The new round of October polling from the Senate Leadership Fund shows all but one Republican candidate running behind Donald Trump in battleground states.
Trump is more popular than conventional Republicans. Republican voters actively prefer a lying, ignorant, whining, vengeful racist to an ordinary person with conservative views.
I guess we already knew this since Trump won the Republican primary handily, but still. Do any Republicans watch his rallies and understand just how far he's melted down since he was president? Or do they really prefer lying, ignorant, whining, vengeful, and racist to ordinary?
They really prefer lying, ignorant, whining, vengeful, and racist to ordinary. They all know exactly what is going on.
I'm not a psychologist, but then of course we are ALL amateur psychologists!
So here is my hypothesis. Most men, and some women, went through an adolescence suffused with rebellious resentment against authority (meaning "Mom"). The cool kids were the ones who said "fuck the rules" and were admired for it. Half of us grew out of it, realizing that life in this world requires acceptance of responsibility and that rules are largely there to impose order on what would otherwise be a cruel and chaotic world. But about half of us never got past that yearning to be one of the cool kids who said "fuck the rules, fuck the teachers, fuck the cops, fuck the smart kids, etc. . . ."
That's Trump's base. It's the men who think they are "alphas" because they have no idea what it means to be a real man. It's women who are drawn to these ersatz-"alphas" for God-knows-what reasons.
I think you are on to something that applies to at least a good number of MAGAnauts. Authority in this case can be Mom and Dad. Like Mark Twain my opinion of my father improved comsiderably after adolescence. Also, unlike Trump and I suspect a fair number of his followers, I had the good fortune of having a father who was not an bullying asshole.
It's spelled maggot.
and the rest of coalition consists of:
-GOP pols wanting a career job
-Religious guys wanting continued tax exemptions
-Corporate America wanting no taxes or liabilities
Adds up
it's been almost a decade of his lying, ignorance, whining, vengefulness, and racism and republican voters have spend all that time proving beyond any doubt that's exactly what they want and love. can we stop pretending otherwise?
¿Porqué no los dos? Republican voters are generally really shitty people in most aspects of life. And swing/ independent/ occasional voters are generally tuned out for the entire election, so they just don’t know any better.
C'mon, man, really? Do you actually know any Republican voters? Trump is an appalling mess, but no, most Republican voters are usually normal (and in many cases quite decent) people who vote for assholes.
But you are right, in that unlike most folks who are reading this blog, a LOT of voters have their overall impressions of the guy and politics in general and spend most of their time thinking about other things rather than parsing how Trump's call for increased tariffs would actually affect inflation, for instance.
But WHY do they vote for assholes, and in particular ones who make racism and sexism the CENTERS of their campaigns?
Answer: because even though they may not openly flaunt their bigotry -- at least not around you, and they may love puppies and their children and donate to hurricane relief, and they may be polite to their customers -- at least to the White ones -- but they're still bigots. And if they're around their fellow bigots, and/or they've got a few drinks in them, it comes out pretty easily.
Like jdubs below, this is not something that makes anyone happy. It surprised me to find out how broadly and deeply bigotry runs in this country. I really thought we were growing out of it. But evidently not.
+1. This has always benn my experience. You think you know someone and then they say something so profoundly ignorant, racist, and or misogynist that it shocks me. This usually happens during election time. More so since Trump won in 2016. They feel emboldened to speak their minds. And what's on their minds is quite often disturbingly ignorant or just plain stupid.
Agreed. Trump made it ok to say what you REALLY thought. And the social belonging that comes with others thinking the same thing (see also dittoheads).
I think we lefties underestimate the psychological resistance to change and just how many people are unhappy that you can't ahead in America anymore by just showing up and working hard.
That isn't the fault of Democrats in general, globalism has benefits and flaws. We have lots of cheap stuff, but somebody else makes it for us. Corporate meritocracy is that you earn in relation to how valuable your services are to someone's quarterly profit line.
Voilà !
We've gone from 80% of the white population as extreme bigots to less than 50%. Progress is very slow.
I know some/observe some. They're shitty. Case closed!
+1
It's attitudes like Austin's that led to trump being elected in the first place.
