Red Mosquito

BurtReynolds wrote:

Captain Termite wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:I can't think of anyone but Biden who would have done worse. This shouldn't be a contest.

I have a suspicion you would have said this about someone else if they had been the nominee. The mythical "anyone."

And of course, if DeSantis or Haley had been nominated, there would have been lots of people saying equivalent things about them.

I said before that Biden and Trump were the worst possible candidates and that anyone would do better, and when Harris took over i thought she'd win. But then I realized she is awful in interviews and her campaign has been really sluggish and out of touch.

Maybe people's expectations have cratered so much that we just expect these oafs now. I have to think one of the other choices would be much better. Anyone that knows how to talk. Desantis and Haley have problems, but they both can stay on message pretty well. I'm not sure what Harris's message is.

tragabigzanda wrote:George Will wrote a thought provoking op-ed today. I’ll refrain from making a WW3 thread just yet, but…

World War III is already under way. Not that Harris or Trump has noticed.

https://wapo.st/3NsSgEV

4/5 wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:I can't think of anyone but Biden who would have done worse. This shouldn't be a contest.

This thought was what prompted the question. It's as if each party asked themselves, if we let the other party choose our candidate for us, who would they choose? And then did exactly that.

My logic kind of goes:
If the Republicans ran anybody but Trump they would likely win relatively easily.

Since they are running Trump the Democrats should win relatively easily.

The only candidate Trump would have a substantial advantage over was Biden.

The next-best opponent for Trump was Harris.

dimejinky99 wrote:Trump speaking, and just this second, he said, verbatim "I don't like her (Harris) very much. Hopefully... when we win. After we win. We will dispose of her."


How the fuck is he not arrested yet?

simple schoolboy wrote:Continuing to post things that are almost certainly fake:

"Leading source for breaking news"

"Polymarket forecast"

Who am I to impugn this entity?

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are neck and neck in the polls. But in one popular betting market, the odds have skewed heavily in Trump’s favor, raising questions about a recent flurry of wagers and who is behind them.

Over the past two weeks, the chances of a Trump victory in the November election have surged on Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market. Its bettors were giving Trump a 62% chance of winning on Thursday, while Harris’s chances were 38%. The candidates were in a dead heat at the start of October.

Trump’s gains on Polymarket have cheered his supporters, and they have been followed by the odds shifting in Trump’s favor in other betting markets. Elon Musk flagged Trump’s growing lead on Polymarket to his 200 million X followers on Oct. 6, praising the concept of betting markets. “More accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line,” Musk posted.

But the surge might be a mirage manufactured by a group of four Polymarket accounts that have collectively pumped about $30 million of crypto into bets that Trump will win.

“There’s strong reason to believe they are the same entity,” said Miguel Morel, chief executive of Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain analysis firm that examined the accounts.

The accounts betting big on Trump—Fredi9999, Theo4, PrincessCaro and Michie—were all funded by deposits from Kraken, a U.S.-based crypto exchange, according to Arkham. They behave in a similar fashion, systematically placing frequent bets on Trump and stepping up the size of their bets at the same time, Arkham found. The oldest of the accounts was created in June, while the newest was created this month.

The accounts have plowed most of their money into straightforward bets on Trump’s winning the presidency, but they have also put millions of dollars into bets that he will win such swing states as Pennsylvania, as well as long-shot bets on Trump’s winning the popular vote—smaller side markets also available on Polymarket.

The betting spree has echoes of the “Romney Whale,” an unknown trader who placed a flurry of bets on a Mitt Romney victory during the closing weeks of the 2012 election, using Intrade, a now-defunct prediction market. The trader lost nearly $7 million, according to a 2015 paper by a pair of economists from Microsoft and Barnard College. The authors concluded that the bets had characteristics of manipulation, potentially aimed at shaping public perceptions.

Rajiv Sethi, one of the paper’s co-authors, said the recent bets on Polymarket followed a similar pattern: steady accumulation of a huge wager that gradually lifted Trump’s chances of success. The simplest explanation is a giant bettor who expects Trump to win—but the possibility of manipulation can’t be ruled out, according to Sethi, a professor at Barnard.

“If I were trying to manipulate a market, this is exactly how I would do it,” Sethi said.

BurtReynolds wrote:he wants it more.

BurtReynolds wrote:he wants it more.

Chris_H_2 wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:he wants it more.

court appearances don't count