"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

Biden's ahead of Clinon nationally and, more importantly, in battleground states by more consistent numbers.

Clinton was up like 7 in mid october and 3.5 by election day. I mean, you're right that 10 is more than 7, good job

And also, hundreds of thousands of votes have already been cast, way more than any previous election.

You can't October-surprise someone out of a vote he or she has already cast.

I think it's good for us to treat this as though another 2016 **could** happen, but there are some major differences right now

1) # of undecideds are much lower - a 53-42 lead is much more comfortable than a 47-36 lead. 538 was very loud about 2016 being hard to predict because both candidates had sky-high unfavorables.

2) undecideds tend to break towards the party not in power. a vast majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track right now.

3) mail in voting is way, way up. people have been voting for weeks now. every day that passes without a major polling shift is gonna make it that much harder for Trump to regain ground.

4) we are in the middle of a pandemic and there is really nothing that Biden could do that would overshadow 210,000 dead Americans and a fucking OUTBREAK IN THE WHITE HOUSE. I do not see the media giving any serious attention to anything involving Hunter or Burisma.

this probably sounds morbid or pessimistic but unless someone else dies I think the perception is that the outbreak in the white house is over

doesn't matter

if he collapses on his Never Ending Tour it will turn not a single one of his deplorables but may keep turning seniors against him. That's what matters.

I know I'm coasting on a Biden-Harris caravan today -- my first for any candidate, well, ever -- and having my mail-in ballot get officially counted the other day, none of which means Dropping My Guard or anything. I phone bank on Wednesday.

Biden is really liked in a way that Clinton was not. It's not fair and she didn't deserve that at all, she should have won and our country would have been so much better off for it

He is likable though, and I think he will win

I phone bank on Wednesday.

As an Oregonian (whose state is a lock for both Biden/Harris and a strong Democratic ticket in all state races) I thank you, even though I know it is essentially out of self-defense, not altruism. We all need Florida to deliver its rebuke along with the rest of the nation.

Everyone who thinks Biden is likable should be forced to watch a simulation of their children or loved ones' children getting blown up by a drone.

The president under whom he served signed those orders, but, yes, I don't understand likability arguments for any president. Then again, I'm not the senior or suburbanite whom the campaign wants to attract.

Biden is really liked in a way that Clinton was not.

Biden’s approval/poz vibes are still below 50% per the Cook Political Report. Which is to say he’s not really liked, he’s just not hated like Clinton (or Trump). There’s a pretty big difference.

(And it means that he’s going to have to be the chosen one in the first 4 months of 2021 or people will turn on him.)

from Gallup two days ago: "Among eight character dimensions, Americans' perceptions of President Donald Trump and Joe Biden differ most on likability: 66% of U.S. adults believe Biden is likable, while 36% say Trump is. Americans are also more likely to perceive Biden than Trump as being honest and trustworthy and as caring about the needs of people like them. Trump surpasses Biden only when it comes to being a strong and decisive leader."

https://news.gallup.com/poll/321695/americans-view-biden-likable-honest-trump-strong.aspx

Cook’s reference to a WSJ poll this week -

Looking at it from a third angle, the poll also asked respondents how positive their feelings were toward Trump. Thirty-nine percent reported positive feelings, 5 percent were neutral, and 55 percent felt negative feelings. By comparison, Joe Biden was 43 percent positive, 16 percent neutral, and 41 percent negative. Regarding the debate—if that is what it was—49 percent said Biden did a better job; 24 percent thought Trump did.

Everyone who thinks Biden is likable should be forced to watch Anita Hill's testimony in full and read every Thomas commentary issued on SC judgements since then

(and watch hours of footage of him rubbing against and sniffing women in public)

Trump surpasses Biden only when it comes to being a strong and decisive leader.

Sure thing. If "decisive" doesn't require making good decisions and "strong" only means truculent.

I’m so glad some of y’all are here so I don’t have to tattoo DRONE STRIKES or ANITA HILL or CRIME BILL on my body

personally I like Courier New, makes me think of that Lucksmiths song

In other dumb news: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-got-a-21-million-tax-break-for-saving-the-forest-outside-his-ny-mansion-now-the-deal-is-under-investigation/2020/10/07/de84c1ba-ff6b-11ea-830c-a160b331ca62_story.html

In other $21 million news this weekend:

At one point during his self-funded 2016 campaign, having been spurned by Deutsche bank, Trump received a $21 million payment from Trump Las Vegas Sales and Marketing. This business, co-owned by Trump and one silent partner, “had little previous income, no clear business purpose and no employees.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/09/us/donald-trump-taxes-las-vegas.html

Also in the NYT's ongoing deep reportage into the president's leaked tax details, a no-surprises but lots-of-specific-figures account of his influence peddling:

The Swamp That Trump Built

What do I know, I'm still stumped by that 42% of ride or die Trumpers that will vote that way all the way into the fucking grave.

