rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

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

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/04/democrats-hispanic-voters-2020-222751

Gillum/Nelson won the hispanic vote in FL by 8 points in 2018 (54-46), so that's not great...

The electoral college will be rendered obsolete by peaceful democratic processes during my lifetime. Easy. If you don’t think so, but would like to believe otherwise, support NPVIC with some of your time, money, or both.

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/25/trump-biden-texas-coronavirus-poll/

Biden winning Hispanic voters 50-40.

Only somewhere between 10 and 25 points off Hillary's pace.

"Joseph R. Biden Jr."

He’s gonna win

I know you hope so.

I actually don’t hope so thanks

i started getting used to the idea of trump winning the week of super tuesday. i definitely don't hope it's going to happen.

god this place. the second shakey mo leaves, 1000x more irritating and unbelievably arrogant pricks like unperson and iatee fill in. a law of ilx.

iatee has been around for a long time, maybe as long as shakey was?

god this place. the second shakey mo leaves, 1000x more irritating and unbelievably arrogant pricks like unperson and iatee fill in. a law of ilx.

― i am a horse girl (map), Monday, April 27, 2020 10:09 PM (fourteen minutes ago)

as opposed to the fruitless despair of "he's gonna win"?

map, I love you, but c'mon

ahahaha and out of nowhere comes dandydonweiner, proving this law of ilx ;)!

i think "he's gonna win" can actually be fruitful in the sense that it can direct people to not spend so much time freaking out about national politics and more time helping out in their own backyards.

I've mellowed over the years, map. Or tried to.

I like that part about helping out in my own backyard but a lot of people would rather try to cut the head off of the snake.

one can be concerned about both

Many of us do

It's not either/or

as opposed to the fruitless despair of "he's gonna win"?

map, I love you, but c'mon

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

ok, let me be serious here. cw: self-harm.

in 2016, the prospect of a trump presidency terrified me so much that i literally couldn't imagine surviving were he to be elected president

at this point in 2016, i was still telling myself "if donald trump wins election, i am going to kill myself, because i can't live in a world where he is the one running things"

now, obviously, i haven't killed myself, and i'm glad i haven't. and one of the reasons i didn't was because i did a lot of work between april and november to try to imagine _how_ i would survive if donald trump won, even though everybody i knew was assuring me it would never, ever happen

i drank myself to sleep on election day, ignored all the polling and the moment by moment updates because i couldn't handle it, and when i woke up the morning after and heard the news i started shaking uncontrollably, and it wasn't the alcohol

and then my wife and i moved out here and i am doing ok despite the fact that as far as i can tell we are all literally in hell right now

"trump is going to win" isn't a statement anybody can with any confidence make, but i would heartily recommend anybody who wants to outlive this fucker do is _consider the possibility_ that trump will, in fact, win, consider the possibility that whatever happens in november is _out of your control_, and focus on what you can do to keep yourself alive. don't put your faith in elections, people.

I honestly struggle with how anyone can insist with any degree of certainty that this election will be free and fair.

for the record i do have a friend who killed himself in 2016, and i miss him. this shit is not theoretical to me.

I'll never forget the morning after at work, you could identify right away who hadn't slept and who had this guilty look on their face

I took Wednesday off

ha, good idea. maybe i should too. a personal day, if you will.

100% going to anesthetize myself early and deeply and not watch any of it.

tbh being drunk that night and hungover the next morning made it a lot worse

I know it's early but being underwater with Rasmussen seems pretty bad, especially since idk how his numbers get better from here

Trump Job Approval:
Approve 44%
Disapprove 54%@Rasmussen_Poll, LV, 4/23-27https://t.co/BbPYo95zzJ

— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) April 28, 2020

At my old job, there was a guy in his mid-40s that I didn't really know all that well, other than he used to be a MMA fighter and was a super friendly guy. I just never really interacted with him beyond the occasional acknowledgments in passing.

Shortly after the 2016 election, I was talking to another coworker who had spent a lot of time with him. Apparently he was just completely oblivious to politics and didn't care at all, never did (obviously privilege of being a straight white male). Turns out he voted for Trump because his parents were big supporters. But he apparently felt terrible when he came in the day after the election and saw how absolutely destroyed everyone seemed to be. He actually ended up personally apologizing to three coworkers for his vote.

I found it really hard to imagine someone of that age living in Chicago in 2016 being that completely oblivious about politics and can't imagine how many other people like him are out there, but I hold on to the story when I need a tiny glimmer of hope and optimism about how the 2020 election might unfold.

he's been doing that poorly in Rasmussen for a while, though it does fluctuate and some days the numbers aren't as bad. he's actually been worse in the Rasmussen poll, when his polling hit its nadir.

especially since idk how his numbers get better from here

We are in the middle of a national crisis that (despite the widely publicized just-the-flu-make-my-stylist-go-back-to-work protestors) is seen as such even by most Republicans. If we are not still in an acute crisis in November, or even if we still are and people have just gotten used to it, there will be a certain amount of "whew, he got us through it, the country survived" no matter how bad he fucked it up. I mean, if millions actually die, it's a different story, but I think the people in all 50 states who are not Donald Trump are actually going to succeed in keeping that from happening, to Trump's benefit and to ours.

People who support him now are willing to ignore the mass death and incompetence happening today. In several months it'll be even easier to ignore.

Again, they only comprise a fraction of the voters polled. Most of the time his numbers dip it's a combination of losing some R support, some D support, and a lot of I support

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sefhon9CgA

So apparently Trump’s invoking the DPA to...force meat processing plants to stay open. I can only assume this is going to lead to hundreds if not thousands of additional deaths. If he wasn’t certifiably the laziest man alive I’d think he was deliberately trying to see how difficult he can make it to get himself re-elected. Then again, maybe the calculus is that keeping the beef train running is worth more than all those dead factory workers. Yeah that’s probably it.

i tell myself that we don't know yet how bad, if at all, the virus can be spread via humans touching meat, then ingesting said meat after it's been cooked

tell us how you really feel, ulysses

I think the danger of covid-19 infection to meat packing workers mainly consists of standing next to and across from numerous other workers at the conveyor belts, in crowded enclosed conditions, with inadequate PPE.