politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
I'm still finding it extremely unlikely he's electable. Not saying we shouldn't take it seriously, though.
Over the years many conservative anti-vaxxers have died from covid, boomers are dying off, and anyone who wasn't already a trumper isn't exactly lining up.
Most economic indicators are trending very well; meanwhile the abortion topic continues to backfire tremendously.
2022 proved polls don't sufficiently capture millennial and zoomers.
I'm GenX, and I wouldn't answer a poll if you paid me. I will vote, and I will never vote for a Republican for the rest of my life. If there's no Dem candidate on the ballot for a specific office, I leave it blank so they can see how many votes they're not getting when they don't run a candidate.
My plan for the next year is to answer every opinion poll.
I’m going to tell every pollster who will listen I’m not voting because I won’t vote for republicans, and Democrats haven’t done anything to deserve my vote - because they had 60 years to make abortion access federal law, they have had numerous opportunities to unwind Medicare Part D, and in 2021 they should have made the ACA better, overturned Citizens United, fixed the Voter Rights Act, and worked to improve turnout by mandating federal voting holidays (amongst other things), but they didn’t, and instead their whole modern platform is that they will slow walk the U.S. into corporate and theocratic ownership slower than the Republicans.
And then I’m going to vote anyway, because I’m not a child. But I won’t be telling pollsters that. The Democratic Party needs to fear what their milquetoast policies have wrought.
That's not how polling works
It's not, but evidently polling isn't capturing these groups effectively. Again, as 2020 and 2022 proved.
I don't answer polls as a GenX, but I sure as hell vote in every election. I will never vote for a Republican. Polls won't capture voters like me, and voters like me are not just millennials and zoomers.
Polling isn't as simple as adding up responses and reporting the percentages.
They use complex methodologies to account for inaccuracies exactly like your good self.
That's not to say that polls are necessarily accurate - clearly they aren't, but to say "polls won't capture voters like me" is incorrect.
I disagree with this assessment affecting voting in any way. Mortality rates are very low outside of very vulnerable and elderly population that totals much less than 2%. Even if you're left only half way there mentally after a severe infection your vote is still a vote, and the majority republican areas are not affected by this in any way.
Even if 20% of republicans died from a disease in most of the red states voting wouldn't change much. Between gerrymandering, propaganda news and winner takes all electoral college configuration even if republicans lose the popular vote they will still keep basically all of their electoral college votes.
The abortion topic still gets religious votes, and votes for those who want a poverty stricken lower class full of cheap labor workers. They won't bend on cheap POC immigrant labor, they only want more white labor. I don't think voting for abortion will beat out voting for what the church says and what all the peer pressure for voting red says. If pro-abortion won votes in red states we would have seen many more democrat and independent wins than we've seen in the house and senate. Local legislature seems to not be greatly affected by this either.
The fact that polls put him close to a majority means it's a major threat. The problem is that the democrat majority unfortunately is clustered in small areas where even if they win a popular vote in a district of a red state are unlikely to win the overall vote for all districts.
Finally, Biden as a candidate is practically worthless. Trump would lose hard to Obama, but he can never be president again. Why anyone worth electing didn't run for 2020 is beyond me but here we are.
So I think you raise some good points but bear in mind my overarching premise in my comment: Nothing improves conditions that Republicans didn't already have in prior elections. Now, there is if anything diminishing returns across all vectors which tend to benefit the GOP. That being said:
Regarding COVID, I'm not referring too much these days but of the early post-vaccine era where last I tried to best calculate we saw a ratio of about 4 or 5 conservatives dying for every Democrat. Yes, it doesn't particularly impact an amount on a state-by-state basis, but the key point is: Did this help Republicans? Absolutely not; it has only hindered them. Does this matter in red states? Of course not. But in purple states and certain districts it could mean the difference of turning red or blue. We of course saw outcomes decided by literally a handful of votes. Considering this elderly Republican population most at risk is also a group that is most likely to turn out to vote for Republicans, then that hinders their most loyal base.
Yeah, right-wing rhetoric is heavily pushing an alternate reality that the economy is going to shit and everything is bad. Yeah it may stick to some people, but the reality is these words are largely hollow. Whether the economy is good or bad, it's true that there will be people who just find a reason to blame Biden because he's a Democrat. You can't stop that but you don't have to; for they were always going to vote Trump anyway. The key point is that these arguments -- permitted people like us raise our voice at dinner-tables and social media -- can be quickly dismissed because the data that Republicans normally tout negatively are pretty positive.
Look at what overturning Roe said. Even in an interview with a GOP Strategist I saw on PBS -- they said the Republicans had no idea that overturning Roe be this unpopular even amongst part of their own base. FWIW my mother-in-law is a lifelong Republican who even voted for Trump and because of this reversal of Roe and how protective she is of her kids, she is now vehemently anti-Republican. Basically, it took away the choice of her daughters and now she's pissed. Meanwhile it has been a major rallying cry for Democrats -- and 2022 again proved that. Religious voters will likely continue voting Republican, but that's largely a constant. If anything, they will feel less compelled to vote as they may feel their duty is done and they may get careless.
Don't get me wrong: I think polls should be some marker for concern and we should always assume the worst and hope for the best. However, and I say this again because literally nobody has remotely countered this point: The polls were deeply wrong for 2020 and especially 2022. One key facet of this was younger generations not sufficiently represented in polling.
I also agree that Biden isn't that great of a candidate. He's just -- dare I say -- the "lesser of two evils." Both candidates are old and largely useless; the only difference is that Biden isn't corrupt and his cabinet is full of competent experts. I'll vote for him, but you're right that he does not remotely inspire. If Republicans nominated anyone younger, Democrats would guaranteed be fucked.
The problem is that's only half the battle. What do you do when his legions of supporters decide they don't like losing and take it out on the rest of the country?
Let them string themselves out. They will lose. It will backfire as did January 6th.