rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

Trump is probably gonna win and we’re gonna need this thread

the electorate is never wrong

I'm not concerned about Trump getting more votes than Biden, he almost certainly won't, but I do worry that the Supreme Court basically gave the GOP permission to disenfranchise large amounts of voters and throw away absentee ballots. I know a lotta people don't take Trump saying stuff like "vote by mail is illegitimate" seriously but lets see what happens if/when he actually loses

our catechism must be:

increasing isolation? good!
emboldening? bad!

leon czolgosz did nothing wrong

I know a lotta people don't take Trump saying stuff like "vote by mail is illegitimate" seriously

i do. i don't know why others don't. he's saying the quiet part out loud, when a more competent GOP person would just litigate it and let the GOP-selected judges do the work of disenfranchising voters. that's what they'll do under trump, too, but he's doing us the favor of yelling out his intentions so they can at least be critiqued (and hopefully counteracted).

but instead everybody's just like "keep your head down and...vote?"

or you know, try to vote, knowing that a ton of the people you need to vote with you aren't going to do it because they don't want to die

on the flip side

new @CNN poll of registered voters:

Biden 53%
Trump 42%

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) April 9, 2020

the good news is that even though voters will (once again) be disenfranchised, we're starting from an even better margin the time that h clinton lost by negative 3 million votes. and it's not due to biden being good or inspirational. he 's standing in for the steaming pile of shit in the well-worn phrase "i'd vote for a steaming pile of shit before i'd vote for donald fucking trump".

for the second time in 4 years, we've been handed a choice between donald trump and literally a steaming pile of shit

Would've bet on trump (almost did bet on biden to win democratic nomination and trump to win the general at the beginning of the year but the odds were below 2/1) but COVID throws in a dollop of unpredictability

for the second time in 4 years, we've been handed a choice between donald trump and literally a steaming pile of shit

― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone)

i'm working really hard not to play grammar police here karl, i'm trying to be a good descriptivist but i can't get over my white privilege hangup that people should not use "literally" when they mean "figuratively"

Hilary Clinton >> Joe Biden

But that's for another thread. No doubt Fred will poll them.

Hilary Clinton had a functioning brain and many people were genuinely invigorated by her candidacy

exactly

xp i call out people on the literally thing too. but the thing is, when i see donald trump, i see a big pile of shit with steam coming off of it, with a little crevice in the side moving up and down in time with the words that he speaks. he literally is a steaming pile of shit, and apparently 53% of voters also see it

she still lost white women though

Hilary Clinton >> Joe Biden

i agree too, it's a mistake to lump them into the same category. but i had to hold my nose for her all the same

She was definitely a much better candidate, but people didn't absolutely hate Trump the way they do now. hard to remember now but there was a time when a lot of online folks liked Trump b/c he was just eviscerating the GOP

I think enthusiasm for a candidate augurs success more often than people hating their opponent

Hillary would’ve made a better president and seemed smart and alert and awake but ppl hated her guts and they don’t feel the same about Biden

she did seem alert and awake! and sadly those do put her in another league, as a candidate

xp i call out people on the literally thing too. but the thing is, when i see donald trump, i see a big pile of shit with steam coming off of it, with a little crevice in the side moving up and down in time with the words that he speaks. he literally is a steaming pile of shit, and apparently 53% of voters also see it

Not that I disagree

In a just world, Hillary would be a stronger candidate than Biden, and I say that as someone who doesn't like Hillary much. But Biden Obama's VP and a good ole white guy.

it's up to Biden to fuck it up, and I trust he can do it.

yeah, i mean i'm not going to complain if you call donald trump literally a steaming pile of shit, but to call hillary clinton literally a steaming pile of shit seems slightly... hyperbolic?

I wouldn't bet a dollar on the outcome. I've generally thought GENERIC DEMOCRAT would win for the last couple of years and Trump will win people were just doomsayers, but so much of Trump's insanity seems to have been normalized and Biden is such a uniquely terrible candidate (we haven't even gotten to the BURISMA BURISMA BURISMA stage of things) that I wouldn't begin to guess how this will turn out.

but to call hillary clinton literally a steaming pile of shit seems slightly... hyperbolic?

yes, this is the part where i made a mistake, i readily admit

oh wait, and i called biden a literally steaming pile of shit, too.