We all have blindspots, yours is just bigger.
About the response I expected from the crowd here, and your point is one I very much agree with. Us folks on the left do not realize how obnoxious some of us can be and why someone might want to vote against us because some of it. One of the reasons that Trump resonates among some of his voters is he represents a big middle finger to the excesses of the left.
What excesses?
To this question expect to receive a recitation of the standard Republican catechism of generalities like "high taxes" and "too much regulation" plus some cherry-picked, distorted or utterly false specifics like "open borders" or "BLM riots" or some comment by somebody on DKos.
But scratch even a little at even those, and what you'll find REALLY driving them for the large majority of Rightists is fear of change -- and especially status anxiety -- that is rooted in bigotry. A Black man becoming President. Same-sex marriage. A complex, unfamiliar and sometimes ambiguous world that refuses to be fenced out no matter how hard they try to fence themselves in.
(And as to excesses, shall we talk about -- just off the top of my head -- separating children from their parents and then losing the paperwork, or "slow down the testing," or tear-gassing peaceful protestors to make room for a photo-op next to a church? Honestly ...)
+1.
I would say the general Apocalyptic Doom / Anti-Human (anti-progress / growth) cult of many on the left (climate change, AI, etc.)
Also, the Language Police / every white person is racist.
And then Faux amplifies it
This isn't Harris or Biden. But I know this pisses off people.
Do you think your examples are representative of the majority of thinking on the left? I don't think it is. But you're right about it being amplified by fox News, but you can include some of the MSM too.
Really, @Josef, you cannot think of any yourself? While I won't get into a detailed explanation or I will be here for longer than I can afford, a good place to start is language and control of it using institutions of what can and cannot be said.
And bbleh's comments, below, by and large are not what I was talking about. Although there are good points in there most notably that MAGAite excesses exceed those of the Progressive Left by an order of magnitude.
Yep. It is the fault of liberals that people like you vote for gigantic ignorant, racist, sexist assholes.
"Trump is an appalling mess, but no, most Republican voters are usually normal (and in many cases quite decent) people who vote for assholes." How normal and decent could one be if one votes consistently for assholes? If your decency and normality is conditional I don't think they're genuine.
Yeah, if you'll vote for such a despicable person, you are also despicable.
My personal theory is that it’s the former. Trump does better the more he stays out of the spotlight; the Rs need to pretend that he’s not the person that they are voting for, rather than Fox News’ depiction of Trump.
It’s why the debate had a huge effect; people focus on Harris showing that she is capable, but a lot of it was GOP voters having to confront the fact that the guy on the Ballot is not the imaginary person in their minds. They are busily trying to forget it again- it’s the whole strategy.
There's no evidence the "debate" had any effect at all.
The polls? That his campaigning style shifted?
I think there's something to this. In his campaign ads that I see on TV, you never see him talk on video- at most you'll see a few photo-op type pictures, and maybe a short voice over or sound bite. In some, all you'll hear is the boilerplate "I approved this message", and even that doesn't sound very good. And this is coming from his own campaign, mind you! It's as if they don't want you to see him talk live!
The opening for that article to which Kevin links is this:
There has always been only one explanation for Trumps success.
7 or 8 years ago it was surprising to realize how many acquaintances and members of my community were excited about the opportunity be more openly racist and hateful and stop pretending to care about political policy to explain their yard signs.... but this is no longer surprising.
EXACTLY this; thank you for saying it.
Like Mussolini "he allows them to be their worst selves." And they were and are hateful and racist. Most of them don't make it the centers of their personalities, but it's there, and having been given permission to express it, and a group of fellow-racists with and around whom they can express it and receive approval rather than the opposite, they've embraced it.
The corollary, of course, is that it won't go away when TFA does. The genie's out of the bottle now, and it's gonna take a long time to stuff it back in.
yup.
I would draw a distinction between people who voted for Trump in 2016 and those who voted for him in 2020 and will likely do so again this year. In 2016 Trump was a bit of an unknown quantity and for a variety of reasons, a lot of people just didn't like Hillary Clinton. I know a lot of people who voted for Trump in 2016 but who didn't in 2020 and won't this year. These people are fundamentally different from the hard-core MAGA types, who, if you've ever talked with one at length, has a racist core that they'll never admit to, but is readily apparent to anyone else.
