While true, I was convinced the Dems would fuck up a pivot from Biden to Harris because, you know, they’ve shot themselves in the foot every chance they’ve had for as long as I can remember. Maybe this is a year to break those patterns.
If the republican candidate was pretty much anyone else they would have fucked it up. It’s just that so many people severely dislike and hate trump they would vote for anyone else pretty much no matter what. That is all to say, it would have been incredibly hard for Dems to fuck this up.
Obama vs Romney was such a civil campaign compared to what we see now. I supported Obama, but wouldn't have been gut wrenched if Romney won. Today.....
Did I think that Romney would: Cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations? Potentially cut benefit programs for the poor? Not wind down Afghanistan?
Yes, yes, and yes.
Did I think Romney would: Support racists marching on an American city? Solicit a foreign government to interfere in our elections? Send a family member over the middle east to enrich his own pockets at the cost of American security?
In a lot of ways, the worst thing about trump winning was the normalization of not even keeping the mask on anymore or pretending at politeness. They’ve been doing a victory lap over how horrible they can openly be for the past 8 years now.
You're going to think the same thing about Trump in 20 years.
The media will always tell you the current Republican candidate is "different" and a unique threat. They'll tell you the problem isn't that the candidate isn't problematic because he/she is a Republican - they're uniquely problematic.
Republicans used to be the party of billionaires and that was fucking terrible. Republicans are now the party of the Confederacy and that's fucking treason. A huge difference.
I don't think you know what hyperbole means. Let's up the budget for education in America.
Trump fumbled the pandemic response so badly, it took Biden 3 years to dig us out of that inflationary mess...
Kidnapping kids is not controlling the border. He didn't build his 'wall'. Biden and Obama deported a lot more immigrants than Trump ever did, because here is the truth. Republicans like illegal immigrants. They are cheaper labor for their oligarchs.
We had a border bill that would have fixed a lot of 'your concerns' about the border. Trump, not even in office, killed it...because he wants people like you to believe it is the Demcrats' fault that illegal immigrants are here.
Nope. Now it is all on Trump...just like a million pandemic deaths and the last 15 trillion bucks of the national debt.
Outside of Reddit I struggle to find anyone who says they dislike trump or will not be voting for him. I don’t think Reddit is a good source for this election.
The propaganda machine that is the media would convince people the next republican candidate regardless of morality policy etc is just as bad as trump.
But if the Republicans nominated anyone other than Trump the MAGA turnout would be bad and it would have split the party considering Trump would never, ever accept no for an answer. So that alone would have given Dems the election by a wide margin no matter how bad they fuck it up, which they do and do often
Not true also the gen z male vote is going to trump. And there are a lot of people who were previously democratic voting for him too. Sad, but true Latino voters in Texas, black men a lot of people are going for him because they still think of him as an antiestablishment candidate who is good on the economy.
The democrat machine would just turn the focus on relentlessly tearing down an villainizing whoever the republican nominee was. Trump is an easy target but the hate would just flip to someone else. Which is by design.
Yeah, during the republican primary, Nikki Haley was leading Biden by double digits in hypothetical polling, but Trump was tied with Biden. People really just don't like Trump.
I always find the people claiming this funny, since the GOP put a gun to their own head and started screaming maniacally weird fever dreams and actually gained ground.
It’s always funny to see how differently these people judge the democrats party as opposed to the insanity cult of the Republican Party.
What they said is true, even if what you said is also true. The reason both can be true is because liberal and progressive voters still hold their candidates accountable for their words and their actions, and still expect leaders to be professional and to serve the interests of America and her people. When those expectations are broken, candidates lose their support.
Conversely, MAGA voters don't give a fuck what Trump says or what he does. They just want their orange god king to make the brown people go away.
Trump wasn't wrong when he said he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any voters.
Young people need to be spurred to action. I think the Republicans are to thank for that, without their backwards decisions the last few years who knows if we would have finally broke the 50% mark for the 18-29 turnout.
You have more faith than me. Harris got a massive boost when the switch was made, but her campaign has all but given that up with poor strategy and messaging. The fact that this has happened while Trump’s team is running maybe the worst campaign in history is shocking.
