Respondents rated the economy as the top issue facing the country, and some 44% said Trump had the better approach on addressing the “cost of living,” compared to 38% who picked Harris. Among a range of economic issues the next president should address, some 70% of respondents said the cost of living would be the most important, with only tiny shares picking the job market, taxes or “leaving me better off financially.” Trump had more support than Harris in each of those areas as well, although voters by a margin of 42% to 35% thought Harris was the better candidate to address the gap between wealthy and average Americans. Trump appeared buoyed by widespread concerns over immigration, currently at its highest level in America in over a century. Some 53% of voters in the poll said they agreed with a statement that “immigrants who are in the country illegally are a danger to public safety,” compared to 41% who disagreed. Voters had been more closely divided on the question in a May Reuters/Ipsos poll, when 45% agreed and 46% disagreed.
I have a dream that one day we will be permitted to read and digest one of these articles without you feeling the compulsive need to preempt that to tell us what you think we’re supposed to believe, and to steer us into one of your fever dreams about some other tangentially-related topic. Wouldn’t that be lovely.
That question goes just as much for you as it does for anyone else here, and my thoughts here is that you can’t do it.
I’m all for holding the Democrats accountable and pushing them Left, but as long as the US is a right-of-centre country, it’s going to be an uphill battle, and there are plenty of “I don’t like Trump as a person, but I like Democrats policies worse, so I’ll vote for the asshole” votes out there, even more than there are ‘Dems aren’t left enough for me!’ votes. I don’t fault the Dems for trying to appeal to those, and push the ‘I don’t like Trump as a person’ higher than the ‘I like Dem policies less’. But man, Biden/Harris has been fighting for issues close to me; Climate Change, Minority Rights, Student Loan reforms, and Women’s rights.
And Biden is doing all of this in the face of stiff and unified opposition by Team Red. They WANT him to fail, and want anyone Left of them (which includes distractions like the Greens and Socialists) to utterly fail. And they are not above convincing our own voters that the failure is inside the house when it’s really imposed on us by the Republicans.
There is a fact for this election, that has been a fact nation-wide since the founding of this country. One of two parties will win. It used to be the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, then the Democratic-Republicans and the Whigs, and finally, the Republicans and the Democrats, which has been a constant through another four phases of American politics. Nobody has come close to upsetting this system after the death of the Whigs and birth of the Republican party.
Jill Stein has a probability of winning the election of less than 0.1% according to 538 and other poll agrigators. She hasn’t taken more than 10% in a single poll, let alone more than Trump’s share. Despite her party’s perennial status as a contender for the Presidency, that party hasn’t won 10% in a single state in a single election, let alone gotten an EV, to say nothing of coming close to 270 EVs which it takes to win the Presidency. No one else has, either, in the past 20 years. You have to go to 1992 to see anyone win more than 10% with Ross Perot, who poached 9.8m votes from team Red compared to the previous election and created roughly another 10m votes for himself (while Clinton picked up 3 million more than Dukakkis). And despite this 18% vote count, Perot got NO EVs, because he couldn’t close the gap in a single state over the winner. And that’s the challenge all Third Party candidates have.
Let’s get real here. You will see one of two people take the Oath of Office next January. That person won’t be Stein. It won’t be Oliver. Alas, it won’t even be my personal favourite, Vermin Supreme. One of those people’s names will be Kamala Harris. The other will be Donald Trump. There. Are. No. Other. Options. FPTP. It sucks, but it’s what we got.
I personally think that I can have a conversation with Kamala Harris. She’s the bus that gets me closest to where I want to go. I don’t love her, but I don’t have to (and really shouldn’t as that would piss my wife off…). I just need her in office instead of the other choice.
Trump is not somebody I can have a conversation with. He goes nowhere near where I want to go. I’d rather take the bus to Boulder than Colorado Springs for a variety of reasons.