Even this election cycle, a lot of people will vote for Trump while holding their noses. They fundamentally don't believe that government can do positive things. They hate Trump, but believe democrat policies will be very damaging. Remember, even after Haley withdrew, she was still getting 20% of the vote. And republican primary voters are skew far more evil than republican general election voters.
Agreed. It would be a mistake to over generalize and think that there's only one reason people vote for Trump. Certainly there are a lot of people conditioned to reflexively oppose Democrats and anything they propose. Just for fun, Democrats should propose lowering taxes on high earners. Republicans would be running around saying, "WTF, that's OUR shtick! Now we have to be opposed to this!"
Surely if the last 20 years have taught us anything, it's that it's a mistake to seek rational explanations for American voter choices.
A vote for Trump is usually a protest vote against 21st century America. Since he promises to take America back to some imaginary "greatness", people vote for him. They despise half the Republican Party as "RINOs", and see no inconsistency in their positions. That's it. Trying to tease out rational explanations for the way they think is a fool's errand.
It seems quite correct that indeed a large percentage of the Trump vote is indeed reactionary vote against socio-culture change of the past 20 years or so - insofar as this tracks with other changes in balance.
Not all, certainly as some significant percentages of all voting populations vote by party identity - particularly in two party systems.
However one can effect rational analysis of "irrational" positions - otherwise put 'emotional' and societal security based reaction. As Europe here is facing somewhat similar socio-economic change backlash and rise in vote percentages of neo-fascistic parties, some of the factors are clearly not uniquely American.
So rational explanation of what is going on is quite possible if one lays aside socio-economic snobbery and examines in as well as reasoned manner drivers of change anxiety and if only for purely not-losing-elections-as-dam-against-fascism thinking about mitigants.
It rather probably is the time for the Democrats going on about relief for indebted elite Uni graduates and more time thinking about political pitches to working class outside of your poverty-help-poor and minority identarian lenses.
“As Europe here is facing somewhat similar socio-economic change backlash and rise in vote percentages of neo-fascistic parties, some of the factors are clearly not uniquely American.”
Yes but unlike in Europe, where you generally need over half of the voting population to vote for parties promising more fascism/racism in order for fascists/racists to seize control over government, more fascism and racism can be implemented in the Senate with just something like 17% of voters actually agreeing to it as long as those voters are sufficiently geographically scattered enough to control 50-51 seats in the Senate. And more fascism and racism can be implemented in the White House with something like 40% of the vote because of the Electoral College screwiness. Thus, European democracies will do better at repelling racism and fascism than American “democracy,” even if desire for one or both are rising on both continents.
...more fascism and racism can be implemented in the Senate with just something like 17% of voters
This.
America has the normal problem of "a lot of voters suck" that any democratic polity must deal with. But it's also burdened with a uniquely awful constitution. It's the worst constitutional order of any major democracy and it's not particularly close. And much of the reason for this flows directly from the absurd difficulty of amending the damn thing.
This is it, period. The rest is commentary. What you get when your foundational document was boiled in the legal and 'necessary' barbarism of slavery.
It's the American Way™, economics of theft – or as we always hear it in the movies, "it's just business."
Certainly the need to make compromises with slave states altered the Constitution in many ways, but that's only part of the story and doesn't explain the unique structure. Remember, the framers were working from scratch - they were inventing a new government type that no one had ever seen before. Their only working model was the English system and they tried to avoid the faults therein. It all worked pretty well for going on two and a half centuries. But there were flaws that they could not have foreseen and we're dealing with those now.
You might want to get rid of the Senate as being undemocratic. Fine. Would you like to see a Newt Gingrich-led Congress have free rein? Get rid of the filibuster? Fine. It's not hard to recall times when not having it would have been disastrous. Every change has its potential downsides. Be careful what you wish for.
There is ample evdence that many if not all the framers were familiar with the governance model used by the Iroquois Confederacy, which appears almost certain to have contributed numerous ideas to the initial US idea of democracy.