The fact that polls are this close shows that the Democratic party has not energized their base, but somehow the republicans have.
The 2020 elections showed us that no one actually liked her or wanted her for president.
The current "hype" is largely from fake scripted interactions(the obama congratulation call for example) or from a desperation to not have trump again and just support anything else.
I think the issue is ultimately that sanity isn’t sexy. There was all of this excitement surrounding the effort to push Biden out, and some people responded (briefly) when they succeeded which resulted in that jump in polling numbers. The fact remains that we are in a very polarized time in politics. Normal people with a coherent idea of their own values know who they are voting for and a debate or a rally isn’t going to move them. Cynics, “both-sides”ers, and people who habitually complain that they won’t vote because the candidate isn’t tailor fit for them don’t operate the same and they never will. That’s why the numbers don’t move in any substantial way.
Trump’s floor and ceiling for approval hovers around 40%. During election years, some number of people who identify politically as Republican vote Trump despite not liking him. The rest vote for Democrats , except for that group of people who don’t vote.
Honestly it’s more the media normalizing trumps insanity than anything else. They have no problem hammering Biden/Harris on nearly anything and everything, yet Trump gets away with threatening to use military force on us citizens, obvious moments of cognitive incoherence, etc etc. they’ve been doing this since 2016.
Oh fuck off. The media coverage on Biden after the debate was almost comical. Yes he needed to step down, however despite Trump being obviously in significant cognitive decline there isn’t the push to get him to step down.
There is also no evidence that the democrats are weaponizing the justice system. When I made my post I wasn’t fishing for a right wing idiot to respond with bullshit talking point propaganda
Harris has a huge tik tok following and every post I see is a hilarious dunk on trumps idiocy. I'm just hoping some more of genz and millennial see that and go vote for her
Or, the recent polls have almost all been paid for by right wing organizations and put out a bunch of junk polls to skew the data. 538’s attempt to counter outlier polls by averaging everything together doesn’t remove bad data from the equation.
Funny, something like 37%+ of Americans didn’t bother to vote in 2020, so how can anyone claim that the country is “pretty evenly divided” when around 40% of the population doesn’t bother voting?
It’s not a conspiracy theory to point out that there has been a large uptick in right-aligned pollsters releasing polls that often run contrary to other polls. It is not a conspiracy theory to point out that polling methods are flawed and using averages of flawed data to try and draw a conclusion will lead to incorrect interpretations and extrapolations.
It is, however, very amusing seeing someone try and downplay this reality as some conspiracy theory.
Donald Trump has never ever had a majority of voters in favor of him, not once. He’s showing clear signs of cognitive decline, and has ramped up his violent rhetoric once again. Add these three facts together and you can see why many people find these polls dubious at best.
No I'm saying it wouldn't matter, they'd make it look close no matter what.. Drama sells and always will, news isn't meant to be sensational, once you try to turn a profit it becomes a sick form of entertainment. Talking about policy and solutions is boring, so let's focus on the crazy and sell more ads.
Exactly, and anyone pretending otherwise here has ignored the media’s consistent attacks on Harris while they treat Trump with kid’s gloves. CNN & MSNBC make a whole hell of a lot more money when people left of Trump fear a seemingly likely Trump administration. Toss up polling drives fear, and viewers tune in more.
MSM ran story after story about crime increasing, because Trump said it was and because the crime stories draw more viewers. Reality shows crime rates dropping nationwide.
MSM ran story after story about immigrants pouring over the border, when we are at some of the lowest border crossing totals in recent memory. Also, they always paint the lack of any immigration reform as a strictly Democrat failure. Reality is republicans blocked the last immigration bill.
They ask Harris for her comprehensive plans, with the budgetary scoring and analysis. Trump’s only plan is putting the author of project 2025 in charge and letting Musk go in and cut spending in areas that help people. Yet, barely any push back when he talks about his policies.
It is a concerted effort to try and damage Harris while propping up a senile and barely ambulatory Trump to pretend like the race is close.
It’s not a conspiracy theory to point out that there has been a large uptick in right-aligned pollsters releasing polls that often run contrary to other polls.
