US Elections 2020

[Jalpha]

My limited understanding is that Biden will not be able to do much. His party does not hold enough seats in the other houses. Or however it works in the USA.

We had the opposite situation here with the Howard government many years ago.

pray

Victim mentality. Help yourselves God doesn't like you.

[iamahh]

swiggity swooty, deepstate coming for that Bolivia/Syria booty

[Thaydi]

Us in the third world can't wait for the new democracy bombings by Biden!

[shubla]

My limited understanding is that Biden will not be able to do much. His party does not hold enough seats in the other houses. Or however it works in the USA.

Yeah, I dig a bit into it and there are house of representatives AND senate in the US. To get any changes through, they BOTH must accept the changes. In other words, any major changes require that the same party has both under control, if the other party opposes (and this is almost always the case with any major changes to society).
Also the president cannot do much if he doesn't have the senate behind him, but also the opposite is true, for example when there was some charge against trump trying to get him out of power, republicans had majority in the senate so they just voted to close the case.

Currently both democrats and republicans have 48 seats in the senate out of 100 total, it seems that republicans are going to get 2 more, but there will be re-election in Georgia, because the state laws require at least 50% support for the winning candidate. If they get even seats the vice president gets one "extra" vote, so democrats would be safe if they get the seats from georgia with the support of vice president.

Senate elections are very complicated, they only re-elect 1/3 of the places every 2. years and other needlessly complicated stuff like that..

My government owned and funded new agency also said that it is very difficult to get any major changes through the system in US because of this. The two parties lack all ability to cooperate. For example, in the first 6 years Obama put a lot of things through, but then republicans got the majority in the senate, so he couldn't do much in the last 2 years. They circumvented this by some means but those don't provide the same level of power that the support of the senate does. Trump put down many things that Obama spent years getting through, so kind of proves the point about being unable to cooperate and get any major changes through when the power shifts back and forth all the time. Yeah maybe its kind of same with other systems, but at least in Finland different parties do cooperate even though they don't agree on everything.

[shubla]

The most hilarious thing just happened!
I was watching a speech given by Biden about him being elected. Then afterwards some confetti was shot, and on the stream that I was watching there was immediate cut to some football game(by a coincidence), right after biden and other people on the stage turned towards the sound. For a moment I thought that somebody shot him, because the confetti was not obvious on the stream that cut to the football, but then I found some other stream without cut to the football. More than 500 000 people were watching the stream with cut to the football ½ seconds after the confetti-shooting-sound so I'm sure that I'm not the only one who misunderstood for a moment!
Clip with cut to the football
https://streamable.com/swkvrd
Here is a clip without cut to the football.
https://streamable.com/lcn6g9
I think that they were not told that there was going to be confetti, you can see all of them get startled and for a split second think that it's all over now.
Afterwards some guy in black suit behind biden tells him something, maybe about the fireworks that were soon to be follow, which they didn't get startled of.

[painhertz]

shit, people might even start wearing masks and respecting women too

america is fucked, with the hippy liberals in charge they might even begin to start making international trade agreements again

disgusting

I will pray for all of you and I hope you get through this

You continue proving that you know exactly fuckall about the United States.

[painhertz]

Us in the third world can't wait for the new democracy bombings by Biden!

Right? Don't worry. The party of "peace and understanding" LOVE to share our expensive ordinance on those less fortunate.

[MagicManICT]

It's over guys. USA will be hamstrung for another four years.

Nailed it. $4-5.00/gallon gas. $300 electric bills, wars, entitled morons burning down more cities..... Not going to be fun.

Yeah, because the US has anything to do with the current gas prices... Russia and OPEC are in a production war along with a worldwide pandemic pretty much shutting down any non-essential traveling. Overproduction + lack of demand means gas prices are cheap right now. And wasn't gas $3.00 a gallon in the cheapest parts of the the US 15 years ago when Bush was in office? If gas prices swing high, it's because this little oil trade war will put US and Canadian oil producers (the small guys) out of business, and when things go back to normal and to where the prices were at the start of the pandemic, there won't be the increased production to meet the increased demand. It's certainly something a world leader might have been able to step into and help soften up by interjecting with a bit of sense into the other leaders.

For what it's worth, the future for oil is looking bright until we can convert to cleaner sources of energy for transportation. Be smart and invest in some oil mutual funds before speculation about increased travel demand once this pandemic starts clearing up (either a vaccine or simply effective treatment) and capitalize on the change in fuel and electricity costs in a year or two? Just a word of warning on that: expect churn on such investments until oil stabilizes.

My limited understanding is that Biden will not be able to do much. His party does not hold enough seats in the other houses. Or however it works in the USA.

As of now, there are a couple of senate seats still up for grabs. It appears it will be an even split--49 Rep, 49 Dem, 2 independent, but it certainly could go back to the status quo with a Rep majority. The Vice President sits as leader of the Senate, and only gets a vote when there is a tie. I don't recall what this means for deciding the majority leadership,as that is who holds the gavel and decides what makes it to the Senate floor for business. The House of Representatives has been held and will continue to be held by the Democrats, though I think they lost a couple of seats in this election cycle, but not enough to lose the majority leadership.

Senate elections are very complicated, they only re-elect 1/3 of the places every 2. years and other needlessly complicated stuff like that..

Something like that. It was 35 elections this year because of something in the past that I can't remember immediately without doing some digging on the Internet, but it is normally 33/33/34 every two years in a six year cycle. It was set up so that no state elects both Senators in the same year, but Georgia is electing both this year.

[jorb]

Not convinced Sleepy Joe has actually won yet, tbqh.

[jordancoles]

Why isnt the vice pres the house representstive instead of whatever role mitch mconnell plays? That dude is a slug