If you are like me and don’t want Trump in office, there is only one choice under our system of government to ensure that doesn’t happen. Hold your nose and vote Kamala Harris. Hopefully you showed up to the Primaries to vote for the most Leftist Democrat, because THAT is how you influence the government. Vote for the Liberal in the primary and the Democrat in the General. That’s how the Tea Party captured the Republican Party and turned it MAGA. And that’s how you’re going to inject some Green into the Blue.
But if you don’t want Harris in office, you can go get fucked, because that means you want Trump in office. Fuck off with that and get lost.
You can still vote for someone even if you think we deserve a better candidate, I’ve been doing it for decades at this point…
There’s no reason to insult people or act like you can’t criticize the least worst option while still holding your nose and voting for them.
The majority of Dem voters shouldn’t be shocked by that. We’ve been doing it for a long time…
I can count the people I know who wanted Biden or Hillary as president on one hand but virtually everyone i know still voted for both of them in the last two elections.
It would just be a lot easier to stop trump if we ran a candidate that Dem voters wanted to be president.
I think there’s a time and a place for criticizing our candidates. The time is during the candidate’s term and in the Primaries. During the General, it’s a bad time to do so. And you have to realise: You don’t always get what you want. You say you want a candidate that Dem voters want to be President. The opportunity for that to happen is in the primaries. Unfortunately, the time for that has come and gone.
Biden won those primaries. The voters for the Democratic Party, who ALL get a say, put Biden up front. And people hammered Biden, including bad actors from the other party as well as from foreign countries, until Biden had no room for error. When he flubbed the first debate, we used the rules for succession, with him stepping down and his VP taking the top spot, like what would happen if he was rendered incapable of serving while he was in office.
I return to my key point. Trump or Harris are our choices today. No Third Party will win. As long as you are voting for Harris, criticise away. Just know that I will push back against any post that seems to suggest our candidate is horribad and shouldn’t be voted for. Not voting for Harris means we get Trump.
The time is during the candidate’s term and in the Primaries.
You think we had a primary?
And during their term? That’s like saying the best time to negotiate price is after the sale is made…
Your view only makes sense if you’re operating under the assumption the candidate won’t listen to any criticism or adjust their policy to align with Dem voters more and maximize their chances of winning the election.
Biden isn’t the candidate anymore, Harris certainly isn’t perfect but I believe she’s at least willing to open a dialog with Dem voters, even after the shit that was pulled at the DNC where she did the opposite.
Dem voters aren’t Republican voters, telling them to shut up and vote D depresses turnout, what improves Dem turnout is the candidate listening to voters so that they feel part of the party and more likely to support the candidate, even if the candidates position doesn’t change.
It’s really as easy as that to boost Dem turnout.
It’s only bad for the Dem candidate if they act like a spoiled toddler who’s told there’s no ice cream till the vegetables are gone
Yeah…I thought you might be reasonable, but this? This proves you aren’t reasonable.
Dear reader. We did have a primary. We even had a choice between RFK Jr., Marianne Williamson, Jason Palmer, and Dean Philips. Polling showed Joe Biden with a 60% margin (not vote share, MARGIN) before the Primaries, and he won a total of 14.47 million votes, for 87.1% of the vote share. 3905 pledged delegates voted for him. The second biggest share of the vote was Uncommitted, who could only muster 37 delegates and 4.25% of the vote. Democracy had its day, and unlike givesomefucks here, I’m not going to dismiss the results.
Biden dropped out because elements of our voting coalition combined with bad actors from the Republican Party and Russia and hammered him on his age and capability. He had a bad debate night, seeming to give those elements justification and he ended up throwing in the towel. Since he won the nomination, thanks to a variety of reasons ranging from ballot access and campaign contributions, Harris was elevated to his position and continued the ticket. You know, exactly what would happen if that MAGA idiot had gotten to Biden before he got to Trump and didn’t miss? Just sayin!
