rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

I honestly struggle with how anyone can insist with any degree of certainty that this election will be free and fair.

for the record i do have a friend who killed himself in 2016, and i miss him. this shit is not theoretical to me.

I'll never forget the morning after at work, you could identify right away who hadn't slept and who had this guilty look on their face

I took Wednesday off

ha, good idea. maybe i should too. a personal day, if you will.

100% going to anesthetize myself early and deeply and not watch any of it.

tbh being drunk that night and hungover the next morning made it a lot worse

I know it's early but being underwater with Rasmussen seems pretty bad, especially since idk how his numbers get better from here

Trump Job Approval:
Approve 44%
Disapprove 54%@Rasmussen_Poll, LV, 4/23-27https://t.co/BbPYo95zzJ

— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) April 28, 2020

At my old job, there was a guy in his mid-40s that I didn't really know all that well, other than he used to be a MMA fighter and was a super friendly guy. I just never really interacted with him beyond the occasional acknowledgments in passing.

Shortly after the 2016 election, I was talking to another coworker who had spent a lot of time with him. Apparently he was just completely oblivious to politics and didn't care at all, never did (obviously privilege of being a straight white male). Turns out he voted for Trump because his parents were big supporters. But he apparently felt terrible when he came in the day after the election and saw how absolutely destroyed everyone seemed to be. He actually ended up personally apologizing to three coworkers for his vote.

I found it really hard to imagine someone of that age living in Chicago in 2016 being that completely oblivious about politics and can't imagine how many other people like him are out there, but I hold on to the story when I need a tiny glimmer of hope and optimism about how the 2020 election might unfold.

he's been doing that poorly in Rasmussen for a while, though it does fluctuate and some days the numbers aren't as bad. he's actually been worse in the Rasmussen poll, when his polling hit its nadir.

especially since idk how his numbers get better from here

We are in the middle of a national crisis that (despite the widely publicized just-the-flu-make-my-stylist-go-back-to-work protestors) is seen as such even by most Republicans. If we are not still in an acute crisis in November, or even if we still are and people have just gotten used to it, there will be a certain amount of "whew, he got us through it, the country survived" no matter how bad he fucked it up. I mean, if millions actually die, it's a different story, but I think the people in all 50 states who are not Donald Trump are actually going to succeed in keeping that from happening, to Trump's benefit and to ours.

People who support him now are willing to ignore the mass death and incompetence happening today. In several months it'll be even easier to ignore.

Again, they only comprise a fraction of the voters polled. Most of the time his numbers dip it's a combination of losing some R support, some D support, and a lot of I support

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sefhon9CgA

So apparently Trump’s invoking the DPA to...force meat processing plants to stay open. I can only assume this is going to lead to hundreds if not thousands of additional deaths. If he wasn’t certifiably the laziest man alive I’d think he was deliberately trying to see how difficult he can make it to get himself re-elected. Then again, maybe the calculus is that keeping the beef train running is worth more than all those dead factory workers. Yeah that’s probably it.

i tell myself that we don't know yet how bad, if at all, the virus can be spread via humans touching meat, then ingesting said meat after it's been cooked

tell us how you really feel, ulysses

I think the danger of covid-19 infection to meat packing workers mainly consists of standing next to and across from numerous other workers at the conveyor belts, in crowded enclosed conditions, with inadequate PPE.

So apparently Trump’s invoking the DPA to...force meat processing plants to stay open. I can only assume this is going to lead to hundreds if not thousands of additional deaths. If he wasn’t certifiably the laziest man alive I’d think he was deliberately trying to see how difficult he can make it to get himself re-elected. Then again, maybe the calculus is that keeping the beef train running is worth more than all those dead factory workers. Yeah that’s probably it.

― Evans on Hammond (evol j),

hence why these Bush vs. Trump arguments strike me as specious

https://thehobbledehoy.com/2020/04/27/the-irish-times-publishes-devastating-rebuke-of-trump/?

"devastating rebuke"? hmmm.

Fintan O’Toole's perception of the situation and Trump's shortcomings are entirely correct in every particular, but however much this is so, no devastation of Trump will be forthcoming as a result of that critique. First, it arrives from Ireland and will be roundly ignored by all those millions of Americans who might benefit from its truth, and additionally, the man himself has never yet been corrected by criticism, however scathing or accurate it may be; he seems to make it his life's work to derive no benefit, moral or practical, from his failures.

So apparently Trump’s invoking the DPA to...force meat processing plants to stay open. I can only assume this is going to lead to hundreds if not thousands of additional deaths. If he wasn’t certifiably the laziest man alive I’d think he was deliberately trying to see how difficult he can make it to get himself re-elected. Then again, maybe the calculus is that keeping the beef train running is worth more than all those dead factory workers. Yeah that’s probably it.

