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

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.

agreed

A huge amount of Republican voters could easily be swayed by a candidate or party that actually represents their interests

I don't think this is true. For a lot of people, voting as an assertion of identity will in fact outweigh self-interest.

Yep. The GOP has no interests outside eliminating the tax burden from the rich. It's a collection of racists. The racism is the point.

That is the GOP's goal, I agree, which all the 'serious' Republicans understand. Their tactics, on the other hand, are pure culture war. Hence - as you say - the collection of racists, abortion crusaders, etc.

And yes, it helps that so many aspects of the culture war integrate so neatly with eliminating taxes for the rich. It almost adds up to a vision.

an electoral blowout would still be made up of many relatively close races, many hinging on the results of mail-in ballots. i do want it to be a landslide, but i still fear the extended litigation nightmare

yeah one scenario I can see happening is - in person voting is counted on election night, showing several swing states red, then as mail-in ballots get counted, they slowly flip to blue, causing Trump to tweet "all the fake news showed I was WINNING and now I am LOSING....this is fraudulent, cancel the election?" - iirc he did something similar in a recent election but I can't remember which one

that is if mail-in voting favors Dems - I know it usually doesn't, but it probably will this time

All voting is going to favor Dems because we're going to kick their asses from here to Kankakee

not a ton of EC votes in the mid-Atlantic iirc, maybe shoot for "here to Hawaii"

dammit

I'd go with "Old Maui"

fwiw I think f hazel is right - I respectfully suggest that sic is overestimating the power of political messaging to budge people out of tribal allegiance with talk of "representing their interests."

Like, I try to imagine a group of very intelligent, eloquent, and persuasive Republicans showing up at my doorstep and convincing me that I've been wrong all this time, and that my truest interests lie with supporting their party and its candidates.

They show me charts. They cite respectable peer-reviewed journals. At some point, I say, "wow, you're right, the Laffer Curve is correct! Burdensome taxation and excessive regulation DO stifle entrepreneurship and therefore the betterment of humankind, including the plight of the downtrodden. I just never knew! And wow, you're also right about all these pesky culture-war issues that I used to think were important. Now I realize it's just liberal virtue-signaling, and doesn't actually help any people of color. People of color are best aided by economic growth! I realize now that trying to help them through welfare programs is paternalistic and condescending. Thanks, guys!"

This is not gonna happen. Nor is its opposite.

all you can do is imagine those people exist