Yes, folks. We do have to hold our tongues and noses and vote for the Democrat. It is that simple. 2000 and 2016 are perfect examples of what happens when we don’t. We have to accept that this country is not friendly to liberals and leftists. 1968, 1980, and 1984 made that clear. All elections are about who you can have a conversation with. Everyone who thought Gore was boring and two-faced, myself included (I didn’t vote in the 2000 election because I bought Nader’s Both Sides Bad bullshit) got an object lesson in the Lesser of Two Evils when Bush won and basically ran the country into the ground. Yes, our time to influence the Democratic Party is in the Primaries, with data taken from the candidate’s term – every broken promise, every sellout, every capitulation. But there also needs to be a bit of reason taken as well. Biden has tried like three times to deal with Student Loan debt. Each time, Republicans have thwarted him, enabled by the people who thought Obama wasn’t Liberal enough who stayed home in 2010 and 2014, and the people who stayed home or voted third party in 2016, demonstrating that they’d rather have Trump than Clinton.
Some 53% of voters in the poll said they agreed with a statement that “immigrants who are in the country illegally are a danger to public safety,” compared to 41% who disagreed. Voters had been more closely divided on the question in a May Reuters/Ipsos poll, when 45% agreed and 46% disagreed.
Ahhh good to know some things never change. Good old hateful racist assholes Americans being asshole Americans. I hate living here with these fucking ghouls. The only dangerous people are actual American citizens…
That’s certainly one way to look at it, and around here you’ll find a lot of folks are eager to pat you on the back for embracing that kind of lazy, myopic conclusion. There is, however, much more to the story:
That 53% of voters includes ever trump voter in the country.
So if it’s every trump supporter, it’s only 10% of people who aren’t voting R no matter.
Republicans pander to the majority of their base. And Dems also pander to the Republican base.
It’s one of the biggest and most obvious problems with our political system. When both parties keep moving right, it’s obviously going to result in the country overall moving to the right.
It’s really not complicated, but some people love to misrepresent it.
Straight from the article:
I have a dream that one day we will be permitted to read and digest one of these articles without you feeling the compulsive need to preempt that to tell us what you think we’re supposed to believe, and to steer us into one of your fever dreams about some other tangentially-related topic. Wouldn’t that be lovely.
…
90% sure we’ve went over this before…
X% of voters includes Republicans that will never vote D under any circumstances
To motivate people who will vote D. We need to focus on what they want.
Did it work this time?
Speak up, laddy. We didn’t hear you the first 8,900 times.
Do you want to just insult people?
Or are you willing to abide by this subs rules and have a reasonable discussion?
His comment was no more insulting than yours, IMHO.
That question goes just as much for you as it does for anyone else here, and my thoughts here is that you can’t do it.
I’m all for holding the Democrats accountable and pushing them Left, but as long as the US is a right-of-centre country, it’s going to be an uphill battle, and there are plenty of “I don’t like Trump as a person, but I like Democrats policies worse, so I’ll vote for the asshole” votes out there, even more than there are ‘Dems aren’t left enough for me!’ votes. I don’t fault the Dems for trying to appeal to those, and push the ‘I don’t like Trump as a person’ higher than the ‘I like Dem policies less’. But man, Biden/Harris has been fighting for issues close to me; Climate Change, Minority Rights, Student Loan reforms, and Women’s rights.
And Biden is doing all of this in the face of stiff and unified opposition by Team Red. They WANT him to fail, and want anyone Left of them (which includes distractions like the Greens and Socialists) to utterly fail. And they are not above convincing our own voters that the failure is inside the house when it’s really imposed on us by the Republicans.
There is a fact for this election, that has been a fact nation-wide since the founding of this country. One of two parties will win. It used to be the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, then the Democratic-Republicans and the Whigs, and finally, the Republicans and the Democrats, which has been a constant through another four phases of American politics. Nobody has come close to upsetting this system after the death of the Whigs and birth of the Republican party.
Jill Stein has a probability of winning the election of less than 0.1% according to 538 and other poll agrigators. She hasn’t taken more than 10% in a single poll, let alone more than Trump’s share. Despite her party’s perennial status as a contender for the Presidency, that party hasn’t won 10% in a single state in a single election, let alone gotten an EV, to say nothing of coming close to 270 EVs which it takes to win the Presidency. No one else has, either, in the past 20 years. You have to go to 1992 to see anyone win more than 10% with Ross Perot, who poached 9.8m votes from team Red compared to the previous election and created roughly another 10m votes for himself (while Clinton picked up 3 million more than Dukakkis). And despite this 18% vote count, Perot got NO EVs, because he couldn’t close the gap in a single state over the winner. And that’s the challenge all Third Party candidates have.