Meatpacking is the most dangerous job in the country year in year out and no one gives a shit. They're not going to start now.

New Montana poll from @montanastate:

President
Trump - 45% (+5)
Biden - 40%

Senate
Bullock (D) - 46% (+7)
Daines (R-inc.) - 39%https://t.co/Fum3RAOJcl

— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) May 5, 2020

nice!

for anyone else who reflexively checks 538's pollster ratings, here's what they look like for Montana State University:

https://i.imgur.com/Yu0eugO.png

4th poll in a row with Cunningham having a lead in #NCSEN, 2nd in a row that has him up 9 points. North Carolina's polling is pretty blue right now: #NCGOV just got moved to Likely D in our ratings last week. https://t.co/uJh0vK1Acs pic.twitter.com/vnA28xwWBt

— Chaz Nuttycombe (@ChazNuttycombe) May 5, 2020

the coronavirus holding pattern is pretty bad for most parts of life, but i would like to freeze the current condition of the polls in the senate swing states

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/state-polls-2020-analysis/index.html

I suspect the betting markets still favor Trump due to how far we are from the election and the sheer advantage of incumbency

https://www.kciiradio.com/2016/08/13/trump-leads-in-iowa-clinton-leads-national-polls/

I'm Pollyanish enough to make the same mistake twice--I don't think Trump will win--but this was interesting:

James Woods is that rare thing in Hollywood: A supporter of Donald Trump. And on Sunday, Woods perfectly encapsulated the message that could get Trump reelected.

He tweeted this (in part):

"Donald Trump is a rough individual. He is vain, insensitive and raw. But he loves America more than any President in my lifetime."

Trump retweeted that assessment; "I think that is a great compliment," he wrote. "Thank you James!"

It's, of course, not a great compliment. If someone called you "vain, insensitive and raw," would you be flattered?

But Woods' tweet is 100% right when it comes to how Trump can win again in November.

"Great compliment"!

http://www.cnn.com/2020/05/18/politics/donald-trump-james-woods-2020-reelection/index.html

But Woods' tweet is 100% right when it comes to how Trump can win again in November.

I didn't even have to glance at the byline to know who wrote this drivel.

I'm not sneering at you, clem, just noting that this person is the most credulous of Beltway hacks, and only he could write a sentence this obvious.

Cillizza bugs me sometime on CNN, for sure. But I think his basic point--pretty much the same argument made in Audience of One--about this strange "he's-awful-but-he's-on-our-side" pull that Trump has for some people isn't that far off from something that exists.

a lot of people on the left are trying to talk themselves into Biden the same way really

the way Cilizza treats this administration like a fun reality show full of quirky characters even as the US nears a 100k death toll thanks in no small part to the president's incompetence is absolutely shameful & honestly makes me wonder if Trump was right about the media all along

trump loves america the way a child loves a milkshake
it's likely analogous to how he loves KFC

a lot of people on the left are trying to talk themselves into Biden the same way really

A less toxic version of awful, I think, but good point.

(Please, please, please--I don't want to argue about Joe Biden.)

it's a stupid thing to say and Cilizza should be embarrassed for writing it, if he was capable of shame. Trump does not love America. he whines about it all the time and has a blatant disregard for over half the country. he does not give two shits about the Constitution or the rule of law beyond what immediately benefits him. he still believes that despite being in control of everything there is still a shadow group working behind the scenes to take him out. he has not and will not sacrifice a single thing for the good of this country. fuck Cilizza and fuck James Woods.

Coronavirus has given me a window into Evan McMullin-voting Respectable Republicans (who I grew up with) degenerating into MAGA/Q people in real time.

I’ve got no answers for combating it, aside from outlawing Protestantism.

I don't think Cillizza is in any way saying he agrees with Woods, he's just using him as a example of a mindset that is out there.

he loves america like a man loves fish; he loves to cook & eat it.

mcdonald's will cook it for you

James Woods Mindset

Step one: destroy your serotonin receptors with cocaine
Step two: ????

"There's so much we can do-o-o-o-o...."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay6GjmiJTPM

yes

maybe this is the wrong thread to say this but

i dont think trump is gonna win

we cannot stop you, we can only hope to contain you

guess we need a rolling "trump is not gonna win" containment thread

i really don't know. some days i lean he'll win some days i lean he'll lose.

I'm no longer as despondently convinced he'll win as I was when I started the thread but I still don't think "a lot of people hate Trump" is much of a winner. I guess the covid depression adds a variable.