welp

look in the time of coronavirus, etc etc, mistakes are made

Everyone who voted for the Iraq war is a steaming pile of shit

let me fix this for the record: we're faced with a decision between a literally steaming pile of shit and a figuratively steaming pile of shit. in 2016 the choice was between a literally steaming pile of shit and however we want to figuratively refer to hillary clinton

firm, but fair

Hillary would’ve made a better president and seemed smart and alert and awake but ppl hated her guts and they don’t feel the same about Biden

this is my one hope for 2020, people were mobilized to vote against Hillary in ways they won't be for Biden. I had coworkers who hated her guts for no discernable reason. we rag on the GOP for the way they fired off bad-faith attacks on her for 20 years but it sure as hell paid off

I wouldn't bet a dollar on the outcome. I've generally thought GENERIC DEMOCRAT would win for the last couple of years and Trump will win people were just doomsayers, but so much of Trump's insanity seems to have been normalized and Biden is such a uniquely terrible candidate (we haven't even gotten to the BURISMA BURISMA BURISMA stage of things) that I wouldn't begin to guess how this will turn out.

well the fact that "the president doesn't have a functioning brain" is now normalized is probably a point in favor of Biden now, sadly. by and large this is just what we've always known, most voters don't care about racism, corruption, lying, dead people in foreign countries, etc. etc...but once they start losing their jobs and having people they know die as a direct result of the President's incompetence, things might change. murdering 1,500,000 brown people on false pretenses didn't hurt GWB. the financial crisis and Katrina did.

I honestly don’t think Trump comes off as nearly as senile as Biden. We’re mostly judging him on content but he’s still a pretty confident speaker. Biden genuinely sounds like my 92-year old grandfather in the final year ‘decline phase.’

is this also the thread for "we're gonna have a Republican judiciary + sham elections for the rest of our lives"

however we want to figuratively refer to hillary clinton

― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone)

if you're asking my preference, i would prefer we not refer to hillary clinton, figuratively or otherwise. that's probably not a reasonable request, but it just seems like picking at an old wound that will fucking never heal over.

is this also the thread for "we're gonna have a Republican judiciary + sham elections for the rest of our lives"

― lukas

i feel like we should have a separate thread for long-term doom-mongering and we could try to keep this to 2020-only doom-mongering? but it's not my thread.

HRC is a white supremacist mass murderer who is partly responsible for this shitshow why should she get a pass

So good to finally have someone on this board who can weigh in from The Left.

HRC is a white supremacist mass murderer who is partly responsible for this shitshow why should she get a pass

shit really? Perhaps there should be some congressional hearings.

I honestly don’t think Trump comes off as nearly as senile as Biden. We’re mostly judging him on content but he’s still a pretty confident speaker. Biden genuinely sounds like my 92-year old grandfather in the final year ‘decline phase.’

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Thursday, April 9, 2020 2:52 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i agree. i think it's hard to imagine Biden beating anyone but 799 people died in my state today of the virus trump was denying was a problem about a month ago so WHO KNOWS

Dumb asshole is gonna win, ffs

This site has enough rolling 77 threads for griping.

The thread title says what it’s for, it’s for this, so it doesn’t go in other threads

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWFrynfU4AASTY5?format=jpg&name=medium

Low numbers for Biden in both Trust and Don't Trust, so he does have room to improve if he's able to become more visible

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWFrynfU4AASTY5?format=jpg&name=medium

its tough when every major news network gives a free 2 hour commercial to your opponent every single night

dems needed a big accomplishment for normal people in order to soundly win afaict

If there was one thing the Republicans were determined to do as soon as they re-took the House majority, it was to deny the dems any such big accomplishment for the past year and a half. They preferred to look like fools and incompetents, so long as the dems could get nothing of substance done.

It's like everyone criticized Dems for failing to pass a big enough stimulus when Republicans did when quite obviously what happened was those stimulus checks were passed with bipartisan support in an election year to try and help their candidate, and immediately this support vanished the moment Biden took office so they could blame him even though none of them wanted the original stimulus to begin with

They don't universally have different sets of rules - when gas prices were high under Bush, Republicans suffered. Trump's numbers were never good pre-COVID in part because people were waiting for the economy to shit the bed. (And his instability made people whose idea of a good economy is "line goes up" nervous.) All we've experienced for the past decades are a series of bubbles and their popping, even when things were going 'well' there was an expectation of something bad about to happen.

But it's not about legitimizing or treating any particular idea as reasonable (our political and economic systems are completely unreasonable - we labor under the Senate and Electoral College after all) but they're a reality you have to work with, right? What's the alternative, telling people they're morons who can't see the truth?

