#2020

The first votes are being counted. Now we will see if the polls are right or the silent majority materializes.

Disclaimer: This is purely for entertainment. It is not intended to parody any specific person, nor is it intended to be an accurate representation of any political movements mentioned in it. I am entirely aware that no one actually thinks like this (I hope, anyway). I wonder whether anyone actually reads these copy-pasted disclaimers. This is completely satirical. None of the below content necessarily reflects my own opinions and beliefs.

Editor's Note: We are just twelve days out from the 2020 presidential election, and debate rages over who will win. By all appearances, we are on our way to a record turnout. If you're looking for clarity in these confusing times, then I have some good news for you: the Bard's experts have gathered together to give informed predictions about the election outcome. Without further ado, we will move on to their predictions.

Trum Porter: After the 2016 election, we all learned how inaccurate the polls are. Throughout the last four years, the media has spewed nonstop hate of the president. People know this, and they aren't going to tell pollsters from the fake news media that they're voting for Trump. The silent majority is out there in every state of the nation. It's going to be a fifty-state sweep for the president. The Republicans will sweep both houses of Congress and ensure that the best president in history will have as many terms as he needs to keep America great! The libs will be so triggered and run to their safe spaces while TRUE PATRIOTS laugh at their tears! MAGA!

Environmental Wacko: The polls were accurate in 2016, and they're accurate now. Trump will lose in a landslide, and all those racist Nazis who voted for him will be put in their place. It'll be so-o-o sweet to watch the conservative snowflakes cry. Hate will never win! Harris 2021! Er, I mean Biden/Harris 2020!

ScumAnonymous: Look, fellers, we all know how this is going to go down. Everyone's gonna be sitting on the edge of their seats on election night, but they ain't gonna get results. They won't get results the next day either. No way, pal. The election officials ain't gonna finish counting those early ballots for weeks. And when they do, a whole lotta swing states are gonna be real close. And then, pal, then the recounts begin. Both sides will accuse the other of cheating, and just before they start shootin', the results are gonna come back, and it'll be 269-269. At that point, it ain't gonna matter who wins. It'll all end in flames. And how do I know? Because 2020, pal, because 2020.

Carl Engels: An old, rich, corrupt, bourgeoisie member of the elite will win. He will trod all over the proletariat as they suffer. Which one? It doesn't matter. The bourgeoisie will laugh either way, safe in their positions of power. When the great revolution begins, they will know the feeling of a boot stamping on a human face, forever.

Conspi Theo: Does it really matter which lizard person wins? They're both part of "them". They're out to get you. I just saw a YouTube video that exposed their Satanic plot. Whichever one wins will shapeshift into the antichrist! We will see the establishment of the New World Order, Babylon the Great! The guy in the video also discovered why the Illuminati launched the plandemic. They needed to keep us all inside so we wouldn't see them send rockets to the moon to plant evidence that they really landed on the moon. Someone was about to figure it out, so they had to maintain the hoax! "They" are lying to you!

Editor's Note: If any of these predictions are wrong, the guy who made the YouTube video reserves the right to retain full prophetic credibility for any future predictions.

Grandpa Curmudgeon: Back in my day, America was already great. Didn't have none of these cheesy slogans. No sir, we had distinguished, sophisticated platforms like "I like Ike." Politicians didn't say the dumbest things you ever heard every time they opened their mouths. Leastways, if they did, we didn't have no internet media telling us about it. Well, that's why Trump should win, cause he wants to make us great agin. But that's also why he ain't gonna win, cuz all you young rips don't know what greatness looked like. Look, boy, you wouldn't know greatness if it hit you like a brick. You spend your days with your eyes glued to yer phones. If you'd look up for two seconds and read a book, you'd know that socialism ain't never gonna work. But no, you all gonna vote for Sleepy Joe. Well, when I was yer age...

Let me preface this by saying that if I was the one seeing this headline in the poltiics thread, I would have immediately dismissed it as bullshit without giving it a second thought.... If you're skeptical about the bold claim being made, I completely understand, I find it difficult to forsee happening myself

Just hear me out. 

