>Call it a failure of the media or a failure to build a robust majoritarian party coalition or a failure of government passing policies that solve peoplesโ problems.
Maybe it's not a failure of any of these things. Maybe it's the fact that this much of the country has always been waiting for someone to give them permission to be racist, sexist, patriarchal, fascism-loving pigs. Maybe people are supporting Trump because they actually want what Trump is selling them.
"This is not who we are." Nah, this is exactly who a large chunk of the country has always been. The Civil War never ended.
This week in Canada my province (New Brunswick) the Liberal Party (kinda equivalent to the Dems) swept out the Progressive Conservative party (kinda equivalent to today's Republicans) and we elected our first female Premier (e.g. Governor equivalent) with the Liberals almost having 2x the number of seats as the previous government. The scenario isn't the same as what you face in the US (we don't directly elect our Premiers or Prime Ministers, as an example) but it gave me a slight bit of hope that even in the more conservative of places people can look at the options and choose to elect a dynamic and smart female leader. Or simply reject a party that doesn't appear to support inclusion and move a bit beyond doom and gloom. I want to believe that Harris and her VP will be elected but after the letdown of Clinton losing to Trump in 2016 and how the Republicans appear to have geared up for battle I fear that Trump/Vance will prevail. But perhaps things will go better than I fear. Good luck down there.
It's not (just) the pandemic. There's a long list of enormous failures that have colored American perceptions of our government for the past 20ish years, and which have largely never been reckoned with. Iraq, Katrina and the ever-increasing pace of climatic disasters, the Great Recession exposing the failure of the Reagan/Clinton economic consensus; all of these things contributed to Trump getting elected in the first place. Biden was a retreat from Trump, but his decision to try for a second term, and to not even invite any sort of competition about what new direction the government should take going forward, represented a serious betrayal of a campaign promise that voters were primed to punish Democrats for. Dropping out in favor of Harris was probably the best way to fix that problem once it was brought into existence; there's no sense that *Harris* is breaking a promise by running against Trump, or that she thinks she deserves the office just by dint of how bad her opponent is, but the fact that there was no conversation about where we should be going makes the "we're not going back" case much less of a slam dunk than it should be.
Biden should have resigned after two years. Democrats could have touted breaking the glass ceiling with the first woman president and vice president Harris would have had a warmup period and had a much better chance at winning. She is a weak candidate running against a very old and scattered Trump
People wanna worry, they should worry about the Republican plan to ratfuck the vote count to install alternate electors, or barring that, generate enough chaos to justify throwing the decision to SCOTUS or the House. Things like the Georgia rules to allow challenges to votes, the "poll watchers" meant to "insure election integrity". I'm convinced the biased polls are also meant to be justification for the suits to be filed claiming "irregularities" in voting (how could he lose by that much? Look at all these polls!). It's a dumb plan, but when has that stopped them before, and sometimes their dumb plan works. Brooks Bros. riot?
Anyone who is anxious should take physical action, volunteer to help the local party branch or at the polls. Put up a sign, stand on the corner with one, whatever. Find like-minded people to do it with.
Yeah I am pretty much with you all around and especially on the over-confidence some models have on the shape of the electorate. One other reason to be skeptical is field - the basic assumption tends to be that field doesn't matter unless one campaign has a *really great* field operation - and even then it matters in the 0.5-1% range - because both campaigns will have, at least, a standard field operation. All indicators are that Trump barely has a field operation *at all* - the RNC fired everyone, it got outsourced to America PAC (Elon's group) and Turning Point USA which, tl;dr, both seem to be utter catastrophes. You can't necessarily assume normal turnout because one of the main variables there - field operations that turn out voters - seems to be on Harris' side, at least in the normal-competent range, and on Trump's side, a flaming tire fire.
We don't *know* for sure, but this is one area where given all the reporting, you definitely want to be on Team D rather than Team R.
I saw a video today of some guy teaching others how to fake out the gps of Elonโs canvassing app so he could just sit around in Starbucks, collecting money for doing a few phone taps in lieu of physically knocking doors. No ground game at all.
I really appreciate the thinking here, and not just because it reflects my own! Itโs nice to hear a professional walk through these point with a methodology and, to the extent possible, data. I have been functioning on hunch, but the dynamics of the election constantly make me doubt myself.
Iโd live an update late next week, as most of the polling and a lot of the voting will be in.
>Call it a failure of the media or a failure to build a robust majoritarian party coalition or a failure of government passing policies that solve peoplesโ problems.
