Hopped in here to see what the commentary on the presidential debate was.
I was surprised that... I can't find any threads even when I search, but would love to hear everybody's opinion.
Naval had a great quote on who's been in charge this whole time.
And I think that is kind of the real question.
But yeah, love to hear everybody's kind of opinion on tonight and what we think is going to happen going forward.
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Well, it's obviously a disaster for the Democrats.
They've got 40 days to find a replacement for him, which is going to be really difficult.
40-day limit is because of the Ohio ballot rules to get on the ballot.
I think you have till August 4th, I think.
In any case, because of Biden being the incumbent, they have to convince him to step down, which I don't think actually will be that hard.
But then they have the harder job of convincing Harris to step down alongside him, because if she doesn't voluntarily step aside, she's going to get beaten up by Trump.
She loses very badly to him in the polls.
And then they have to replace the entire Biden-Harris ticket with probably, I would guess, Whitmer and somebody else.
This is where it gets really tricky.
Maybe Hillary makes a comeback.
I don't think they can quite run Newsom.
He's not ready, and California's record is terrible, and he would lose all the swing states.
So I think the Democrats are in a very difficult position.
And that's all I got right now.
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And my question about who's been in charge all along, it's been semi-obvious that it hasn't been Joe.
So I think it's just a good moment to reflect upon how the bureaucracy in this country, and frankly in the entire West, is highly entrenched and is on autopilot.
Imagine if you were an investor in a company or a board member and you walk into your board meeting and you realize the CEO hasn't shown up to work for two years, and really just the VPs have been running amok and doing whatever they wanted.
You'd know at that point that anything run by committee is incredibly inefficient and wasteful and almost kleptocratic.
So you would expect the company to have essentially been looted the entire time.
If they convince Biden to step down and then Kamala to step down, does the Democratic Party just get to choose the next candidate?
I would assume it's too late for primaries. Do you have any insight on how that process actually works?
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I think they can just have a contested convention, but they would have to move the convention date up.
It also really hurts them on fundraising, because when you don't know who's actually going to be running, you're not going to donate to the party.
So it does put them behind the eight ball.
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On a slightly different note, I just checked Polymarket.
RFK is still only sitting at 2%, which I think is up to 1% before the debate.
Before RFK, this was basically a perfect storm with Biden being completely incoherent, but still very, very low likelihood of a third-party candidate getting into the race.
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Unfortunately, the way the two-party system is set up in the United States, third parties really don't have a chance. All they can do is bring specific policies to light by running a campaign, but they just don't have a shot. The whole ballot system is rigged against them. They have a really hard time getting on stage in debates. They have a hard time getting on the ballot in states. They have a hard time fundraising. They just, they have no apparatus to push them forward. I think Ross Perot was the one who got the closest, and he never even got that close.
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