rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

non-biden-voting bernie supporters seem statistically insignificant in comparison to the amount of suppressed democratic votes that would have existed in general, plus the increase in suppressed democratic votes caused by coronavirus deaths and/or fallout

One of the main reasons...

Hmm. I think this fluctuates quite a bit as a motivator from one election to the next.

I doubt there were a lot of Obama '08 voters or Bradley '00 or etc who thought they were less electable than Hillary or Gore.

The importance of electability to the voter who makes up their mind on the way to the polls may vary from election to election but for the people who 'have' a candidate, how often (barring the Marianne Williamson protest voter or w/e) is that not a major part of the calculation?

As you phrased it, a main concern for primary voters was the lack of electability of the other candidates, which concern became a major reason for eventually choosing the candidate one voted for. This elevates it to a position of equality with every positive reason for being drawn to one's chosen candidate. While this reasoning seemed to play a fairly prominent role for Democrats this year, I don't recall it being nearly as prominent in the majority of presidential primaries in my lifetime, at least for the party which was not running the incumbent.

While this reasoning seemed to play a fairly prominent role for Democrats this year, I don't recall it being nearly as prominent in the majority of presidential primaries in my lifetime, at least for the party which was not running the incumbent.

Because, ILX's tendency toward "they're all equally bad" bullshit aside, there had never been a candidate as glaringly, shit-on-your-chest awful as Donald Trump on the other side.

No, in 2004 the voters' ideas about the electability of respective candidates were a fairly prominent part of the vetting process that produced Kerry. Supposedly his war record and Bronze Star indemnified him against charges of being anti-military during an ongoing war. Didn't work out.

2004 was also the gay marriage wedge election, which sucked.

yes

Your mistake is in assuming that the majority of Democratic voters will feel the need to hold their nose to vote for Joe Biden.

Your mistake is in assuming that I was expressing anything about my own assumptions about what millions of people may or may not do in November, if given the chance, rather than my stating that I was making assumptions about the stresses that led silby to create a contained thread in which to vent, this week

Can we keep this and lock the Joe Bidden thread. The shitposting opportunities are higher here.

Incredible pic.twitter.com/tlDsHLQ7Ic

— Nadine Shah (@nadineshah) April 22, 2020

5 Reasons Pundits Will Overestimate Trump's Odds Of Winning In November

#2 and #3 don't seem like "reasons pundits will overestimate" so much as convincing reasons why his odds of winning are higher, and tellingly, the author doesn't even attempt to explain how these lead to overestimates (ffs, he even calls #3 a "non-superstitious reason"!)

Wonder covid will impact on the shape of the electorate. Might take polls-as-indicator out.

Triden is gonna win.

It is a strangely half-assed article, especially considering that he published this piece the same day:

Trump’s Coronavirus Approval Bounce May Be Gone

Early on in the coronavirus pandemic, Trump was getting narrowly positive reviews for his handling of the crisis, which in turn lifted his job-approval ratings somewhat, though not as much as one might expect when looking at the rallying effect benefiting other national leaders, as Matt Yglesias noted on March 31:

>>[E]ssentially all incumbent leaders appear to be benefiting from a coronavirus-related bump. Compared to the governors of hard-hit states or the presidents and prime ministers of hard-hit foreign countries, Trump’s bump is actually quite small, amounting to maybe 2 or 3 points. Compare that with foreign leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron or Germany’s Angela Merkel, who have seen double-digit increases in their approval ratings.

A Siena College poll released Monday showed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) enjoying a 20-point boost in his approval rating.

Since then, public assessments of Trump’s handling of the pandemic have steadily eroded. According to RealClearPolitics’ polling averages, his approval ratio on the coronavirus crisis turned negative on April 5, and now stands at 47/50. And accordingly, his overall job-approval rating has been inching downward in barely perceptible but regular ticks, and reached this point today:

Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
On Super Tuesday (3/3), maybe the last normal-ish day in American politics before COVID became the only story, Trump's approval rating was 43.3 and his disapproval was 52.7. Now? 43.6% approve and 52.4% disapprove. So he's lost his small bounce.