By some accounts, many Indians were horrified by the heirarchical structure of European-based societies, and the IC in particular seems to have been significantly more egalitarian than anything in or conceived of in Europe or the colonies at that time.
Undoubtedly. But they were more influenced by Enlightenment thinkers and Plato, who fundamentally didn't think people could be trusted to govern themselves. Hence the reliance on elites and the Electoral College.
A bunch of you might enjoy this podcast episode:
https://guykawasaki.com/aj-jacobs-the-constitution-comes-alive/
AJ Jacobs is no ordinary author; he is known for his, shall I say, immersive experiments as well as his New York Times bestselling books. His first book, The Know It All chronicled his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Another New York Times bestseller, The Year of Living Biblically, detailed his experience following the Bible\’s rules for a year.
In this episode, we explore AJ’s latest adventure: living for one year according to the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution. It’s a journey that’s as hilarious as it is thought-provoking, offering insights into the foundations of American democracy and the challenges of applying 18th-century laws to 21st-century life.
Imagine walking down the streets of New York City with a musket, grappling with the concept of cruel and unusual punishment in the age of modern prisons, or trying to navigate free speech in the era of social media. AJ did all this and more, bringing the words of the Founding Fathers to life in ways that are both entertaining and enlightening.
But this isn’t just about laughs (though there are plenty). AJ’s experiment raises important questions about constitutional interpretation, the evolution of rights, and the ongoing debate between originalism and living constitutionalism. As we discuss his experiences, we delve into the complexities of modern democracy, the importance of civic engagement, and the delicate balance between preserving tradition and embracing progress.
From election cakes to quill pens, from pillories to the Second Amendment, AJ’s journey offers a fresh perspective on the document that shapes American life. It’s a reminder that the Constitution isn’t just a historical relic, but a living, breathing guide that continues to influence our daily lives in ways both big and small.
Join us for this remarkable conversation that will make you laugh, think, and perhaps see the Constitution in a whole new light. AJ Jacobs’ year of constitutional living is more than just a quirky experiment – it’s a wake-up call to engage with our democracy and consider how we can continue to form a more perfect union in the 21st century and beyond.
Yes there are more barriers - there is also a still extent historical memory of the errors of the 1930s where the centres of Left and Right rather too often let themselves see the other side as irreedmable and let the extremes (fascists, stalinists) essentially gain upperhands.
The lesson of European 1930s while not 100% applicable is reasonably a warning.
Voter turnout in 2020 was sky-high. For America, that means 66% of eligible voters voted. In 2016, it was a bit more than 59% of eligible voters.
In 2020, then, and recognizing that these numbers are somewhat misleading because of the electoral college, the popular vote was:
Biden 81,283,501; Trump 74,223,975; Eligible voters not voting 80,109,911. So the vote was Biden, then non-voters, then Trump.
And in 2016, the popular vote was:
Clinton 65,853,514; Trump 62,984,828; Eligible voters not voting 89,531,729.
Just running those two sets of numbers, I think it's political malpractice not to list them in every election. I don't have time to run the numbers on previous elections, but I do wonder how frequently the popular vote winner or election winner received more of the popular vote than the "eligible voters not voting" category, or, for that matter, how those numbers look if you list only registered voters not voting. (Maybe a good graph for Kevin to create?)
"did not vote" numbers can be wildly misleading and essentially useless because you don't know why somebody did not vote. The range of possible reasons is quite large; the specific reason(s) that a given person did not vote can point to a very, very different interpretation of that (non-) act.
While that's true on an individual case, at a macro level we can look at these numbers and draw conclusions from them because those "there's a chance this happened to this person, and a chance that happened to that person", where this and that are reasons they didn't vote, and know that this and that will always happen at some rate across the electorate.
Drilling down into whether "this" and "that" have changed (or whether the candidates/parties were more/less enticing) is exactly the point of such analysis. You can do that on a population level. Case-by-case distinctions are irrelevant.