I feel like if there is any commonality between media, entertainment, and politics today (I almost included education), it’s the near impossibility of persuading significant numbers of human beings to pay attention to any message.

I wonder if that’s why so many Americans *embrace* authoritarian government. They just want someone with the power to cut through all the layers and MAKE IT SO (whatever IT is)

agree with that, I think. I feel like Republicans, Fox News, Newsmax etc. are very good at persuading a significant number of people to pay attention to their message

Xpost the alternative is admitting we have less control over these things than we thought abd that things other than facts and accomplishments drive votes.

Obama, btw, won re-election despite the narrative that gas prices almost doubled under him (which was technically true only because they cratered due to demand bottoming out due to decreased consumer consumption due to record costs. People stopped traveling!

That narrative didn't sink Obama, he still won handily, despite gas being at an average of 3.34 a gallon in Nov 2012.

Most of us not named Iago Galdston thought Trump was unelectable because we assumed the general public wasn't that fucking stupid and we were wrong.

Biden should do better things regarding the economy and Gaza and student loans because it's the right thing to do. But GTFO with pretending they are going to move the needle. Independents are largely vibes, low info voters. You win them with a slightly better personality and rhetoric than the other guy.

I think most Americans (left or right) would prefer to have an authoritarian leader, as long as they agreed with them policy wise.

Xpost Bush didn't open the door for Obama due to gas prices, it was due to Iraq fatigue, Katrina, and presiding over the Great Recession. Which frankly has its seeds planted during Democratic and Republican administrations. McCain just took the fall for Dubya

Gas prices the summer before Obama's election were incredibly high - $4 gallon in 2008 dollars is still the record IIRC.

and yes, that was absolutely a major factor in the lead-up to November 2008 - "“When asked in an open-ended format to name the economic or financial problem they have been hearing the most about in the news lately, fully 72% of Americans point to gas and oil prices,” the Pew Research Center wrote in June 2008. “No other issue comes close. The housing and mortgage crisis is a distant second.”"

XP^^And that was goosed by China hoarding fuel for the summer Olympics and some big Gulf hurricanes limiting off-shore production.

I'm talking about the 2012 election. Gas prices had declined to about like 2.17 a gallon by election day 2008. They went under $2 by the time Obama took office.

Romney seized on that and stated during his debate that gas prices had almost doubled from the time Obama took office to election season 2012. There was a huge, racist Super PAC billboard on I-4 around exit 87 eastbound that said "STOP, OBAMA!", that pictured a very racist caricature of Obama kneeling before two Arabs in front of a gas pump that said $5.

It was a narrative. It didn't work. People just didn't like Romney

You also referred to 2008 directly above?

In June 2008. Gas prices dropped sixty cents per gallon between September and October and almost a dollar by November.

Gas prices are the one thing that isn't vibes based. I sincerely doubt that was the defining factor by November.

June was around the time frame oil spiked at $147/barrel. Of course THEN people would cite that

I said "Obama, btw, won re-election despite the narrative that gas prices almost doubled under him (which was technically true only because they cratered due to demand bottoming out due to decreased consumer consumption due to record costs. People stopped traveling!

That narrative didn't sink Obama, he still won handily, despite gas being at an average of 3.34 a gallon in Nov 2012."

If you don't wanna read what I said tho....fine

Gas prices will definitely rise this summer because the people who control them want trump to win.

https://wapo.st/44HTW53

A choice young voters see: Upend the country too much or not enough?

I don't know what "generationally charismatic politician beat the gas narrative" illustrates, though (aside from the argument about Biden lacking "main character energy" maybe having a kernel of truth)? Economic vibes (and in that era the actual economy) did a hell of a number on Democrats nationwide from 2008-2012.

Yes it did. But not in the Presidential election. Which is what we're talking about itt.

It's almost as if significantly fewer (and different) people vote in midterms vs Presidential elections

Yeah, it's simultaneously true that Biden has some real policy/political wins, that the economy as a whole has been OK under his watch by historical standards, that those historical standards are not what people base their sense of "the economy" on, that Trump in a 2nd term would have absolutely faced the same inflation Biden did (duh it was a global phenomenon), that Biden himself has never been a super popular figure much less a beloved leader, that the U.S. right now seems like an exhausting mess from any number of political perspectives, and that when the main thing two-thirds of the country can agree on is that it's headed in the "wrong direction," it's always bad news for an incumbent.