He’s doing a bit better at RealClearPolitics, which doesn’t adjust polls for accuracy or partisan bias, and shows him at 46 percent, but the trend lines are similar.

So Trump’s back at, or near, the narrow band of approval ratings that has characterized nearly all of his presidency, and it places him close enough to reelection territory to keep his team upbeat, but not there yet. Perhaps the wild environment created by the coronavirus and the economic collapse it has generated make these trends largely insignificant. But as noted so many times before, voters tend to really like and really dislike this man in an extremely durable manner. He cannot afford big mistakes on COVID-19, but just muddling along while taking credit for good things and shifting blame for bad things is not going to get him a second term.

but just muddling along while taking credit for good things and shifting blame for bad things is not going to get him a second term.

Narrator:

A lot of people are credulous enough to grant Trump said credit.

Like, there's a whole FB thread that a relative of mine has going that's just copypasta of Trump's "accomplishments," and the conversation going on there is a mirror-universe version of the same conversation happening on the left: that the other side is in denial about the facts. It's pretty wild.

media literacy. the ability to discern between a good and a bad source of information. everyone thinks they have it (including this board). everyone thinks the other side doesn't have it.

karl.....I run Snopes

great example! UMS has been posting on ILX for a long time, and i know they're a trustworthy source. and ilx is full of so many talented and friendly people - it's not a surprise that one of them also runs Snopes on the side!

one kinda funny/sad thing - while doublechecking myself that "media literacy" was actually an appropriate term to use, i ran across this:

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/news-and-media-literacy/what-is-media-literacy-and-why-is-it-important

which is great! but aimed only at children:

https://i.imgur.com/D4cSxSL.png

https://i.imgur.com/4GG2xXZ.png

all ADULTS need to figure this shit out first!

Bold prediction: Trump will start to demurely defer to scientists' & sane governors' decision to remain locked down, until a week or two before the election, when he will revolt against the evil scientists & socialist governors and "free the country".

that would actually be close to the best case scenario with trump, i think

I've seen four polls from PA in last 24 hours: Biden +6 (Ipsos), +6 (Susquehanna), +7 (PPP), +8 (Fox News). Three from MI: Biden +7 (PPP), +8 (Ipsos), +8 (Fox News)... Take em or leave em, but they are there.

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) April 23, 2020

6.5 months before an election is still an eternity. Trump's impeachment "trial" was only a bit over three months ago. The most predictable thing about November is that nothing about Trump will change, unless it's his health.

I have roughly $2k riding on a trump win (loser pays for all the expenses on an annual trip), a bet installed long before this shit started to go down, and a bet I would be thrilled to lose.

My prediction is that the States is going to be so fucked for the next year that Joe “I Look Like a Stock Photo of a Politician” Biden will win just because people will gravitate to anything that looks like stability — that Citibank branch manager image will push him over the finish line.

My REAL gut feeling is that some insane thing will happen out of the blue that nobody could have predicted and it will throw us all into such a chaotic mess that we will look back on the halcyon days of April 2020 as a blissful, normal time.

would you be willing to be another $2K on the insane thing happening

to BET!

turnip prices

Only if it means I don’t have to pay the first $2k.

Might be willing to bet 2K that by the end of the year both candidates will be insisting they won.

trump will be insisting he won, no matter what. biden will only insist that he won if he actually won the electoral college. if he loses the electoral college while winning the popular vote by 5 million votes or whatever, he will graciously accept defeat and then no one will talk about how to change the system that led to this happening 3 times in 6 elections

Morning, Karl!

those are all hypothetical scenarios, you see

i'm actually feeling pretty good about biden winning this year, believe it or not. :)

no one will talk about how to change the system that led to this happening 3 times in 6 elections

You are wise, Karl, but this is false. Lots of people will talk about it.

In fact lots of people talk about it (here and elsewhere) but changing it will not come from how many people are talking about it. Changing it will come from flipping red states to purple and purple states to red.