And in New York Magazine this week, Armando Ianucci, creator of two of the 21st century's core texts on how more of the minute-to-minute operations of political office are occupied with crafting false public narratives about their real actions than with the efficacy of said actions, on current events.

The collision of a deadly pandemic with a reality-show host on steroids has shattered all that’s left of our definition of reality.

In reality, Donald Trump is still probably contagious and currently breathing on Republicans to death — but the vision of him defeating the virus has already been cut and pasted into a narrative rendered official. Even the White House website has footage of Trump declaring it a miracle, so who are we to question the veracity of these events?

It’s as if, during those crucial three days when the president was hidden away from us in the hospital, he was wrestling with not only the virus but reality itself. His wager was that if he acted like he’d been cured, he would be. Or that, if still contagious, his contagion would only spread in a world he no longer inhabits, a pussy world where idiots and lowlife losers scramble for cover and double over in pain. He, however, would have transformed into a god-thing that no longer need worry about germs and protocol and infection and where the sheer power of the will razed old reality to the ground.

...Trump claims to see all time at once. He justified his loop outside the hospital by saying that if he hadn’t done it, the media “would have said ‘Rude!’ ” So an absurd event was organized in response to a reaction set in the future and for which there was no way of proving whether it would have happened or not.

Thats a pearler.

Good one. I like the bizarre fit of a Doctor Manhattan analogy that doesn't really work but still is kinda funny.

Some xposts, but re likability and the posts from Dan S, sure. Biden is more likable than Trump. Also most people in the US have the intelligence and media literacy of a sodden bag of pop rocks.

https://www.ocregister.com/2020/10/11/unofficial-ballot-drop-boxes-popping-up-throughout-the-state-worry-elections-officials/

What do I know, I'm still stumped by that 42% of ride or die Trumpers that will vote that way all the way into the fucking grave.

Why does Trump still have a similar "approval rating" as he did when his presidency began? Because people taken in by cults or cons can only admit they'd been thus "taken" at great harm to their self-regard. It's unlikely they'd want to admit that... 1/

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) October 11, 2020

It is kind of weird to me that people think Trump voters have been "taken." They are pretty much getting exactly what they paid for.

I dunno, there is an overlap, at least in my circle, between Trumpers and people who have fallen for MLM scams and in one case, actually fell for a version of the Nigerian scam.

I think there are actually people who think he's a successful businessman, or not a racist, or just a joker, or otherwise is not what he pretty obviously is (stupid, obnoxious, lazy, reckless, and so on). People so unplugged from reality (per Ianucci) that's they've constructed their own. And once you've been pushed that far, it's got to be hard to be brought back, let alone have any sort of dramatic naked lunch moment of clarity. It's hard to convince someone they've been conned because the point of the con is to convince someone they *haven't* been conned.

https://www.ocregister.com/2020/10/11/unofficial-ballot-drop-boxes-popping-up-throughout-the-state-worry-elections-officials/

― Walter Draggedman (stevie), Monday, October 12, 2020 7:22 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Some useful context about this:

So...people are talking about the GOP ballot boxes in California as a GOP vote fraud thing. But it's not. It's a *bonkers conspiracy nut* thing.

This is a story of Republicans suppressing their own vote by refusing to trust officially sanctioned ballot boxes. Short thread: /1 pic.twitter.com/qWrYyO3cQw

— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) October 12, 2020

It is kind of weird to me that people think Trump voters have been "taken." They are pretty much getting exactly what they paid for.

MAGA hat: $20
MAGA flag: $75
Owning the libs: priceless

how much is it to rent libs

I lease with an option to buy

Most libs will let you live rent-free in their heads iirc.

They tend to squat.

It is kind of weird to me that people think Trump voters have been "taken." They are pretty much getting exactly what they paid for.

thing is, sometimes when you get conned, you do get exactly what you paid for - it just doesn't work out like you were promised.

