era has been predictable for a lot of people. And polling may be snapshots, but by putting those snapshots together you can see trends really easily. The second the guy cherry picked the one poll that had Biden up the day after the debate I knew he wasn't the kind of guy who actually runs math models. Nobody who "makes predictions" is doing so off of a single poll. And certainly not one that was either a flash poll or conducted before the debate. To get a look at how long getting that kind of data takes, we're just now getting in depth data from battleground states that was gathered after the debate.

He's also guilty of something you're not supposed to do if you're in that game. He's putting himself in play. Saying there's some X factor only he knows about. In reality, even if there was such a factor, it wouldn't matter. This is a crisis of confidence that Biden brought down on himself. And it won't be easily gotten past. The question now isn't, does Biden win in a traditional race because that's gone. The question now is how much damage gets done here. Can he win with that damage? and can someone else win with the damage of a replacement? And you only need to read the news to see some of the party leadership and Donors have decided the answers are No and Yes.

But also that answer during the interview didn't help at all. He said he'd just be proud to do his best? This isn't a fucking little league game. If he gets replaced or goes forward to lose, that's the moment historians are going to point to.

Eh, not exactly. That would be telegraphed literal years in advance as they would have to entirely rebuild the officer corps to be loyalists to them specifically. Right now the military leadership puts a lot of stock in the Constitution, so much so that the last time Trump tried to order them to go after BLM protestors, they not only refused the order, they then sent a memo to the entire force reminding them of the exact wording of their oath.

The only legal bar the US needs to clear is "Credible Evidence". Well...

Desert ecosystems do exist. I guarantee you the water was not just being wasted. If nothing else there's the aquifers and those are getting drawn down pretty fast these days. Anyone capturing water in the Southwest is contributing to the water crisis there.

It's supposed to run off. Humans aren't the only things that need water.

It was a sustainable oasis all on it's own. Now it's just a golf course.