The obstacle - in 2000 as now - is always the red stranglehold on big, sparsely populated states. And the desire of Democrats to live in coastal cities and New York and California, where their power is concentrated but ultimately wasted (from the perspective of overturning the EC).

No deep red state is going to agree to reduce its disproportionate power in the Senate or the EC. Not based on strident arguing that these institutions are undemocratic and that they shortchange people of color. None. Flipping flippable states is the only way progress will be made on that issue.

In fact lots of people talk about it (here and elsewhere) but changing it will not come from how many people are talking about it. Changing it will come from flipping red states to purple and purple states to red.

― stone cold jane austen (Ye Mad Puffin)

...purple states to red?

sorry, isolation brain - purple to blue. is what i meant

gah

xposts

i don't see the electoral college changing in my lifetime. if democrats flip more states and get a congressional majority, even a supermajority in the senate, i don't think it changes much because:

1) at that point they'd have just won a series of elections, and that whole "EC is a total joke" thing would be even less talked about then after elections in which the EC did screw them (2000 and 2016).
2) there would be renewed talk about the "permanent democratic majority", rending EC irrelevant in the minds of many of democratic party true believers
3) as always with democrats, a hypothetical supermajority would be a time of great pre-emptive compromise with the republicans, going out of the way to make sure we don't scare any of them off or offend them, and certainly reforming the EC would not be supported at all by republicans. it would be smeared as a ruthless coldblooded political massacre, definitely by all republicans, but also by enough democrats to scare any notion of it happening.

honestly i don't think it'll change until after a second civil war. trenchant but that's actually what i think!

let me lighten the mood, sorry

If the presidential election were held today, polls in crucial swing states like Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania suggest that Joseph R. Biden Jr. would be in position for a narrow victory.

The disquieting news for Democrats is that at the same point in 2016, Hillary Clinton was in a better position.

Some Americans have lost faith in President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, but the country’s deeply entrenched partisan divide has prevented the president from losing more than a few percentage points on his overall approval rating.

Besides, the Electoral College has a meaningful Republican tilt, and those who turn out to vote tend to be slightly more conservative than the general population. Add to that Republicans’ efforts to limit access to voting among predominantly Democratic populations, and Mr. Trump might well become the first president in history to win two full terms without once winning a plurality of the popular vote.

State polls proved problematic during the 2016 presidential race — that much is well known. But with no guarantee that a repeat won’t occur this year, it bears noting that Mrs. Clinton was considerably further ahead of Mr. Trump in many swing state polls in spring 2016 than Mr. Biden is now.

Real Clear Politics polling averages show Mr. Biden leading Mr. Trump in most polls of Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But on average, the former vice president’s lead in each of those states’ aggregates is only about half what Mrs. Clinton’s was at this point in 2016, six months before she was defeated.

oh fuck, sorry!

OOF!

Hispanic voters play an important role in Florida, and in this demographic Mr. Biden looks anemic. He lost the Hispanic vote to Senator Bernie Sanders in many primaries and caucuses this year, and the new Quinnipiac poll of Florida shows him leading Mr. Trump by just eight percentage points among Hispanic voters, 46 percent to 38 percent. In 2016, both pre-election surveys and exit polls showed Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Trump by three times as many percentage points among Hispanic voters in Florida.

where's Comey?

the new Quinnipiac poll of Florida shows him leading Mr. Trump by just eight percentage points among Hispanic voters, 46 percent to 38 percent

guess those cages weren't that disqualifying to hispanic voters

as always, james comey is in the big and tall menswear online store, posting complimentary non-sequitur comments about james comey under a pseudonym

xp to mordy

yeah, i'm kind of stunned by that. don't know what to say.

"Hispanics" is inaccurate as taxonomy. Peruvians, Ecuadorians, Cubans over 65, Venezuelans over 30, everyone under 30 who mostly voted for Sanders -- we're complex.

"Complex Hispanics" sounds like a new vertical waiting to happen

new nutritional supplement