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

he also regularly insults anyone he doesn't like. I think a lot of perception of toughness is the fact that his message has no hope in it whatsoever, he's not like Obama or even Romney where he can articulate some sort of "together we can realize the dream of America", literally all he has is "everybody else was a total disaster, but not me, I am very smart"

And he hasn't carried anything heavier than a five iron in forty years.

the five iron is his penis

The dark underside of presumed toughness is that no one who cares about his opinion wants to be on the tough guy's shitlist. These are folks who are most comfortable when they're cowering before their drunken father.

trump's schtick has always been wrestling heel, full stop.

Trump loves taco bowls.

Biden has never (to the best of my knowledge) been photographed with a taco bowl.

Newsflash: lots of dummies conflate verbal abuse and assholishness with "toughness". Not sure why this is so hard to grasp.

Exhibit A: just about every Executive or Sales individual at my company I've ever met

these folk , like Trump, also wilt when you hit them back

Xp Coffee is for closers

I treat an Executive like 7-Up, I never have, never will

Newsflash: lots of dummies conflate verbal abuse and assholishness with "toughness". Not sure why this is so hard to grasp.

ding ding, finally someone hits it.

Saw this A TON working on construction projects. A project manager or superintendent would come in to meetings and verbally abuse everyone for an hour, without offering a single suggestion or solution and storm off. The owner and client would gush for weeks about how "tough" he is and can GET THINGS DONE. Even though it was his minions, who sat silent throughout the tirade, that came up with the actual solutions and pushed the project forward.

fair re abusive assholes. but there's Alec Baldwin's character in Glengarry Glen Ross (lol xposts),,, and then there's a guy like Trump.

yeah when I got in "truly dngaf mode" at my job in 2017 when I was being abused as were other employees I just got mouthy and these folks just have no gameplan for that because they're not used to people saying "no" or giving them sass back. everybody just assumes you kneel before Zod.

FiveThirtyEight has a new feature where you can test out various electoral college scenarios by shifting one or more battleground states into Biden's or Trump's win column. I simply picked Biden to definitely win in AZ and made no other changes to 538's current win probabilities elsewhere and *bingo*, Trump's odds of winning the electoral college instantly dropped to 3 out of every 100 simulations.

That was fun!

real life Al Swearengens vs wheezing manbaby, etc

yeah it's a cool feature, but definitely dont' try the opposite, like flipping FL to Trump

somehow i ended up in the 3 out of 100 simulation last time tho...

Regarding Texas Latinos, this article was a p decent read:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/dont-call-texas-latino-voters-sleeping-giant/

I was curious, so I drove by my local polling place today. When I dropped off my ballot a week ago there was a huge line, hundreds of people long, for in-person voting (and even a small one for me). That was right after the polls first opened on the first day, around 10am or so. It was around 2:30 when I just swung by now, and while the line isn't nearly as long, there is still a line out the door and down to the street, which is pretty impressive. That's after a full week of available early in-person voting.

Re some comments above about why non-college educated young men don't go Democrat by a large margin.... it's the usual answer, but I don't think it would be wrong to cite the absolute decimation of unions and union jobs in the United States. Of course unions aren't wholly Dem or leftist orgs, that's obvious, but it has something to do with it, I think.

I wonder if there are some people who just like voting for whoever is currently in charge without thinking about it too much

I think the lazy stereotyping is the idea that Latino voters "should" be Democrats.

I can go on and on about this.

Growing up as a Cuban in this town -- always a liberal in a conservative milieu -- I don't understand the assumption that Latino men must be liberal when up-from-the-bootstraps still exerts such a powerful hold on the ambitions of these men.

this article really delves into why people don't always vote, thought it was interesting: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/non-voters-poll-2020-election/

Perhaps because I didn't experience a large Latino presence in my surroundings until I was 22 or so, I made what I would say is a safe assumption that Latinos wouldn't support obvious racist assholes who want to kill them, but obviously I was wrong.

Not trying to be snarky, just explaining, btw.

I obviously understand what you're saying, Alfred. I just don't really 'get it,' iykwim. Why would people vote for someone who actively hates them?

when up-from-the-bootstraps still exerts such a powerful hold on the ambitions of these men.

It's been a very long time since I last noted here that originally "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps" was coined as a comically ridiculous idea because it described a physical impossibility. It still does, but somehow for millions of conservatives it has become the perfect description of achieving success in America. Ironic, eh?

Isn't the question at hand why Trump has GAINED Latino support since 2016, rather than why would any Latino vote for a conservative?

also it seems to me that trump is such a unique figure in politics that it may be risky to assume support for trump = general support for conservatives

Why would people vote for someone who actively hates them?

That's not these Cuban men (and many women) look at the situation. They don't see the hate -- they see people on the same side, united by hating the shiftless and the weak.

Isn't the question at hand why Trump has GAINED Latino support since 2016, rather than why would any Latino vote for a conservative?

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger),

"Latino" is too broad a brush. You have to look at discrete needs: Venezuelans aren't Puerto Ricans who aren't Nicaraguans.

I wrote a little about it, and there's this solid NYT story.

Right but that's the stat that was brought up wasn't it? If ppl can speak of "suburban women" as a monolith voting block then why not Latinos? I'm all for arguing that neither of those groups shouldn be viewed as a monolithic block.
Or are you just saying there are a multitude of reasons why his support grew, at least one for each subgroup of Latinos? That's a helpful answer, but doesn't negate the question being asked.

If you want to transition out of a hated group, you gotta start walkin' the haters' walk.

"soccer mom" is one of the most objectionable of recent bits of political jargon

better than "security moms"

honestly, "demographic analysis" just leads to extreme generalizations that cause everyone to hate everyone

and distorts everything too. like, urban/rural has always been a better indicator of voting trends than "red states" and "blue states," or "the coasts" and "the heartland"

keith urban vs. keith rural

There are two semi-monolithic blocs of American voters - white evangelicals and African-Americans.

We still talk about other groups and demographics - and how to appeal to them and win their votes. That you can't 'win the Latino vote' purely through playing identity cards doesn't mean there's not a Latino vote to talk about. In most of the country, Latino voters do have a lot in common on socioeconomic grounds.

Nate Silver or someone at 538 had a small piece about how there is no actual real-world support for 'economically conservative, socially liberal,' but there is for the opposite. If you fall into that group (as a working-class young man might - or a Catholic), if the Democrats aren't offering you improved economic circumstances and you aren't completely sold on their socially liberal politics, why would you be expected to default into their camp?

"suburban women"/"soccer mom" are just euphemisms for white women, no?

a small piece about how there is no actual real-world support for 'economically conservative, socially liberal,'

stop making Bill Weld cry

"suburban women"/"soccer mom" are just euphemisms for white women, no?

no -- it means white women with college degrees which is decidedly not the same thing

and soccer-playing kids

they care a lot about the cost of imported fruit because they need to bring orange slices to practice once per season

single issue voters on this

There are two semi-monolithic blocs of American voters - white evangelicals and African-Americans.

If we're going to separate out the white evangelicals from other evangelicals, I think we can separate out the non-Orthodox Jews from other Jews, and I gotta believe we are close to as politically monolithic as the other two groups -- not just in partisan preference, I feel like I could walk into a conservative or reform shul anywhere coast to coast and pretty much get the same narrow band of political takes.

non-orthodox jews include both republicans and democrats, come on

can i just say that i keep waiting for Morbs to show up here and start talking shit and it's making me a bit sad that it's not happening

I didn't realize it until you said it but yeah