Without a decomposition of what "Republican voter
The data that show over the past two decades (or since perhaps the Pres. Clinton period) in partiuclar your party losing ground in working class / non-Uni educated which has equally seen in your mid-west centre formerly solid states for you turn rather
The current ID of Republican voter may be perfectly Trump structured that the traditional party candidate is a loser now or equally it may be that sans the PT Barnum showman mastery of Trump, Trumpist candidates (or it may be a mix of mismatch types depending on the regional geography rather than a single answer, but I would suspect as per the lessons of the failure of the Florida governor that being Trumpist sans having Trump's PT Barnum skills is not so appealing in many geographies).
Really data and refined analysis is needed to have actual insights (rather than self-reinforcing Party Political Partisan self-congratulation on being the Good Guys against the Bad Guys - however emotionlally fun that is)
I think the more likely explanation is that Trump triggers participation bias problems for pollsters and these are the lowest of the low information/propensity voters who only care about who controls the White House.
The rush to the recruitment office...
Not knowing what depravity awaits. And I'm not talking about combat.
Wow… still in that first stage of grief. Denial.
Time for predictions about what happens when trump wins and has congress in his pocket.
When the former president endorses violence and proposes using the government to attack his enemies, many of his supporters assume it’s just an act.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/us/elections/trump-promises-extreme-rhetoric.html
What do you think?
One of the more peculiar aspects of Donald J. Trump’s political appeal is this: A lot of people are happy to vote for him because they simply do not believe he will do many of the things he says he will.
This is what I’ve been thinking all along. Some of his supporters are hard core while others think he just saying shit to own the libs. None of the care.
"What do you think?"
He definitely is going to use violence. He already praised the Chinese government for shooting protesters in 1990, in his words for "put it down with strength", and didn't change his view since then. He still adores "strength", i.e. suppressing population, and that what he will do. He will provoke protests, and send the "immigrant deporting militia" to shoot them.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tiananmen-square-video-1990-interview-china-massacre-protests-demonstrations-a9545591.html
In case of any doubt:
"Trump suggests using military against ‘enemy from within’ on Election Day "
Which obviously isn't going to stop at the end of Election Day.
No way you are going to have free elections if he wins.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/13/politics/trump-military-enemy-from-within-election-day/index.html
That, I think, is more of an issue with the political press. After all, he promised to lock Hilary up and she wasn't arrested in his first term, and he didn't outlaw, imprison, or even ban the press, so he's all talk. (And yes, Trump often is all talk. The question is whether the people he puts in positions of power are.)
This election, like most close American elections, will be decided by voters who are currently undecided. Those voters are almost certainly disengaged from the whole process, don't know or don't care or actively avoid learning about the races until maybe a week ahead of time, and will gather their impressions based either on coverage at that time, or even thinner basis than that.
It's quite plausible someone is staring at a ballot in Wisconsin and deciding then: "Trump? He was president before, right? Was that before COVID? Or Harris? Who is he? Isn't Biden the president now?" If that voter's overall impressions of Trump and Harris, based on things half-remembered or outright wrong, tips the scales one way or the other, then all the careful campaigning in the world isn't going to matter much beyond random chance. OTOH, things like "get out the vote" matter a great deal more, as do voter suppression efforts.
There are certainly those who don't believe he will do the things he says he will. My experience is that there are more who hope he does.
The house is going democrat so congress won't be in his pocket. All the republicans in NY state who won in 2022 are getting booted.
He still be safe from impeachment, because there are enough Republican worms in the senate to block it. So he will be free to do whatever he wants, including using threats of violence against officials (judges, members of congress, state officials).
The fact that impeachment is not a threat anyore is the main difference between his previous term and if he wins the next term.
OT: Last week you posted about how we were on track to expanding renewable energy. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) says you're wrong.
Now, add up the costs of mitigation. You sure the world is ready to spend upwards of $100T to address climate change?
There is no need for the government to spend trillions. All we need is a robust, annually rising price on carbon with all the revenue divided up equally among American citizens. This would create an incentive for the private sector (which owns the vast majority of the money) to shift their investments from fossil energy to non-fossil energy.
So, you may ask, if this carbon taxation is so great, why hasn't it been done already?
Because it would work.
It would also be extremely divisive and the PR efforts of the fossil fuel lobby would make sure it is would be. Taking away choice and replacing it with something that costs more is just not going to go well. If you did a carbon tax and used it to offset the costs that would hit the middle and working classes, only then do you have a shot. The flip side of that is all the graft that goes along with buying down things like heat pumps, hybrid/EVs, insurance, and electric rates to make them palatable to the masses.
