"The August 2020 US Politics Thread is highly thought of, but nobody likes me. It can only be my personality. That's all."

So Rashida Tlaib won her primary 66-34. Can someone explain why so many political journalists spent the last 2-3 months writing "Tlaib In Danger!" stories? It feels like it was because *they* didn't like her, so they refused to believe that the people in her district did.

they need to hammer trump on incompetence, all the empty cabinet positions, gutting the adminstration's ability to respond to a pandemic, then when a pandemic came, not caring about responding effectively, preferring to shift blame

probably a lot of that along with a few ppl who liked / were rooting for her making sure that people didn't get complacent about her chances? xp

I mean, the media is mostly propaganda aimed at upholding a centrist status quo, so that might be part of it. xpost

"the media" is a circle of like 75 people treading water in the middle of a rapidly closing circle of sharks

Fact checking more like fart-checking amirart

Treezy otm

Yeah I mean, the greatest-hits reel of Trump's almost uncountable idiocies and fuck-ups just needs to be on a constant inescapable loop in all the social media feeds.

treeship! that's good!

Nice image, treesh

glad to see the senate is focused on pressing issues today like asking Sally Yates these important questions

Kennedy isn't even pretending to give Sally Yates a chance to answer his questions. He's just blatantly going for the 20-second Hannity soundbite. pic.twitter.com/vVNXh8bBnW

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2020

it's hard to compare anyone to Hillary given the sheer amount of negative conditioning conservatives have been subjected to

honestly I have no clue how much conservatives "actually believe" anything, so much of it feels performative at this point

they believe that they should have whatever they want all the time with the least resistance possible

Trust me, you want to read the survey email.

bill thinks trump donors are even stupider than brad did and that is really saying something https://t.co/gJ40SWvQSB

— kilgore trout, new tone haver (@KT_So_It_Goes) August 5, 2020

"Kennedy isn't even pretending to give Sally Yates a chance to answer his questions. He's just blatantly going for the 20-second Hannity soundbite."

ime this is the expected behavior in these sorts of hearings

so they're adjusting their copy to reflect the spirit of conspiracy in the QAnon zeitgeist. very cool. xp

in previous election cycles, i remember noticing a significant ramp-up in the pace and volume of news and political gossip, to almost unbearable levels by late september-october. we're not there yet, but it's interesting how (to me) the election is just another enormous gravitational pull, but hardly much more than all the other shit going on. oh, it's probably going to be litigated from election night until inauguration day? cool, add it to the list

i don't think it will be litigated if biden blows him out of the water, only if it's close. i don't think it will be a blowout either, unfortunately. if you read the right-wing press, you'll see that fear and hatred of democrats is higher than its ever been. biden won't be able to present himself as a "normal" alternative to many of these voters.

so yeah, i guess we'll have another supreme court case and a lot of bullshit about "voter fraud"

Those voters are't voting for Ronald Reagan himself, and those voters aren't Lincoln Project types.

maybe, i don't know. it will be interesting to see if biden can make inroads in areas where trump won (which he needs to do). the recent civil unrest is unnerving to a lot of people, and this has been played up A LOT by outlets like fox news, who are saying that the democratic party has been captured by a radical activist wing

whether people are actually buying that line outside of diehard trump supporters, who knows.

Biden already is, but for the most part these are people who reluctantly voted for Trump in 2016 and expressed voter booth remorse in 2018.

none of the MAGAs in my neighborhood -- the ones whose Trump flags unfurled in the last three weeks -- are persuadable. In conversations they'll admit they prefer Biden to Clinton but think he's a senile vessel for AOC, Ghost of Fidel, Pol Pot, and Stalin.

the Mount Rushmore liberals want to see

idk if the civil unrest is really a point in Trump's favor, particularly when it's so clear that much of this is a direct response to Trump himself

pol pot would also be a ghost though

oh stalin too iirc

I think Alfred is saying they’d all be one ghost. Like “sandwich of bacon, lettuce and tomato”

shit forgot my oxford comma

I think that a very large percentage of voters in national elections have always been clueless political simpletons who just vote based on vague ideas of which politicians are "on their side". It is much more noticeable now because in the past the parties limited voters' presidential choices to reasonably competent and experienced candidates. The Republican Party derailed itself by elevating Palin to the ticket in 2008 and barely escaped nominating some complete bozo in 2012. In 2016 they finally imploded. Here we are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf9DYeePLJY

that's why the right wing press is doubling down on the idea that democrats hate republican voters and all they stand for.

they're leaning hard into the culture war.

they're leaning hard into the culture war.

And polls indicate that it's not working. Like, really not working. At all.

hope so!

none of the MAGAs in my neighborhood -- the ones whose Trump flags unfurled in the last three weeks -- are persuadable.

fixed

Don't correct a corrector.

Maybe you just need to offer them an alternate method of committing slow and spiteful suicide.

so many to choose from

why not fast and spiteful

i don't think it will be a blowout either, unfortunately. if you read the right-wing press, you'll see that fear and hatred of democrats is higher than its ever been. biden won't be able to present himself as a "normal" alternative to many of these voters.

I think a blowout if it comes will come from a massive increase in Democratic turnout. Republican fear and hatred of Democrats has been redlined since Obama got elected, increasing it at this point doesn't increase Republican turnout, it actually causes some percentage of them to die of strokes. Biden is the most normal presidential candidate I think is possible. He was VP for eight years, he's an old cishet white guy... it is his privilege to vanish in a way no other candidate could, presenting a minimal target for Republican caricature while being a blank canvas for a wide spectrum of independents and Democrats to happily color in.

Dems are used to being field mice that anytime they hear the phrase Excite Trump's Base they assume the president can command 987 million voters to overwhelm polling stations. I expect his base to remain excited through November and even after his loss.

There are no McGovern/Mondale blowouts anymore. 330-350 EVs is a ‘blowout’ for the foreseeable future.

yeah, a blowout in this sense being all the tossups going to one party

Yep. Obama's 2008 electoral vote total is the closest we'll see in our lifetimes. The parties have settled: we have no liberal Republicans or conservative Dems

I want Biden to win all 50 states. I know he won't come close. But god it all needs repudiating with extreme prejudice. The racism, the rape apologies, the petty small-minded greed.

that's why the right wing press is doubling down on the idea that democrats hate republican voters and all they stand for.

― treeship., Wednesday, 5 August 2020 19:02 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

In my case - they're right!

no ... conservative Dems

citation needed

citation my ass!

In my case - they're right!

The vast majority of voters on either side in a two-party hegemony are either general-purpose dipshits or people who "don't really think about politics." Tribalism provides an easy excuse to allow themselves to continue to not think about it: there's someone to be opposed to, therefore you are in the right.

A huge amount of Republican voters could easily be swayed by a candidate or party that actually represents their interests, as opposed to poorly but loudly pretending to. The systems of communication are set up to disadvantage anyone attempting to actually reach them.

All of this sucks, but it can be enough to hate everything they vote for, and to feel frustration and pity for them without hating tens of millions of strangers as a lumpenmass.