Biden's up 10.6 and sitting at 52.3% in the RealClearPolitics average. I believe that's the highest vote share that a candidate has ever held in the RCP average in the year of an electionhttps://t.co/NvMmhsdpFA

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) October 12, 2020

They are pretty much getting exactly what they paid for.

^^^this. They have Supreme Court justices threatening Roe v. Wade and gay marriage, and gov't hasn't taken away their assault rifle collections. All is happy and well in MAGA town.

These Oscar the Grouch motherfuckers wouldn't know 'happy and well' if it bit them on the ass. They'd stil be angry and aggrieved if they got their way 100% of the time.

OTM, all of them are members of the Future Victims Society of America, first and foremost

there is an overlap, at least in my circle, between Trumpers and people who have fallen for MLM scams and in one case, actually fell for a version of the Nigerian scam.

The modern conservative movement has 100 percent gone hand in hand with scam operators of all kinds from pretty much its inception. Direct-mail titan Richard Viguerie is the most obvious example, but also all the evangelical MLM stuff with Pat Robertson, etc. It makes sense that an actual con man as president was the eventual result.

They have Supreme Court justices threatening Roe v. Wade and gay marriage, and gov't hasn't taken away their assault rifle collections. All is happy and well in MAGA town.

i think that oversimplifies things.

yes, they were supposed to get a ban on abortion and get to keep their guns. but along with that was an implicit promise that the left and democrats would be blown away by the strength and charisma and endless winning of trump, etc, that we'd have to admit that all it really took was an iconoclast who with the ability to pull off deals you wouldn't believe, etc

All is happy and well in MAGA town? i beg to differ. i think they're feeling more alienated and "oppressed" than ever before, right now. i think they're 30 days away from ripping each other apart

xposts, old lunch and el tomboto made the same point

my mom was the biggest trump fan out there, and even she felt betrayed by him earlier this year. it was for a really dumb reason (there were a couple days in march where trump took covid seriously, and that confused my mom, who still thinks covid is a hoax), but there was really ANGUISH and confusion in her voice, then. anguish over trump betraying her. she ran back into his arms a few days later, when trump resumed his disinformation campaign on covid.

but that's the con and the conned, right there - it is extremely difficult for people to admit that they were completely wrong, that they believed a con man. when they do try to break away from it, it's really hard and disorienting for them. if they can't believe this version of the truth that everyone else around them also believes, then who can they believe? certainly not the angry liberals (their own children) who showed no understanding for their white evangelical suffering and oppression. it's easier just to stay in the cult, for real.

On the one hand, I can understand in the abstract the appeal of someone who just constantly tells you what you want to hear, but on the other hand, latching onto that shit like a pacifier ultimately just makes you an adult baby.

These Oscar the Grouch motherfuckers wouldn't know 'happy and well' if it bit them on the ass. They'd stil be angry and aggrieved if they got their way 100% of the time.

Right. It's not enough for them to get what they want - they also want you (us) NOT to get what we want.

Though, if I were to be completely honest, I confess I kinda feel the same way about them.

Put roughly, that style of politics has caused untold suffering. And yeah, there is a dark part of my heary that wants its proponents to suffer. Not proud of it, but it is there.

xp to old lunch

i think my last words to my mom were something along those lines.

sorry to always make things about my parents and white evangelicals. i know that's not the whole world or the whole explanation. but yeah, i think for a lot of people, they grew up literally worshipping an imaginary, all-powerful being that promises nothing less than eternal happiness for the good and eternal suffering for the bad. it's not much of a leap to go to anything else, from there

Something I've always noticed and pointed out is that almost on principle Americans are maddeningly contrarian. It's almost like a chaotic correction failsafe, and partly explains how pretty consistently in the modern era we go from, say, reelecting Nixon/Reagan/Bush in large numbers and for no good reason but then immediately go the other direction. One of my favorite stories, one that has stuck with me since I think 5th grade (so, a long while ago) was from a teacher who told us of her next door neighbor, a retired teetotal nun, who apparently, the day after Prohibition was passed, got totally smashed and went out on the street shouting something like "*nobody* tells me what to do!" That's America, in all its crazy contradictions.

Which is to say, I can totally see some of the same people that supported Trump and his judges out on the street protesting the repeal of the ACA/Roe, etc. That's part of the con right there. "Yeah, I wanted the ACA overturned, because Obama and unconstitutional and socialism and the lying media, but I had no idea it would hurt me and my family and friends and everyone I know! Boo!"