Have you seen some of the wishy-washy mouth breathers in the “undecided” focus groups? I’m embarrassed to admit we’re the same species. The Trump cultists might be insane, brain-poisoned, sociopathic, fundamentalist idiots but at least they have the capacity to make a bad decision. The independents can’t seem to make any decision. It if they do, it’s based on some random nonsense or impulse. I dunno if they’ve got learning disorders or are just sad windsocks, but the fact that they are the ones who get to decide if America dies next month is terrifying.
wishy-washy mouth breathers in the “undecided” focus groups
This website is deteriorating into Democrats insulting non-Democrats constantly.
You’re party is simply unpopular as it caters to “moderates” and then has to spend an absurd amount of money to convince regular folks that the Democrats are the best those folks are allowed to have. No amount of memes and insults is going to change this simple truth.
This is a website?
Because the people who own everything want him to win. It’s that simple.
If you’re posting this right now because of recent poll data, It’s because Republican companies are creating their own polls just so that they can claim the race is closer than it is.
Of course we don’t know who’s going to win. The election hasn’t happened yet. But any speculation about changes in the last few days should be taken with a grain of salt, because this is a playbook that was trotted out two years ago and it’s back again.
I don’t really understand it. I guess it’s because a close race drives turnout and they think their supporters need more encouragement than ours do?
Because one side wants to own the libs and that’s all they want to do. While one side is just as bad, they want to own the population to get away with crimes and the other side is never taken seriously as it’s full of gas huffing paint-chip addicts.
Most people are poorer today in the day-to-day than they were 4 years ago.
That’s why. It’s that simple.
That, and they forgot that they were poorer 4 years ago than they were 8 years ago.
American voters do seem to have very short memories.
Even faced with actual data that indicates that the economy has consistently performed better under Democrats over the past 75 years, they still pretend that the party of the oligarchs is somehow going to solve the problems of the working class.
Donald Trump is very open about his own anti-labor policies as an employer, yet the very people who hate being screwed over by their bosses worship him.
I don’t understand how anyone can function with this level of cognitive dissonance.
For the same reason I got temp banned from this community. People only need to be slightly against the circlejerk to be pushed away from a community, and this creates a “well, might as well let everything burn” counter-resentment. I can’t vote in the US, but part of that reason is having prioritized society and consequences over ego and money. if I could I would vote against Trump, but it seems you guys are stuck doing it, and you reap what you sow. Stop being surprised pikachu-faced.
In addition to all the things said elsewhere in this thread, younger demographics are less likely to engage with polling, which is likely effecting the outcome of the polls. The emails/texts/phone calls/etc just get ignored, so that leaves the older generations as the only ones who actually answer.
I know the polls try to take that into account, but it’s never going to be possible to do so perfectly.
So tldr: fuck the polls go vote, and make sure your friends/family votes
Also worth noting that younger people are less likely to vote
That is true, however the last few elections have seen strong increases in youth voter turnout. And that makes sense given the now broadened popularity of mail in voting, the climate crisis, etc.
why is this race so close?
Two words: Electoral College.
The electoral college takes it from a 45-55 to a 50-50. But what on God’s green earth gets him that 45% of the votes?
People who only loosely follow politics but liked the Obama economy that trump inherited and only watch Fox News. “He can’t possibly be worse than a demoncrat, he’s the same party as Reagan! It’s really sad how the media slanders him”
some people are misogynistic, others like how much he represents the average American (dancing away the difficult problems).
If you go by the polls, the two candidates are within margin of error of each other, or very close. We’re looking at a possibility that Trump would not only win the EC, but the overall popular vote, as well.
The EC is not the only issue at play. Millions of Americans either like Trump or are willing to handwave his behavior away rather than vote for a Democrat.
No Republican has won the popular vote in 22 years, and that was because of 9/11. Before that, it was George Bush Sr. in 1988.
Great. Not what’s going on right now.
We’ll see in a month.
Nope, we won’t. I say that because my claim is specifically that the EC is not the only thing going on. If the EC breaks with the popular vote next month, it still won’t be the only thing going on.
We’re looking at a possibility that Trump would not only win the EC, but the overall popular vote, as well.
