rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

Trump dead of a coronary.

Also once campaigning begins in earnest it’s likely Trump’s campaign message will be “I wuz robbed in 2020” and that’s a proven loser of a message already.

And, I can’t stress this enough, he’s going to pick an absolute lunatic (probably someone who lost last year like Kari Lake) as his running mate, and that will have a negative effect.

re: economic narrative, I know we all like Line Goes Up graphs showing that actually the economy is doing gangbusters but I don't know many people for whom that's a, uh, lived experience. I don't have a large close social circle but there were more layoffs among my friends over the last year than ever. Electricity prices here remain almost double what they were a couple of years ago, housing (rental) prices have only continued to spiral. Are those Biden's fault? Clearly not but economic malaise always gets dumped on the man/party in the White House. Thank god gas remains relatively cheap.

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2023/10/31/the-economy-versus-the-economic-system/

Also: 22 percent of Blacks support Trump? Really? He earned 8 percent in 2020; the highest any Republican's earned in the last 60 years is 12 percent for Jerry Ford. I don't buy it.

I think the biggest thing people are reacting too economically is still just inflation, prices are very high relative to a few years ago, there's no way around that. Plus also a general sense of instability that just hasn't subsided post-pandemic. (plz no arguments about whether we are actually post-pandemic, you know what I mean.)

And yes polls this far out are super dubious, and also Trump's negatives are super high, this won't be a normal fresh-faced challenger vs. beleaguered incumbent election. BUT. Biden's numbers are terrible by historical standards for an incumbent to win reelection. There's no way around that either.

xp He may pick a lunatic, but he won’t pick a proven loser

I feel like the central fact of Biden's unpopularlity just hasn't seeped into a lot of Democratic partisans' consciousness. He is very, very unpopular. The economy is part of it, his age is definitely a big part of it, and his general message of "Things are OK, firm hand on the tiller, steady as we go" is basically not persuasive on any count. Trump's general message of "Things are terrible and I'm super pissed off" feels more in line with a lot of people's experiences, even if the things he's pissed off about aren't actually the things they're pissed off about.

xxp Trump's support among Black men may reach double digits, but 22% seems wildly inflated. He'll be lucky to hit 5% among Black women.

tipsy otm

I do see Trump resonating with Black voters on real life, for exactly the reasons tipsy stated. Trump gets closer than any other president to upending the status quo that has never, ever worked out for them

Black men, yes. Not so sure about Black women, long the sturdiest of Dems.

A thread:

A. Aggregated battleground polls are stupid. They make zero sense

B. Donald Trump isn’t getting 20% of black voters

C. NYT poll says 10% of the battleground-state electorate didn’t vote in famously low-turnout 2020, & they favor Trump by 14 points. 2020 voters are Biden+5

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 5, 2023

re: economic narrative, I know we all like Line Goes Up graphs showing that actually the economy is doing gangbusters but I don't know many people for whom that's a, uh, lived experience. I don't have a large close social circle but there were more layoffs among my friends over the last year than ever. Electricity prices here remain almost double what they were a couple of years ago, housing (rental) prices have only continued to spiral. Are those Biden's fault? Clearly not but economic malaise always gets dumped on the man/party in the White House. Thank god gas remains relatively cheap.

Point taken. I think a big part of the problem is that positive narratives about Biden that might counteract "too old" and "economy bad" haven't really taken hold (for plenty of good reasons both within and outside of the party's control).

Biden just needs to run on abortion

He also needs Trump to run on compulsory impregnation of white women

xp He may pick a lunatic, but he won’t pick a proven loser

Pillow guy it is then!

"Don't Sleep on Mike Lindell!"

Lol

I don't think Lindell sleeps, what with all the cocaine.

When the phone rings at 3am…

Trump's general message of "Things are terrible and I'm super pissed off" feels more in line with a lot of people's experiences, even if the things he's pissed off about aren't actually the things they're pissed off about.

This is exceptionally OTM. I think Trump is a fascist goon (and Biden is a fascist should-be-retiree), but it's gotten easier for me to see how low-info voters could go for Trump. Shit is not going well for a lot of people, and Biden and the party don't seem to care or even pay lip service to that fact.

Every single person I work with is working multiple jobs. About half of my close friends are in the same boat. And many are still struggling. Many people I know will not vote for Biden, but then again, many people I know didn't vote for him last time, either.

it's gotten easier for me to see how low-info voters could go for Trump

It's just unclear to me how someone could be this low-info without needing someone to refill their fluids and turn them so they don't develop sores.