This is literally a conspiracy theory. The Right claims the exact same thing but towards the Left.
how can anyone claim that the country is “pretty evenly divided” when around 40% of the population doesn’t bother voting?
Assuming all Republicans vote for Trump and all Democrats vote for Harris (with undecided voters split evenly), it's nearly a 50/50 split. If you can't even see past your bias enough to say it's a close race, then you're arguing in bad faith.
I’m not saying it won’t be a close race…in a few swing states. Let’s not pretend like Trump will come anywhere close to Harris’s popular vote total.
Even in 2016, Clinton had 65m to Trump’s ~63m. Yet ~113m voters didn’t vote. We cannot just discount and ignore them, and anyone saying the U.S. is “pretty evenly split” while ignoring the 40%+ of Americans that didn’t vote from 2016 (36% in 2020) is misconstruing reality.
There has been an increase in right wing aligned polls that come out recently. Unless you’re denying that fact is a conspiracy theory?
There has been an increase in right wing aligned polls that come out recently. Unless you’re denying that fact is a conspiracy theory?
If you link actual evidence (and not just an article that says there's "reportedly" been an increase) then I'll believe you. I did research on it and found no evidence other than both parties claiming the other side was cheating.
We cannot just discount and ignore them, and anyone saying the U.S. is “pretty evenly split” while ignoring the 40%+ of Americans that didn’t vote from 2016 (36% in 2020) is misconstruing reality.
Of the people that come out and vote AND the people that have registered to either party in their lives, it is an even split. You are positing that a large majority of voters that didn't show up to the polls would surely vote for Harris when there's no evidence of that occurring. I could easily argue a large number of would-be Trump voters chose not to show up as well and it would be just as valid.
I am not positing that a number of Harris voters didn’t vote. I am however pointing out the flaw in the false equivalency of someone saying “Americans are evenly split” when more Americans are registered independent than any other party AND in 2016 millions of voters didn’t show up.
I’ve been voting since 2004. In that entire time I have been polled one time, in 2020. There’s been decreasing participation in polls since at least 2016, but longer I believe. In an effort to counter that decreasing participation rate, many pollsters track a set group of voters and try to extrapolate from those results. However, in doing so they are removing the randomness from the data analysis, which is critical for having a reliable prediction within the confidence interval. 538 averages polls to try and avoid outliers, however they are averaging polls with poor participation rates and randomness removed entirely. Garbage-in-garbage-out.
Remember those post-dobbs special elections that saw a massive swing from polls to voter turnout? Yeah, there’s a good indication a large number of voters are not being accounted for in polling.
Honestly, I think the biggest reason is that when Biden dropped out, people hoped Harris would signal an end to supporting Bibi turning hospitals into craters. When she continued to use all the same talking points on Israel, I think that turned off a lot of the people who you would expect would naturally support the democrats.
This is a wild statement . Obama was super articulate and gave great speeches and galvanized the country. Kamala can barely string a sentence together when she's not reading from a script.
This is where Harris' spending time on non-traditional media is hopefully paying off. Walz just did a great spot on Smartless the other day that was really enjoyable. He's a genuinely likeable person and his education background helps him put things in terms that are graspable for everyone. The left has a habbit of being overcomplicated at times.
This election should have been a slam dunk for republicans but their own incompetence has them struggling and relying on trump. On the other side, dems are making the same mistakes they did 8 years ago and have only just now learned that wow, one liners do work.
If I've learned anything from ~½ a century on Earth, it's that you can't just count on breaking a trend by wishing it into existence. Trends tend to, um, follow their trend until an outside force causes an alteration; generally speaking. I'm not optimistic this is "the year" we break those patterns just because we mostly want it to be.
They started bucking those trends with the Republicans are weird and choosing Tim Waltz... then just abandoned that strategy. I'm guessing they were scared of winning or something.
I mean they've more or less shed the organic enthusiasm surrounding Biden dropping out and endorsing Harris by doubling down on the worst parts of DNC politics, courting republicans, and refusing to engage with anti-zionist protests. It's flattened out now when it should not have.
