EDIT: for those unaware, not only did the republican party take control of the House, Senate, and Presidency in 2016. They also made big gains in state elections. In fact, the republican party had a 'trifecta' (house, senate, and executive) in 25/50 states. It was a very significant shift in power: https://ballotpedia.org/State_legislative_elections,_2016

I’m not. The above analysis only depends on a lack of confidence in a GOP trifecta. That’s the only case where pissing them off could result in unilateral action and thus consequences for these moves.

Previous result are only predictive to a point.

For comparison, the Republicans did very well in the 2014 mid term, convincingly taking over both houses of congress.

The democratic party had every advantage for a convincing win in 2018 and they instead had a very poor showing. The party is not good at elections and I don't see a reason why we expect this election to be different.

Dems did well in 2018, the issue was that the 1/3 of senators that happened to be up that year were in very bad states for dems geographically.

[1] https://www.axios.com/2018-midterm-elections-democrats-won-h...

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-horrible-2018...

Its a fair point that polls missed in 2016. 2020 has kicked the hornet’s nest (rather, the last four years), voter turnout appears to be higher than previous years, and I’d bet an expensive bottle of bourbon current polls align close to what results will be (with modeling lessons learned from 2016).

Tangentially, quite a few Trump voters have simply aged out over the last four years (roughly 1.8 million voters over the age of 55 die each year). Broadly speaking, much older voters skew conservative compared to younger cohorts (per Pew Research), hence the confidence in a shift towards the left across branches in government representation during this election cycle. GOP support is quite literally dying out.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/03/907433511/trumps-base-is-shri...

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/the-generati...

https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-chance-taking-senate-fore...

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/12/biden-tops-270-poli...

While your point about ideology drift over time has some merit, I don’t believe it to be significant enough to materially consider.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/706889?jou... (https://doi.org/10.1086/706889 if you want to grab the full paper from SciHub)

“Consistent with previous research but contrary to folk wisdom, our results indicate that political attitudes are remarkably stable over the long term. In contrast to previous research, however, we also find support for folk wisdom: on those occasions when political attitudes do shift across the life span, liberals are more likely to become conservatives than conservatives are to become liberals, suggesting that folk wisdom has some empirical basis even as it overstates the degree of change.”

If only a worldwide event would take place where the entire business world deemed it acceptable to change policies so employees can work remotely, then realize they can save boatloads of money by not paying inner city office rents and reduce employee salary expenses by vastly increasing their applicant pool, coinciding with significant increases in inner-city violence sparked by rioting protestors demanding to get rid of the police or else they'll burn the entire city down......oh wait

I'd point out that it's not the polls that are predicting such things. Rather it's people who are interpreting those polls.

Polls are just a snapshot of opinion in time. They are useful and can provide information about public opinion, but they certainly aren't predictive in the way you're stating.

Making predictions like "Biden is 80% likely to win" is a guess. Possibly based on polling data, but are not a poll.

A poll reporting[0] that the respondents of that poll prefer one candidate over another is not a prediction, rather it's data.

[0] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general...

Some rural counties that are know to be republican strong holds by a huge margin are favouring Biden by ridiculous amounts. Its not going to happen. Its obviously an error, and the accumulation of these errors are the final polls. (Source https://www.pscp.tv/w/1YqKDpqkYBOKV)

Its true that the democrats are winning the early mail in voting. But since republicans don't trust mail in voting, as Trump told them to vote in person. They will come out on election night, by a large margin.

“Early voting turnout continues to shatter records, as sky-high voter enthusiasm meets the realities of the United States' creaky machinery of democracy amid a pandemic. That means long lines in some places and administrative errors with some mail ballots, but a system that is working overall, according to experts.

More than 26 million people had voted as of Saturday, according to the U.S. Elections Project, a turnout-tracking database run by University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald. That's more than six times the number of votes cast by the same point in 2016.”

Doesn’t that mean older generations have more influence?

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/28/millennials... (Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation)

Young voters outnumber older voters, but this is mutually exclusive from an aging populace and a declining birth rate. You can chalk it up to population momentum and previously higher levels of immigration. It does mean Millennials will hold on to their electorate influence longer though.

Prior to Section 230, if you censor ANY content (say, child pornography) then you are "moderating" the discussion and are liable for ALL content. If Twitter deletes a death threat tweet, why didn't they delete the defamatory tweet against Hunter Biden or whomever? Biden could sue. So Section 230 allows websites to delete the kiddie porn without becoming a "publisher" of everything that gets posted. Biden can sue the poster but not Twitter.

Reforming (weakening) 230 would force Facebook, Twitter, etc. to choose between allowing all content, and blocking anything that could be the basis for a lawsuit. Of course Facebook and Twitter are not going to become an 8chan free-for-all, so they would be forced to crack down harder, censoring much more aggressively.

Also far-right sites (e.g. InfoWars) very much do not want increased liability here.

So "230 reform" is a useful rallying cry for conservatives who feel censored (rightly or wrongly) by social media giants, but the idea is so obviously bad that I can't imagine they'll go beyond minor tweaks.

<meta> It's rather sad that it has been downvoted, and those doing the downvoting should think a bit about their motivations. </meta>

Almost. That is the situation it would create for small venues like Hacker News-- extreme liability issues and heavy handed moves to mitigate them (if not just a shutdown as would probably be the case for many non-for-profit venues).

But Facebook, Google? These multibillion dollar companies have very little to fear from a lawsuit by the likes of me or you.

They could just staff up their legal team and work anyone who sues them into bankruptcy-- they already do. It isn't like litigation against parties for content they post in the US is easy to begin with even when you're not going after a 900 lb guerilla.

It would be bad news for them but ultimately just a cost of doing business. It might even ultimately be the best for their businesses as the ability to endure lawsuits would be one hell of a moat.