Warren and Bernie have been competing for the more liberal wing of the Dem party. I dont think anyone really disputes that. If you consider Bernie is further to the left of Warren enough to really establish himself as the representative of the far left is one thing, but at the end of the day the only two candidates who could even make an appeal to the liberal wing of the party was Sanders and Warren..... For that reason, its easy to conclude that should one drop out, they would almost certainly endorse the other. With Sanders now the frontrunner and Warren down to 4th, you could conclude that Warren would likely drop out and likely endorse Sanders 

Heres the counterargument. 

In 2016 we had a clear 1v1 faceoff between a very centrist establishment candidate (Hillary) against a leftist outsider opponent (Bernie) in the primary. Shit, a lot of people wanted Warren to run against Hillary as the leftist representative but instead Bernie was the one who jumped in and carried the torch. You might think that because of how much the two had in common and the legitimate race between the two, Warren would have endorsed Bernie over Hillary since Warren was not campaigning, the primary was a close race, and Bernie clearly was closer to her ideologically than Hillary.... But Warren never endorsed Bernie...... Warren waited until the race was practically over before endorsing Hillary, so even though Warren offered high praise for Bernie all throughout the campaign, she still endorsed Hillary instead. 

Maybe though she just knew Hillary would win, or that it was more important to unite behind whichever candidate won to defeat Trump in the general election. Fair theory, fair conclusion. 

In 2018, Warren handily won reelection to the Senate in Massachusetts by an almost 2 to 1 margin. While her Senate term doesnt expire until 2024, right when the next presidential election would be taking place, at that point she would be 74 years old. While the oldest current senator is Dianne Feinstein from California (86 years old), the ability of ANY candidate to win votes in a presidential contest at that age would become a stark problem that would be borderline impossible to overcome..... If Trump loses in 2020 and a Dem takes the White House in 2020, then the next opening for Dems to jump in would be 2028, where Warren would be approaching 80 if she tried running then. 

To summarize, this election and this run for President was arguably Warren's last good shot where she had decent odds to actually win the nomination. Assuming she doesnt win at this point, she will not get a better opportunity to win in the future and will be relegated to being a Senator for the remainder of her career barring a VP selection of some sort. If this is the end of the road for a run for president, which it very well appears to be, then SANDERS would be the one most responsible. Not Biden, not Hillary, not the DNC, not the media or some sort of scandal or flip-flop on a policy issue, it would be Sanders. Sanders has flat out eaten her base of support and united the progressive wing of the party behind himself and away from Warren..... If Warren is salty enough at missing out on her shot to be President thanks to Sanders taking over her base, she could endorse a more moderate candidate out of spite. 

Biden values Warren, both her voice and her stances, to the point that from the get-go he was considering having Warren be his VP on a 2016 ticket. Warren's hard stance against Wall Street and subsequent legislation on banking regulations really caught Biden's eye when he considered entering the race, and he actively sought out Warren as a possible VP candidate to see if it was worth running in 2016. based on reports, Warren liked the idea but was still skeptical since Hillary effectively had the moderate/centrist vote on lockdown, leaving Biden with a very difficult path to even winning the nomination to begin with. Even when Hillary was campaigning people thought Warren should VP for her, since it would supposedly unite the moderates and progressives in the Dem party behind one ticket.... Warren liked THAT idea too because she figured it would give her some leverage in pulling Hillary more to the left on certain issues in order to secure her agreement to be VP. 

Biden values Warren, and Warren could strategically pull Biden to the left on certain issues if she was VP while also uniting the party behind one ticket to beat Trump. 

Thats not the case with Sanders though. If Sanders was the nominee and Warren his VP, then she doesnt get to have much of a say at all. Sanders as the face of the progressive movement would be able to go with whichever policy or agenda he feels is right since voters have made him the representative of the progressive faction in the first place. Sure, Warren would likely agree with Bernie's policies more regularly than Biden, but thats assuming that they get to the White House in the first place. Preaching purely to the left wing faction of the base to drive out fanatical levels of support is what Bernie is basing his entire argument that he can beat Trump on. Thats a very risky strategy that could very well fall short considering how conservative many swing states in the country are and will be..... Biden's strategy on the other hand would be to appeal to centrist and moderate voters more easily swayed away from Trump while Warren becomes the advocate for the progressive faction in an administration, which has better odds of succeeding just from the nature of politics in America.