At the peak of my disgust with Bush II, I considered not voting for John Kerry because I considered him (and H. Clinton and Joe Biden) complicit in getting us into Iraq; I even switched from Democrat to non-affiliated voter (Fla. does not acknowledge independents). Then Bush, barely reelected, nominated Roberts and Alito in the first year of his second term, both around the time Katrina happened.

Which is to say: I understand not voting for Joe Biden; I nodded at every one of tipsy's points, which many of us in our local Cuban Dems club have said aloud; but I don't sympathize. Because, yeah, not voting for the infinitely worse option IS for me a reason to vote -- and ensuring we get to nominate Thomas' successor should the motherfucker choke on a ham bone or indeed nominate dozens of federal judges.

Finally, I vote for Biden because I want to stick it to every fucking racist and gay-hating piece of shit Cuban American I have to deal with daily.

_ it's gotten easier for me to see how low-info voters could go for Trump_

It's just unclear to me how someone could be _this_ low-info without needing someone to refill their fluids and turn them so they don't develop sores.

The poll shows that a) voters highly approve of the things Biden's done, except b) they don't know he's done them, and c) when they find out, their approval rises.

So to put it bluntly: if voters were informed, they would reelect Biden over Trump.

The obvious implication...

— David Roberts (@drvolts) November 5, 2023

The poll shows that a) voters highly approve of the things Biden's done, except b) they don't know he's done them, and c) when they find out, their approval rises.

So to put it bluntly: if voters were informed, they would reelect Biden over Trump.

The obvious implication is that the coming election is going to be fundamentally shaped by failures in the US information environment.

Why so few leading Dems & pundits want to discuss that directly is a mystery to me.

Finally, I vote for Biden because I want to stick it to every fucking racist and gay-hating piece of shit Cuban American I have to deal with daily.

Yeah living in another state ruled by a related variety of assholes — smug hateful evangelicals — I can’t overstate how much I feel the same.

A valid perspective from the guy who plays Nixon on Twitter:

As for the poll, consider the following: Biden has a real problem with his age, and the Israel thing is not helping. However Biden does much better among young people in the the CBS poll, which was done online.

He has also not campaigned yet, and his record is popular once people learn of it. There are a lot of people who don't like Trump or Biden, and in the mid-term, anyway, they broke strongly to Biden. The criteria was who scares them less.

The poll tells us about today, not next year. In any case, don't forget how embarrassing most of the mid-term polls were. It is something for them to watch and learn from, nothing else.

Someone asked "I have a question about that sir: you say Biden hasn’t campaigned, but his campaign is flooding the field with ads and he has been going from town to town trying to tout an economic record. What defines 'the beginning of a campaign'?"

The reply:

They haven't really hit the road yet. They aren't targeting online stuff in particular. The decision is everybody knows the players and the stakes and there's no need to trouble people before Christmas. No one would buy in anyway.

Even given the stated parameters of this thread and my own comments above, there is part of me that still has a hard time believing that this particular guy can get re-elected given EVERYTHING that everyone knows about him at this point. But that is counterbalanced by my incredulity that he could get elected the first time around.

what about Biden

what about 2scoops?

"And while consciously he is said to despise these social leaders whom he can so easily frighten and manipulate, he cannot purge himself of the childhood hurts and the childhood images of power that make him vulnerable to their exclusion of him. In this, of course, other and better-known dictators." David Riesman, 1950

that dana houle twitter thread posted above is cope. trump has always outperformed the polls. the fact that they've been showing a tie for like a year and now many are showing him ahead is a huge warning sign

i think dr volts thread is wrong too. biden people talk about "bidenomics" all the time if you listen, it's just that no one cares. it's a bunch of center left wonks talking about "industrial policy" and "the supply chain" and "semiconductors" like it's an episode of the odd lots podcast. the only policy issues that people care about are abortion, cuts to social security and medicare, both of which trump has moderated on (relative to republicans) and will continue to moderate on as necessary

the only thing that can get biden's chances up is if trump gets back on tv saying crazy abhorrent shit every day. trump's restraint in (a) not tweeting and (b) not showing up to the republican primary debates is giving him a huge boost. people have a vague memory of the economy being better under trump, give him credit for that, are pissed about inflation, blame biden for it. without a daily reminder of what trump presidency was like day-to-day those vibes will carry it for trump. hopefully he doesn't realize that

The obvious implication is that the coming election is going to be fundamentally shaped by failures in the US information environment.

I think this is wrong and represents a worldview that even after all this time thinks of “the information environment” as primarily the so-called MSM. It loses sight of the 30-40 percent of the voting pool that primarily and in many cases exclusively gets their information from right-wing media. To those people, it couldn’t matter less how the NYT or CNN treats Trump, they have zero exposure to those things (except as filtered through right-wing politicians or pundits). In that sense, it’s better understood as a SUCCESS of the information environment, or at least of an ideological slice of it.