Let’s get real here. You will see one of two people take the Oath of Office next January. That person won’t be Stein. It won’t be Oliver. Alas, it won’t even be my personal favourite, Vermin Supreme. One of those people’s names will be Kamala Harris. The other will be Donald Trump. There. Are. No. Other. Options. FPTP. It sucks, but it’s what we got.
I personally think that I can have a conversation with Kamala Harris. She’s the bus that gets me closest to where I want to go. I don’t love her, but I don’t have to (and really shouldn’t as that would piss my wife off…). I just need her in office instead of the other choice.
Trump is not somebody I can have a conversation with. He goes nowhere near where I want to go. I’d rather take the bus to Boulder than Colorado Springs for a variety of reasons.
If you are like me and don’t want Trump in office, there is only one choice under our system of government to ensure that doesn’t happen. Hold your nose and vote Kamala Harris. Hopefully you showed up to the Primaries to vote for the most Leftist Democrat, because THAT is how you influence the government. Vote for the Liberal in the primary and the Democrat in the General. That’s how the Tea Party captured the Republican Party and turned it MAGA. And that’s how you’re going to inject some Green into the Blue.
But if you don’t want Harris in office, you can go get fucked, because that means you want Trump in office. Fuck off with that and get lost.
You can still vote for someone even if you think we deserve a better candidate, I’ve been doing it for decades at this point…
There’s no reason to insult people or act like you can’t criticize the least worst option while still holding your nose and voting for them.
The majority of Dem voters shouldn’t be shocked by that. We’ve been doing it for a long time…
I can count the people I know who wanted Biden or Hillary as president on one hand but virtually everyone i know still voted for both of them in the last two elections.
It would just be a lot easier to stop trump if we ran a candidate that Dem voters wanted to be president.
That shouldn’t be a relevation either
I think there’s a time and a place for criticizing our candidates. The time is during the candidate’s term and in the Primaries. During the General, it’s a bad time to do so. And you have to realise: You don’t always get what you want. You say you want a candidate that Dem voters want to be President. The opportunity for that to happen is in the primaries. Unfortunately, the time for that has come and gone.
Biden won those primaries. The voters for the Democratic Party, who ALL get a say, put Biden up front. And people hammered Biden, including bad actors from the other party as well as from foreign countries, until Biden had no room for error. When he flubbed the first debate, we used the rules for succession, with him stepping down and his VP taking the top spot, like what would happen if he was rendered incapable of serving while he was in office.
I return to my key point. Trump or Harris are our choices today. No Third Party will win. As long as you are voting for Harris, criticise away. Just know that I will push back against any post that seems to suggest our candidate is horribad and shouldn’t be voted for. Not voting for Harris means we get Trump.
You think we had a primary?
And during their term? That’s like saying the best time to negotiate price is after the sale is made…
Your view only makes sense if you’re operating under the assumption the candidate won’t listen to any criticism or adjust their policy to align with Dem voters more and maximize their chances of winning the election.
Biden isn’t the candidate anymore, Harris certainly isn’t perfect but I believe she’s at least willing to open a dialog with Dem voters, even after the shit that was pulled at the DNC where she did the opposite.
Dem voters aren’t Republican voters, telling them to shut up and vote D depresses turnout, what improves Dem turnout is the candidate listening to voters so that they feel part of the party and more likely to support the candidate, even if the candidates position doesn’t change.
It’s really as easy as that to boost Dem turnout.
It’s only bad for the Dem candidate if they act like a spoiled toddler who’s told there’s no ice cream till the vegetables are gone
Yeah…I thought you might be reasonable, but this? This proves you aren’t reasonable.