It hasn't been done already because it's a tax and people are, in general, cognitively biased on the concept of taxation.
This isn't about Republicans because Republicans are voting for both Trump and the Republican congressional candidates. The differences at the margins are Independents. They want somebody who talks tough and hates a lot of people.
This seems likely. Trump is pulling in some Democrats and independents that normal Republicans can't reach.
I know many republicans. Most of them can't vote for a democrat because that is the way it has always been for them. Still, they are mostly at least a tinge racist, hate the whole DEI and LBGTQ+ stuff "being thrown in their face". The college educated ones hate Trump but will vote for him anyway. The non-college educated ones love Trump because... well I haven't been able to get them to give me a clear answer yet. I think for his brazenness.
The vast majority people, regardless of political affiliation, are "a tinge racist".
+1. If we are being honest with ourselves
There is "tinge", and there is "tinge". The one on the right causes people to vote for racists and fascists, the one of the left doesn't.
I'm pretty sure the difference is between people who have implicit biases (we all do) but try to be aware of them and compensate, and those who think it's not bias because "those people" really are inferior, lazy criminals.
There's no difference in your position and Yehouda's position.
I didn't say there was.
Or do they really prefer lying, ignorant, whining, vengeful, and racist to ordinary?
The past decade or so has been one long lesson on how a lot of us simply aren't that virtuous, noble, altruistic, wise, prudent, rational or intelligent. I used to be firmly in the "in a democracy, voters deserve what they get" camp.
But I no longer see things that way.
The reality is that democracy by itself isn't enough. There's no "wisdom of the people" or inherent goodness of the nation that will save us. Democracy (if you can keep it!) only works tolerably well over the long term with virtuous elites.
Elites matter. And ours collectively have been pretty shitty for a while now.
Spot on, and it's especially the Democratic/liberal elites who've failed, mired in the impotent narcissism of the sixties for fifty years now, where being right and righteous matter more than the dirty business of getting shit done. One thing about Harris, I believe I detect something of a shift here. Possibly too little, too late.
The Harris team really has to running ads mocking and laughing at Trump. Not his supporters, but Trump himself.
As for his support, there was an article, maybe in the Atlantic, describing the pride effect. Basically, Republicans preach individual responsibility, and if you're having problems you're a failure. Tie that in with the "prosperity gospel" grift, i.e. if you're not doing well, God doesn't love you, and you have a very toxic environment. When Hillary ran on we saved your jobs (autoworkers), that was an offense to them--they were embarrassed that someone had to save their jobs. Now Trump comes along and gives them scapegoats. It's not your fault for not being a millionaire by 30, it's all a conspiracy against you. It's he immigrants, it's the "elite", it's the (fill in the blank). It gives them someone to blame and fight against, even if it's an amorphous "they"--as long as it's someone else's fault.
"Or do they really prefer lying, ignorant, whining, vengeful, and racist to ordinary?"
Yes. Yes, they do. They hate liberals (or at least the fictional caricature of liberals put out on Fox and other rightwing media) more than they love their country. They'll burn America to the ground rather than share it with immigrants, minorities, or LGTBQ people.
It is very strange. Apparently, "The Trump Voters Who Don’t Believe Trump" according to the NY Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/us/elections/trump-promises-extreme-rhetoric.html)
It seems that whatever he says is thought to be some performative theater, mainly to signal that he is sincere and straight talking. Unleashing the Army against the citizens? Just talk. Arresting and deporting millions of people, boff, just talk.
I just find it really bizarre that Harris was running consistently +3 to +5 and just a couple of weeks later it’s back to a dead heat? What happened to cause a consistent drop in support? It’s all within the statistical margin of error, yes, but they usually show the direction things are going. What happened to the excitement around her candidacy when Biden dropped out? Her rallies consistently draw more people than Trump’s do. You can see the excitement there, but crowd size at events doesn’t equate to votes. There’s been nothing news wise that would cause a collapse of support. There’s been two hurricanes with competent federal responses just as you’d expect from Biden. Do millions buy Trump's lies about the federal response? I doubt it. The polls underperformed for Democrats almost entirely across the board the last two election cycles. It could be doing that here, but damn if it isn’t nerve racking that’s for sure. It’s really astonishing how sick our country is mentally to be so close to voting that maniac back in.