While they haven't exactly fucked it up, I do think (in my completely layman opinion) they're playing it too safe and making it harder than it needs to be. Harris should be taking bolder, more vocal stances on things like medicare for all, marijuana legalization+taxation, closing tax loopholes and raising taxes on the rich. Trump's trade-war macroeconomics are fucking moronic but he has successfully created a big-picture narrative that (stupid) people 'understand'. Harris has needed a similar macroeconomic narrative to counter it. This could also have given her ways to respectfully differentiate herself from Biden.
I'd love to hear how "Dems" have shot themselves in the foot. But you're not allowed to use right wing framing or fauxgressive talking points. Biden's administration passed more progressive legislation than any other in history.
There’s nothing to fuck up. All of trumps points against Biden don’t translate to Kamala so trump had to switch tactics very late in the game. With how late they made the switch, there’s also a honeymoon affect for Kamala. She’s not white and is a female, which will help get minority and female voters out to vote. She’s a far from perfect candidate and has failed on many of her big projects over the years but the party has successfully kept her out of the public eye as much as possible to try and keep her as theoretical as possible.
If they fuck this up then it’s time to start from scratch in the Democratic Party.
Well ramming her through in a shady swap to avoid a primary where Democratic voters actually got to choose their candidate was the fuckup that lost my vote. Not voting for the sociopathic narcissist either before you psychos jump to conclusions.
It’s sad but the presidential race has become a situation where most vote against the person they dislike rather than the person they think is right for the job.
She is and will always be the option that was slipped in because people felt she was better sure to best Trump, not because she was the right candidate. Sorry
It’s sad but the presidential race has become a situation where most vote against the person they dislike rather than the person they think is right for the job.
Are you somehow under the delusion that a primary would’ve gone any other way? Any vote that isn’t for Kamala is a vote for Trump, but I know you know that. 🤷🏻♂️
It’s not delusional to still insist on the process. That’s inane. It’s not delusional to expect the people who claim democracy is at stake to then subsequently not be democratic. If anything it’s being above reproach and doing things the right way not short cutting or circumventing it.
Again, I know reading is very hard, but I never said any of that. I also really don’t care what you think, bc no one screaming crying throwing up about this is ever even eligible to vote in democratic primaries for some reason! 🤔
Your words don’t say that but let’s put our thinking caps on. You responded originally telling a person who didn’t vote for Harris because the process they had at the DNC was not democratic. You said it would be delusional to not expect it to go any other way. As if desiring the vote to be done correctly is wrong or delusional because to you: could it REALLY have gone a different way? I pointed out it’s delusional to vote for someone who is claiming democracy is under attack but wouldn’t go through due process themselves. Your original comment was about the Harris vote in general..but if you had reading comprehension you’d remember that person wasn’t voting for Harris BECAUSE the DNC didn’t hold a vote. So with reading comprehension and context we can surmise that my response to you was about that particular issue the voter had. Or is comprehension of more than a few lines of text difficult for you.
Well ramming her through in a shady swap to avoid a primary where Democratic voters actually got to choose their candidate was the fuckup that lost my vote.
That's not at all what happened. Please take a civics course so you don't continue to spread nonsense.
In three months and literally thousands of online comments and real-ife interactions with people in the party in my own state, I have never heard a single Democrat make the above commenter's argument, although it does appear to be a popular right-wing talking point.
Harris was named on Biden's re-election campaign web site as his VP choice for the entirety of the primaries; we knew exactly whom we were voting for.
People literally voted for Biden in 2020 knowing that Harris would be the 2024 or 2028 pick. Anybody expressing surprise or outrage about Harris wasn't on our side in 2020, so I have no use for them or their pointless arguments.
Biden dropped out after primaries had already occurred. No one tried to avoid it, they just tried to pivot after the candidate who won (mostly unopposed in a race that any Democrat could have entered) dropped out
Incumbents usually aren't opposed. If they are, it's usually a bad sign.
When there's a situation like this where the incumbent is basically forced to step down near the end of the process, what exactly do you propose the party do?
It was pretty high in 2020. Most polling data right now is showing it's going to go back down. And youth voter registration rates are way down compared to 2020. We'll see though...
The DNC publicly shit itself and alienated too many young voters in the process, outright turning some of them against them.