You claimed that Trump might win the popular vote, and that’s very, very unlikely (but not impossible). That’s the only part I was referring to.
One word: stupidity.
Pam_from_The_Office.jpg
Republicans don’t want the country to be educated.
People with college degrees are overwhelmingly voting Harris. Republicans know that if we make the country smarter they’re screwed
Pretty sure it’s the economy. Despite the fact that the US economy has been reasonably well managed, by international standards, people are hurting – which is the perfect recipe for changing the governing party. Telling people that things aren’t as bad as they think they are makes you sound out of touch.
The electoral collage an years of disinformation and latent bigotry plus corporate greed screwing us all over…did I miss anything?
Cult of personality?
Race is close because the news media has a vested interest in it being close, so they are very selective to not report on anything that could crush trump out of the running. because contention and conflict drives viewership and ratings. So does another Trump presidency, and the media has dropped all pretense on who their preferential candidate is for that reason.
Which is why they spent a month harping on the mass hallucination of Bidens supposed mental incompetence, yet havent done so much as very briskly brush by the same topic on trumps very obvious, very public, very recorded decline. or his increasingly nazi-like rhetoric. or him doing anything that would have anyone else out of the race if it was reported on properly
Or because most major news outlets are owned by the billionaires that want those sweet sweet trump tax cuts?
Fox News is the preferred station by older republican audiences. They’re also the most consistently voting. So all the propaganda they push gets swallowed due to the lack of journalistic integrity.
Because “Information Age” misses a prefix, simple as.
It’s entirely the EC.
Biden won by ten million votes, and it was still a clencher because some idjit in kansas thinks the candidates sucking Pennsylvania’s fracking drill all election keeps their interests represented.
We need to stop letting land vote.
If it was 70-30, like it should be, the electoral college wouldn’t be relevant.
You’d think so, but the EC is able to override a majority of even over 80% if the other candidate picks up half plus 1 victories in small states.
Because Trump is energizing his base with lies and propaganda designed to get them angry and motivated, while Kamala has squandered the enthusiasm her base had for her by pursuing disaffected center-right never-Trumpers. It’s basically the same strategy Hillary Clinton ran in 2016 and it’s terrifying to watch the Democrats gamble on it yet again.
its because their corporate owners don’t want to have to implement left wing economic policies for the good of the nation. unfortunately we’ll continue to have fascist bogey men until people start holding dems accountable.
It’s because the media, who teach most people how to think, is mostly owned by corporations who benefit from pro-corpo status quo policies.
media is just an amplifier. but yes you could make such an argument; though its deeper than that.
Obviously it’s the sort of thing one could write doctoral theses about, but I reckon that much is not contentious.
There’s also the fact that this, “centrist liberal,” strategy worked exactly once in 1992 (and that may have had more to do with Ross Perot than anything else), but now there’s an entire pundit and strategist class built around it. Most of these people don’t mind losing elections if it means they can keep their jobs.
The Harris campaign must pursue those voters in order to win. They are the voters who live in battleground states. Pursuing a hard-left strategy the way everyone on lemmy wants is a guaranteed loss.
This is the problem with the non-proportional EC makeup. Unfortunately it’s not going to change any time soon because the party who wins got there on the old system.
Thank you, this is a spectacular example of how Democrats use faulty logic and bad faith arguments to defeat themselves. I’m going to break it down for everybody so we can all understand why they keep losing.
The Harris campaign must pursue those voters in order to win. They are the voters who live in battleground states.
This is confidently stated as fact, but not only is there no evidence to support this statement, there’s strong evidence against it. This is, at its core, the same statement that Chuck Schumer made when predicting a Democratic sweep in 2016:
“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”
Not only did this strategy fail spectacularly in 2016, we’re watching it fail in 2024; Harris has recently dropped in all crucial swing states. The only thing backing up this argument is its proponents’ self-confidence (or self-delusion).
Moving on:
Pursuing a hard-left strategy the way everyone on lemmy wants is a guaranteed loss.
Here, we leave behind false assertions and move into bad-faith arguments. Notice how the user completely ignored the voters I mentioned (her base) in order to pivot to what they think is an easier target: Lemmy users. Sure, if Kamala Harris came out in support of the abolition of capitalism, she’d lose, but no (or at least no one serious) is saying she’d win if she did.