My vote doesn’t matter. I’m a blue dot in a blood red state. I can tell you why people vote for Trump: because they’re stupid pieces of shit. I live around them and interact with them on a daily basis. They range from people who genuinely believe what he says and want it to happen to people who believe he’s God-annointed to people who don’t think it matters one way or the other and that he won’t do any of what he says. If I could afford to leave I would, but maybe after the election I won’t have a choice.
All I can do is hope the polls are wrong or the pendulum swings back in her favor. Oh, and hope Pennsylvania doesn’t go for Trump. What a fucked up system we have.
"I can tell you why people vote for Trump: because they’re stupid pieces of shit. I live around them and interact with them on a daily basis. They range from people who genuinely believe what he says and want it to happen to people who believe he’s God-annointed to people who don’t think it matters one way or the other and that he won’t do any of what he says."
This is exactly my experience, too.
I just find it really bizarre that Harris was running consistently +3 to +5 and just a couple of weeks later it’s back to a dead heat?
Not so. It's been a toss up election more or less since Harris secured the nomination. That's because she's enjoyed a modest popular vote lead* according to most of the polls (ie, 1-3 points), and a modest popular vote lead like that for the Democrat signals a coin toss election (because of Trump's considerable Electoral College lead).
*Long story short, Harris still enjoys a modest popular vote polling lead (according to my own measurements—I average the major aggregators every 5 or 6 days or so—her lead shrank by about a point last week compared to the week before, but was still larger than what it was in late September).
There's a lot of coordinated GOP gaslighting going on, designed, presumably, to demoralize Harris voters. Don't fall for it.
because of Trump's considerable Electoral College lead
Meant to write: because of Trump's considerable Electoral College advantage.
Trump probably wins the election if he can keep Harris's popular vote margin below two points, and he's probably got about a 50% chance if her margin is 2.5 points.
It's an internal fundraising letter, so they want these races to look tight and no doubt selected the worst polling result for every Republican candidate. But let's assume this is accurate.
Does anyone think Republican non-PAC spending this election looks anything like normal, with Lara Trump in charge? Does Trump really care about all these Senate races? Has he been campaigning for these candidates, or just for himself?
And these aren't polls of Republican voters: they're everyone. If we assume the voters changing their positions month-to-month are the undecided voters, then obviously more of them will pick Trump (who they've at least heard of) over a Senate candidate whose name isn't familiar to them over a second Senate candidate who maybe they have heard of vaguely or maybe they haven't.
I don't get it. I have some friends that are otherwise intelligent, educated, responsible and productive members of society yet they believe virtually everything Trump says and are all in on supporting him. We don't get too deep into political discussions since it would probably just cause issues with our friendship.
Same here.
There are people who are authoritarian followers, people who are xenophobic and racist, people who want to blame anybody but themselves for their lot in life, people who think they pay too much in taxes which are helping other people, people who are easily manipulated viscerally, men who can't compete successfully in this world and feel emasculated because of it, people who haven't seen him lately, people who have seen him and don't care because they still want to blow the country up. It's all of this.
Where's Harris's "We believe in America" campaign?
We passed the infrastructure bill to help build for America's future because we believe in America.
We fought for the comprehensive immigration bill to fight the influx of fentanyl that started in Trump's term because we believe in America.
We passed the CHIPS act to ramp up microchip production in the US because we believe in America.
Do you?
+1. Democrats don't toot their own horn enough. Trump does it too much.
Most conservatives either won't be affected by Trumps policies or don't think they will be. So why not vote for the guy who encourages their racist, misogynist, biased and 🍑 behavior. They don't believe they have anything to lose.
One thing we all tend to forget, and the media never talks about, is that Trump is a desperate man. If he loses in November, he can't pardon himself for federal crimes. This means that there is a strong chance he will spend the rest of his life in prison. Thus, Trump, more than ever, will say literally anything to get elected.