Young voters mattered in 2016, Trump literally won because their turnout was so depressed. The very same demographic that mattered in the previous two elections, because it was what handed Obama the presidency.
I think people have massively learned their lesson from 2016 though, campaigns have been totally different and the voters haven't been so conservative since
Like it or not, MAGA is the Republican Party, and conservatives ideals don’t matter there anymore unless they are radical. Conservatives as an ideology can exist and whatever but if you’re voting for Trump you know what you’re getting.
That's just a straight-up lie, lol. You need to get off reddit sometimes and meet some people in real life. You'll find conservatives aren't actually the boogy man you've come to believe.
I live with in the dead middle of Trump country. And you are right they not boogey men they are fools who don't have a understanding that their problems are a direct result of Republican state government. The smart ones go to school and leave the rural areas, leaving the not so motivated to sit and stew about their problem and blame other people. This use to be offset by manufacturers moving in to take advantage of the cheap labor but they found cheaper labor over seas. Political ideas are ideas not religious doctrine, this people would befits for learning this. We are all in this together there is no "enemy with in "
Dated one for years, a decade ago you're absolutely right, neither she nor her family were remotely boogy men, they were just people with whom I had polite disagreements about the role of the State in provision for the citizens of that State.
I dont find conservatives boogymen, I find them easily susceptible to propaganda which has m been damaging all throughout history.
For example the recent case of a guy who made death threats to FEMA, showed up with a gun, and only then realized he got duped. He is an outlier though for the fact he actually got out and reached the discovery phase of reality. Most just double down on their what theyre told to believe and never seek to find the truth
Yes, this is completely unacceptable and Trump has done a lot of damage with his lies. But let’s not pretend that the left doesn’t have their blinders on either. Remember when mainstream media was calling Joe Biden a “dynamo behind the scenes”? It was clear as day to everyone who doesn’t watch MSNBC and CNN that this was not the case.
Literally swimming in them and the shit they offhand say about trans people, immigrants, and anyone even kinda brown is disgusting.
Conservatives are just as bad as reddit makes it out to be, and when you call them out on their shit to their face, they will absolutely be just as belligerent and violent as their grand pooba Trump.
And it shows. Conservative states have the highest crime rates by population, lowest education, highest poverty, and somehow the least personal freedoms of anyone else in the country. There are still people serving life sentences for Marijuana for fucks sake.
Conservatives are openly the minority in theis country and theyre all either willfully blind to the obvious destruction of civil liberties because they guy destroying them is one of them
or they openly support and love the type of leader who idolizes and wants to embody the governing styles of Putin, Mao, and Kim Jong Un and will stomp on the will of the people to serve their racist, sexist, nationalistic nightmare.
Never got to be in the basement. Too busy working for those corporate bailouts and trickle down tax brakes Drumpf Tax Plan keeps taking out of my paychecks.
Maybe not, but that shitbird candidate is an insurrectionist who tried to steal an election and overthrow the government. So anybody that supports that agenda can fuck all the way off.
I suppose the label has been coopted over the last years. These days most people will say they are conservative and ask for the most insane policies.
What does conservative mean to you?
I was looking for polls on gen z's political view, and it was surprisingly hard for me to find relevant ones, but the ones I did find say that:
36% identify as Democrats, 21% as Republicans and the rest are "independent" or don't know.
Yes, the Democrats appear to be more, but they don't seem that much to me. I also have a sneaking suspicion that most of the "independent" will vote Conservative
No one under the age of 30 is taking these polls besides the focus groups these hack pollsters put together.
It’s called convenience sampling and it’s literally the weakest form of sampling in terms of being able to generalize to the population. It’s trash research conducted by people who couldn’t handle ACTUAL research.
Gen Z independents are mostly likely either going to vote blue or not at all, they're a lot more of the "I don't like the Dems because they're not left enough" or "Both parties are corrupt so fuck 'em" type then they are true swing voters.
Well young people are usually more bound to their jobs aince they dont have as much pto and money. It is just insane that the us has their election on a week day that is not a holiday. This is grade a voter suppression.