Dear reader. We did have a primary. We even had a choice between RFK Jr., Marianne Williamson, Jason Palmer, and Dean Philips. Polling showed Joe Biden with a 60% margin (not vote share, MARGIN) before the Primaries, and he won a total of 14.47 million votes, for 87.1% of the vote share. 3905 pledged delegates voted for him. The second biggest share of the vote was Uncommitted, who could only muster 37 delegates and 4.25% of the vote. Democracy had its day, and unlike givesomefucks here, I’m not going to dismiss the results.
Biden dropped out because elements of our voting coalition combined with bad actors from the Republican Party and Russia and hammered him on his age and capability. He had a bad debate night, seeming to give those elements justification and he ended up throwing in the towel. Since he won the nomination, thanks to a variety of reasons ranging from ballot access and campaign contributions, Harris was elevated to his position and continued the ticket. You know, exactly what would happen if that MAGA idiot had gotten to Biden before he got to Trump and didn’t miss? Just sayin!
Yes, folks. We do have to hold our tongues and noses and vote for the Democrat. It is that simple. 2000 and 2016 are perfect examples of what happens when we don’t. We have to accept that this country is not friendly to liberals and leftists. 1968, 1980, and 1984 made that clear. All elections are about who you can have a conversation with. Everyone who thought Gore was boring and two-faced, myself included (I didn’t vote in the 2000 election because I bought Nader’s Both Sides Bad bullshit) got an object lesson in the Lesser of Two Evils when Bush won and basically ran the country into the ground. Yes, our time to influence the Democratic Party is in the Primaries, with data taken from the candidate’s term – every broken promise, every sellout, every capitulation. But there also needs to be a bit of reason taken as well. Biden has tried like three times to deal with Student Loan debt. Each time, Republicans have thwarted him, enabled by the people who thought Obama wasn’t Liberal enough who stayed home in 2010 and 2014, and the people who stayed home or voted third party in 2016, demonstrating that they’d rather have Trump than Clinton.
Ahhh good to know some things never change. Good old hateful racist assholes Americans being asshole Americans. I hate living here with these fucking ghouls. The only dangerous people are actual American citizens…
That’s certainly one way to look at it, and around here you’ll find a lot of folks are eager to pat you on the back for embracing that kind of lazy, myopic conclusion. There is, however, much more to the story:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2024/may/28/young-more-anti-immigration-than-old-in-parts-of-europe-polling-shows
https://www.paschal-law.com/blog/the-rise-of-anti-immigrant-sentiment-around-the-world/
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/27/nx-s1-5050746/rising-anti-immigrant-sentiment-in-germany-causes-concerns-in-the-countrys-business-community
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X22001531
https://bpr.studentorg.berkeley.edu/2022/12/09/what-is-driving-the-rise-of-anti-immigration-sentiment-in-europe/
Given that the trend we’re seeing is also prevalent in most western democracies, we’re left with two distinct possibilities:
Every western democracy is half-full of racist assholes.
There’s something going on that’s more nuanced than naked racial animus.
Which seems more likely seems to depend a great deal on direct, lived experience, as well as education and age. It also seems to depend on the health of the broader economy. Unfortunately, pointing those factors out doesn’t tend to elicit as many upvotes as claiming everyone’s a flaming, degenerate racist.
Thank you for those links and insightful take. I had wondered about this myself - with your take I can see a way forward now.
That 53% of voters includes ever trump voter in the country.
So if it’s every trump supporter, it’s only 10% of people who aren’t voting R no matter.
Republicans pander to the majority of their base. And Dems also pander to the Republican base.
It’s one of the biggest and most obvious problems with our political system. When both parties keep moving right, it’s obviously going to result in the country overall moving to the right.
It’s really not complicated, but some people love to misrepresent it.
the Democratic chase for the centrist unicorn stuffs us all into a very cramped and increasingly hot basket.
Which is why we need to be smart.
We need to cancel the electoral votes of the South, until they sort their shit out, call it Reconstruction 2.0.
We have to fix this cancer on our nation if we ever hope to function again, and the longer we push it off, the worse the metastasis gets.