What people are actually saying is much more tangible and and reasonable: sharpen your criticism of Israel and increase your Palestinian outreach if you want to win Michigan; don’t just talk about the middle-class, get your working-class base out with transformative social programs (like Biden proposed in 2020; stop hanging out with Liz Fucking Cheney, for Christ sake. These are all criticisms the user sidestepped by creating a false dichotomy between the, “hard-left,” and Harris’ current strategy.
Finally:
This is the problem with the non-proportional EC makeup. Unfortunately it’s not going to change any time soon because the party who wins got there on the old system.
This is unrelated, but incorrect. The Democrats have won the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 elections; they would abolish the Electoral College in a heartbeat, but it would require a constitutional amendment, which they’ll never get passed. It has nothing to do with the fact that, “the party who wins got there on the old system.”
Anyway, this is how the Democrats continuously fail. First, they convinced themselves that the only way to win is to get centrist voters, even though evidence doesn’t bear that out. Next, they dismiss criticism of this strategy as, “far-left.” Finally, if they lose (which is looking alarming possible this election), they will blame leftists for not supporting them strongly enough, thus allowing them to continue the same strategy next election without self-reflection…assuming there is a next election, which no longer feels like a given.
This is confidently stated as fact, but not only is there no evidence to support this statement, there’s strong evidence against it.
i agreed with all of the other statements in your comment and this one’s the most fascinating to me: can you share some of this evidence, please?
Well, first, let’s look at the last 6 elections. In 2000, Al Gore ran a centrist campaign and lost. 2004, John Kerry ran a centrist campaign and lost. 2008, Barack Obama ran a very progressive campaign, promising universal healthcare, Wall Street reform, homeowner bailouts, closing Guantanamo…he wound up governing from the center, but he ran far to the left (by American standards). Even in 2012, the center of his reelection campaign was dealing with wealth inequality, and he won despite being called a communist. In 2016…well, we all know what happened there…and 2020, Biden, ran on a very progressive platform and strong support for labor (and he was actually surprisingly committed to it, especially student loan forgiveness).
But election results have many factors and are open to interpretation, so let’s look at some data, specifically from 2016. Clinton and the Democrats’ strategy was to go to the center to pick up moderate Republicans, but the data shows they failed spectacularly. Clinton picked up about 4% of voters who identified as Republican by going to the center, while Trump picked up 5% of Democrats by going far-right. Clinton got 42% of Independents, Trump got 43%. Even in the target demographic, people with mixed political views (AKA moderates), she got 42% to Trump’s 48%. And even if she’d won the center, it’s not clear that it would have helped much, as there’s relatively new data that shows that moderates are less likely to get involved in politics, including voting. In short, 2016 is a case study in why centrism is a losing strategy.
It’s also worth noting that, overall, Americans are not centrist. Sure, if you ask them if they like socialism, the results are pretty devisive, but if you ask them about progressive policies, they’re all for them: raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, single-payer healthcare, and even Universal Basic Income enjoy widespread support across the country. Shrinking away from these policies in favor of more moderate positions simply doesn’t make sense.
Ok.
Those semi-con swing voters are deciding this election though. Nobody else is “on the fence” right now.
Jesus christ, we saw two assassination attempts on Trump and it didn’t change polls. While polls are trash and not to be trusted, they still would have changed if there was some large amount of moderate undecided voters.
And lets not forget H. Clinton won the popular vote by millions of votes. Yes, the Dems are addicting to losing and make the worst decisions in order to appeal to the most useless people, but they’re also playing against a stacked deck here.
but they’re also playing against a stacked deck here.
that they’re helping perpetuate.
I broke this down in another comment, but there’s really no evidence that this moderate strategy will work. Democrats win when their base turns out, and they lose when their base isn’t motivated. Watching Harris campaign with Liz Cheney doesn’t motivate the base. They may pick up some moderate voters in PA (though, again, it didn’t work in 2016, so there’s no reason to think it will work now), but it’s not going to matter if she loses Michigan because of a hard-right position on Israel.