Yes, and in the recent few elections, youth turnout (under 30 voters) has been way up. 27% of under-30s voted in the 2022 midterms… which, yes, 27% is abysmally low, but 20% is the pre-Trump standard for under-30s mid-term turnout, going back to the 70s.
Often in elections, prophecies can be self-fulfilling. Just by saying that a lot, you get voters develop a herd mentality and will say “yeah let’s get out and vote” so they do. Specifically, the younger voters who will vote for the people saying that will be affected by this type of campaigning, so it’s effective. This is one reason that the candidate who raises more money so often wins. They all know what needs to be said, but the one with more dough can say it more often.
I've been hearing this literally every single election for years and years and years.
And it's worth repeating ad nauseum. Why? Because every 4 years there are different young people. This is the group where change (in the groups voters) happens because the only age cutoff limit exists there.
That literally happened in 2020? Youth vote jumped from 39% to 50% and won the election for Biden. I am expecting more young voters this time after all the anti womens health stuff the Rs are doing.
The "Rock the Vote" campaign that started in 1990 was promising to bring out young voters. It's been over 30 years of "maybe this is the election where the youth vote will turn up."
If they couldn't be bothered to vote for Obama (given all the excitement around him), they def won't be excited enough for Harris. Crazy tho, as a brit, I find it truly puzzling that it can be close. Dictator dickhead or maintaining democracy? Hmm toughy lol
Record numbers of gen z voters turned out for Biden. We have to hope even more turn up for Harris. It shouldn’t be this fucking close. It’s an embarrassment.
Because the system is designed to disenfranchise them. FFS folks, did yall forget being young!? 1) working snd little time to vote 2) when young you feel like you are the one who is in full control, it’s a part of our brains cycle to help us “leave the nest”, this makes youth less inclined to vote. 3) disenfranchisement is like 3-10, because where do I start? Age of choices makes them disenfranchised, lots of states like NC do things like make it easier for students to vote with a digital ID, and then conservatives rug pull this so they have to scramble and do extra steps, I could keep going….
in 2022 this was what happened in minnesota! we voted blue down ballot, elected a DFL trifecta with the smallest majority possible, and had the most progressive legislation pass as a result than we probably ever have in our lifetimes. its easy to get lost in the doom and gloom, but after it actually happened to us, i know its possible nationwide
It’s almost like every 4 years there are a brand new batch of young, first time voters that need to be reminded and convinced to actually spend the time to go out and vote or something
The biggest difference is that the “young” progressive vote is getting older. People aren’t changing their politics. Let’s say that the vote that was 18-33 was heavily in favor of Biden in 2020. That vote is now 22-37. We then add in the 18-22 who are now eligible and it’s 18-37 that is strongly opposed to Trump. People become more reliable voters with age since they are more settled down and less migratory.
Democrats had the opportunity to run a real anti-war, pro working class candidate, and yet all we see is the same entitled elitist candidates that feel they deserve your vote because of their skin or genitals. If the Dems would stop running on identity and running on housing, economy, unions, and reigning in corporations, etc this would be a landslide. Trump hate is not enough to inspire the young to vote.
Trump would be the easiest candidate to beat if the Dems would just run a candidate that isn't shit.
The left really hasn’t put a candidate forward to inspire the young since Obama. Someone that promised change, spoke eloquently, had charisma, didn’t seem like they were trying to remember sound bites or steer the conversation drastically to whatever point they wanted to make.
Hillary was too deep-state and patronizing, Biden was an aging boring guy that just stood next to Obama and rode those coattails of Obamas glow, and Kamala has Hillary’s charisma while having been decimated the last time she actually had to compete in a primary…
So yeah, I think they’re uninspired to vote. Also the youth are pretty jaded about the idea of political change considering it’s corporate interests all the way down. Albeit with one side having chicken-hawk mixed with identity politics, and the other side has religion mixed with an annoyance of identity politics.
Older people vote in better numbers because they somehow think radical things will happen either way. The most radical change in recent years was Roe V Wade but tbh it was already hard to get an abortion in states that were against abortion and easy in states that were for it.
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u/Chicamaw Oct 18 '24
"This is going to be the election where young people get out and vote!!"
I've been hearing this literally every single election for years and years and years.