I think that tweet referred to Democrats who do read the NYT, WaPo, etc, not the right wingers whom you correctly say read swill on Facebook and watch OAN and listen to talk radio.

Counterpoint to flopson I don’t think polls this far out are really predictive at all. Tons of them showed Trump beating Biden in 2019.

I've no real idea whether to put stock in polling or not, or when to put stock in it if so. Upthread someone mentioned Biden's poll numbers dropped after Afghanistan withdrawal and never recovered, but this was before the unexpectedly positive midterm results, where Democrats over-performed

Right I mean polling has underestimated the Dems in pretty much every election since 2016 and I don’t think Trump is that strong of a candidate

Biden also seems something of an anomaly. While he isn't popular, the conviction with which that lack of popularity is felt isn't so easily measured, so something which has been an important metric for the last two presidents in particular may not be so much this time around (but it also might be)

biden hasn't earned my vote. contraception getting outlawed, Palestinians exiled, climate-denial congressionally in excelsis etc. would all be bad but it's scare tactics to lean on any of those issues, since the democrats aren't left enough, i guess?

Trump is winning, it’s a done deal

you'd better keep that kind of trash talk in this here containment thread, buster, cuz it ain't welcome in them other threads

Electricity prices here remain almost double what they were a couple of years ago

I don't know where you live, Milo, but electricity prices nationwide are about 20-25% up from what they were a couple of years ago, nowhere near double.

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/APU000072610?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true

So the question is -- what's causing you -- and not just you, I'm not picking on you, it's really common -- to perceive prices as increasing much more than they really have? I see this stuff constantly, people talking about prices having doubled for various goods when they've gone up between 10 and 30 percent. Maybe the claim is that "it doesn't matter whether it doubled or went up 25%, both are a hardship for people just scraping by" -- but I think it does matter! Those are really, really different situations!

(ps you can see time series for energy prices broken down by region and in some cases metro area here: https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices_selectedareas_table.htm )

Biden also seems something of an anomaly. While he isn't popular, the conviction with which that lack of popularity is felt isn't so easily measured, so something which has been an important metric for the last two presidents in particular may not be so much this time around (but it also might be)

Yeah at least some of the unpopularity/disapproval comes from people who are more left than right but either think he isn't left enough or just find him uninspiring. Some of them presumably will still vote for him, but any falloff in enthusiasm from last time is bad.

Biden also seems something of an anomaly. While he isn't popular, the conviction with which that lack of popularity is felt isn't so easily measured, so something which has been an important metric for the last two presidents in particular may not be so much this time around (but it also might be)

― anvil, Sunday, November 5, 2023 7:42 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think Trump is an anomaly too, kind of in the opposite direction, people just hate his fucking guts and that seems to counteract whatever negative feeling they have about Biden and the Dems. I know what the polls say right now but I also know how every election since 2016 has gone - Trumpy candidates and Trumpy judges consistently do worse than you think, yes Trump himself is more popular but also the weight of 1/6 and trying to steal the election and 100 felony charges are hanging over him, plus Trump himself sounds like a raving lunatic and not in an entertaining way like he did when he won. so the 'god, not 4 more years of this fucking guy' factor is gonna be high too.

not saying I ain't worried, I'm incredibly worried, but there's no way he's winning by 5 points nationally

I think it does matter! Those are really, really different situations!

obviously they're different, but emotions create their own reality. a person who feels like prices have doubled has instant access to that idea, but accessing the true numbers and reducing them to the correct percentage requires multiple and usually very difficult steps. even then, if one is presented with the facts, just hearing the objectively correct information may not have any effect on the strength of an emotion or its power to dominate one's perceptions.

I think Trump is an anomaly too,

Trump is obviously anomaly in the general sense, but in this particular sense I think he fits into a pattern where its about "the guy", as it also was with Obama (and arguably Bernie and Hillary too) - both in a like and a dislike sense, they're embodiments. Biden is the least 'embodiment' figure I can think of. There's no signalling, whereas with Trump/Obama it was all signalling.

I don't necessarily know how to measure this, and some of the "he isn't liked" stuff runs into the danger of "look how empty his rallies are" territory

Electricity prices here remain almost double what they were a couple of years ago

thing is if trump gets in it won't affect electricity prices, but you'll be living under fascism and your future votes will likely be meaningless

I don't know, is that just fear speaking?

MSM freaking out about the latest polls is always great for this