rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

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

xpost

Biden is a fascist should-be-retiree

Is this a common sentiment here? The ‘fascist’ bit in particular.

Biden doesn't have the charisma or ambition of a wannabe fascist.

I don’t think Biden’s a fascist, he’s a neoliberal centrist, at least by conventional standards of US politics. Those standards probably need to be updated, but if anything he’s more left now than he was 20 years ago.

xp

Fair but seems like the only ambition it requires at this point is a willingness to compromise with the other side and to put personal profit about whatever vague notions of institutional resilience he may cling to.

Anyway was going to add the caveat of keeping Israel issues in their own thread there. Asking a lot I know but the reaction to recent events really seem to be shifting folks’ frame of reference on the fashie perspective.

I'd say per capita, fewer people on ILX think Biden's a fascist than compared with the U.S. populace at large. But also, per capita, more people in the U.S. at large don't know the definition of fascism.

Someone who wants you to wear a mask

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?

Well, that's why I specified here, right? My prices between contracts actually wound up the tiniest hair more than double (not due to anything Biden did or did not do as I said) from 7.3 cents/kwH in my previous contract to 14.9 - and I had to sign a 3 year contract to get that.

That's a number (completely out of Biden's control) that plays a big role in making people feel like "the economy is not great" (which gets dumped on the President, as always). When I renew in July (breaking my contract would cost $200/mo) it will probably drop down to only 25-30% more than 2020 because natural gas prices have decreased.

Even at just a 25-30% increase nationally when you're talking about people with 3 bedroom single family homes, that difference is more than the $150/mo I got hit with.

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

Did you think that statement equaled "so I'm going to vote for Trump" or something?! It would be impossible for my future votes to be less meaningful than they have been for my entire life in any case.

I think it’s not impossible that one can disapprove general of the job Biden is doing and yet vote for him, if it comes to that. For me, a vote for Biden is without enthusiasm but he’s been good with getting liberal judges confirmed and I would like to be able to vote again in my lifetime, ideally for President Whitmer in 2028.

Also Milo you live in Texas don’t you, with its weird isolated electric grid? Is that an issue with the cost of energy there?

Texas is the actual victim of an Enron-style violation they attempted in California and got busted right

viborg, afaic the US is a fascist police state, I am in the minority on ILX and elsewhere in this godforsaken pit.

High electricity prices are why the Texas electric grid is isolated, not the other way around. ERCOT keeps the grid isolated from the two big US grids because that way they are exempt from FERC oversight and can price gouge, like they did during the February 2021 freeze.

Table is that mainly based on institutional racism? I’d certainly agree that applies in Tuscaloosa but not so sure about Oakland. Fewest cops per capita iirc.

Yes, our electricity is fucked because of deregulation (which is why I said the actual problem was entirely out of Biden's hands) - and actually I think when I renew I may still be as fucked as now because they're letting Oncor raise delivery charges 30+% because of the blizzard, cover Abbott's donors' losses, etc.. I've mostly stopped looking at my actual electricity bill because it's depressing.

My belief is that the President is functionally our Vibeseater. Regardless of his ability to control the vibes - high interest rates, less disposable income, global strife, American empire looking pretty shaky, etc. - the President's approval is inseparable from them. The reactionaries' war on women and LGBTQ+ people also factors into that - but as we saw in the midterms it isn't doing Biden's reputation any favors but voters recognize that the reactionaries are the direct cause of those bad vibes and vote accordingly.

Table is that mainly based on institutional racism? I’d certainly agree that applies in Tuscaloosa but not so sure about Oakland. Fewest cops per capita iirc.

Ok sure but that doesn’t actually reflect the discussion I see here or with any actual people I personally know, seems more like you’re coasting on a feeling based on your sense of the vibes. I mean sure if you take mainstream centrist discourse as crucial then I could see it but who really does now aside from Alfred?

The truth is my family can be annoyingly centrist and I often avoid these discussions with them now so maybe that is part of your milieu, or you have some close circle of friends including centrist dipshits that you actually engage with on these grounds? Personally I just try to tune out the NYT and all the pundit class for the most part now, they’ve become entirely inconsequential imo.

I don’t engage with centrists except on ILX and when I hang around my parents, who are center-left in most ways.

I’m not sure what you mean about “vibes” but I’ve held the beliefs I hold for all of my adult life, and they’ve only become stronger the longer I’m alive.

I was really just riffing off Milo’s post there, plz to disregard. I’m also not familiar with Wojnarowicz’s take on our brownfield reality but that touches on a major issue of distinction between Biden and Trump — while Joe has made some serious missteps on climate policy, he’s far from being the mouthpiece for the worst industry-backed disinformation that Trump is. Our environment in America is doing well for the most part now apart from our ridiculous carbon footprint.

I mean sure if you take mainstream centrist discourse as crucial then I could see it but who really does now aside from Alfred?

how do you mean? If you mean "I read it" or "I experience it," then sure. I consider myself lib-leftist and way to the left of many local Dem colleagues. I agree with Wojnarowicz: many of our choices are false ones. But between Biden and Trump I see a real choice however much Biden, who wasn't even my third choice in 2020, disgusts me