Maybe it's not a failure of any of these things. Maybe it's the fact that this much of the country has always been waiting for someone to give them permission to be racist, sexist, patriarchal, fascism-loving pigs. Maybe people are supporting Trump because they actually want what Trump is selling them.
"This is not who we are." Nah, this is exactly who a large chunk of the country has always been. The Civil War never ended.
Isn't bombing Brown people in a genocide racist? Pro tip: YES๐คฆโโ๏ธ Both Biden and Harris are racist as fuck and mass murderers.
This week in Canada my province (New Brunswick) the Liberal Party (kinda equivalent to the Dems) swept out the Progressive Conservative party (kinda equivalent to today's Republicans) and we elected our first female Premier (e.g. Governor equivalent) with the Liberals almost having 2x the number of seats as the previous government. The scenario isn't the same as what you face in the US (we don't directly elect our Premiers or Prime Ministers, as an example) but it gave me a slight bit of hope that even in the more conservative of places people can look at the options and choose to elect a dynamic and smart female leader. Or simply reject a party that doesn't appear to support inclusion and move a bit beyond doom and gloom. I want to believe that Harris and her VP will be elected but after the letdown of Clinton losing to Trump in 2016 and how the Republicans appear to have geared up for battle I fear that Trump/Vance will prevail. But perhaps things will go better than I fear. Good luck down there.
It's not (just) the pandemic. There's a long list of enormous failures that have colored American perceptions of our government for the past 20ish years, and which have largely never been reckoned with. Iraq, Katrina and the ever-increasing pace of climatic disasters, the Great Recession exposing the failure of the Reagan/Clinton economic consensus; all of these things contributed to Trump getting elected in the first place. Biden was a retreat from Trump, but his decision to try for a second term, and to not even invite any sort of competition about what new direction the government should take going forward, represented a serious betrayal of a campaign promise that voters were primed to punish Democrats for. Dropping out in favor of Harris was probably the best way to fix that problem once it was brought into existence; there's no sense that *Harris* is breaking a promise by running against Trump, or that she thinks she deserves the office just by dint of how bad her opponent is, but the fact that there was no conversation about where we should be going makes the "we're not going back" case much less of a slam dunk than it should be.
Pushing Biden out was a betrayal. I will vote D based on policy, but him getting kicked out will not be whistled past by everyone... nor should it be.
Kick him out after two years? They way you felt about Biden is how I feel about people like you.
Biden should have resigned after two years. Democrats could have touted breaking the glass ceiling with the first woman president and vice president Harris would have had a warmup period and had a much better chance at winning. She is a weak candidate running against a very old and scattered Trump
People wanna worry, they should worry about the Republican plan to ratfuck the vote count to install alternate electors, or barring that, generate enough chaos to justify throwing the decision to SCOTUS or the House. Things like the Georgia rules to allow challenges to votes, the "poll watchers" meant to "insure election integrity". I'm convinced the biased polls are also meant to be justification for the suits to be filed claiming "irregularities" in voting (how could he lose by that much? Look at all these polls!). It's a dumb plan, but when has that stopped them before, and sometimes their dumb plan works. Brooks Bros. riot?
Anyone who is anxious should take physical action, volunteer to help the local party branch or at the polls. Put up a sign, stand on the corner with one, whatever. Find like-minded people to do it with.
Yeah I am pretty much with you all around and especially on the over-confidence some models have on the shape of the electorate. One other reason to be skeptical is field - the basic assumption tends to be that field doesn't matter unless one campaign has a *really great* field operation - and even then it matters in the 0.5-1% range - because both campaigns will have, at least, a standard field operation. All indicators are that Trump barely has a field operation *at all* - the RNC fired everyone, it got outsourced to America PAC (Elon's group) and Turning Point USA which, tl;dr, both seem to be utter catastrophes. You can't necessarily assume normal turnout because one of the main variables there - field operations that turn out voters - seems to be on Harris' side, at least in the normal-competent range, and on Trump's side, a flaming tire fire.
We don't *know* for sure, but this is one area where given all the reporting, you definitely want to be on Team D rather than Team R.
I saw a video today of some guy teaching others how to fake out the gps of Elonโs canvassing app so he could just sit around in Starbucks, collecting money for doing a few phone taps in lieu of physically knocking doors. No ground game at all.
I really appreciate the thinking here, and not just because it reflects my own! Itโs nice to hear a professional walk through these point with a methodology and, to the extent possible, data. I have been functioning on hunch, but the dynamics of the election constantly make me doubt myself.
Iโd live an update late next week, as most of the polling and a lot of the voting will be in.
Harris is fucking trash๐คฎ She's pro genocide. Voting for her makes you complicit. First they came for the Palestinians and Lebanese.
no