In re YMP's WaPo linked story, the apparently strong and widespread appetite for "tearing down the system completely" is disheartening to me for the simple reason that all the mechanisms for major change that are built into the system have been rendered inoperable by the political climate, so the only avenue for "tearing down the system" would be the application of force majeure. Because the instruments of such force are already concentrated in the army, police, 'national security' apparatus, the wannabe militias, and quite a few criminals, I don't see traveling that avenue as ending in a better system or a better life for anyone who is currently oppressed by the heavy forces of wealth, property rights and white privilege, because the system as it now stands does at least exert some minimal safeguards and constraints on these forces and any such constraints would be entirely swept aside if a fascist takeover happens. The only beneficiaries would be the collaborators, not the resistance.

I don't necessarily think you should read too much into statements like that (though I don't think you should read too little either). A lot of polling has these really open ended and abstract questions that could be interpreted in a myriad of ways, or where terms like capitalism, genocide, socialism, free speech and other signifiers mean all kinds of different things at the same time - which is how we end up with people simultaneously saying "Israel is committing a genocide" and "Israel is trying its best to avoid civilian casualties". On the face of it, only one of these statements can be true, but it depends how the person who said this interpreted it, for them both can be true

Its also relevant how something tracks over time, if 13% of voters think x and 10 years later 16% of voters think x, thats not especially significant, but if its a shift from 3% to 12% thats more significant

Precisely. There were mechs put in place with thought time and effort precisely to avoid this shit. The failures of same are not so much evidence of bad foresight or design but instead of a very extreme insistence by wealth an power in defeating, disregarding, and removing them. And imo to insist “well it’s obvious those control mechs are shit and would never work, and usa needs better systems than say, the judicial one, and impeachment”…ok. but i am near a point of believing that no systems will FORCE a people to act ethically or lawfully if enough of em decide just to be fucking shit people to do v bad things. But to eviscerate or overthrow those mechs, i cannot assume anything better is remotely possible amidst chaos as the rich and armed put all other interests to the wall or under the boot. it’s bad enough and hard enough as it is. i think i get who they will make suffer, because we’ve seen it thousands of times.

after writing all this crap i re-read aimless, and it feels like a fucking re-statement. nevertheless.

"it depends how the person who said this interpreted it, for them both can be true"

i think it needs to be very clearly stated that there is no reasonable way both can be true

yes, that's a sign the poll is flawed not that large numbers of people's interpretations of reality are nonsensical

anvil: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-opt-in-polls-can-produce-misleading-results-especially-for-young-people-and-hispanic-adults/

i think it needs to be very clearly stated that there is no reasonable way both can be true

Depends on if they're using the same definition of genocide as you, and what that definition is we can't know. This is the problem with abstract terms that masquerade as definitive

not that large numbers of people's interpretations of reality are nonsensical

I don't know that interpretations of reality are necessarily nonsensical. Its just that a lot of terms aren't just interpreted differently by different people, its that they're often extremely flexible and pliable. Bernie Sanders is a socialist, millions of people love Bernie and say they support socialism - but is Bernie a socialist? and do they? I would say absolutely not, in a literal sense, but literalism is for the dictionaries

i included the word reasonable and i stand by the statement

Thats fair, but may leave you short of a full eleven

the disappointing counterpart to a baker's dozen

I don't necessarily think you should read too much into statements like that

I used the word "appetite" for a reason. Polls questions like that gauge the emotional temperature of the respondents, not their reasoned conclusions. What's disheartening to me is that mass political bodies move upon their emotions, not reasoned conclusions, and if the system denies a redress of their frustrations then those will eventually find an outlet in the act of literally "tearing the system down".

Some people believe that this is the inevitable path to a socialist revolution by the downtrodden, and in some political masses I think that would be correct. I do not see that coming to pass in the US masses, who have been propagandized from childhood to accept fascist authoritarianism in preference to socialist revolution.

New w/ @HansNichols

It’s not just public spin, Biden doesn’t believe his bad poll numbers nor do many of his top aides, per Dems who have spoken privately with the president and his team.

This informs the largely steady-as-she-goes campaign strategyhttps://t.co/Lu7ilWV59l

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) May 14, 2024

polls are skewed, i repeat, polls are skewed

Reasoned conclusions are mostly illusory but I don't think this is necessarily more or less so than at other times. But I'm not sure this is measuring emotional temperature all that highly either (though it might be the case, I don't think its a given)

I think for "tearing the system down" to be more substantive, we'd need a better idea of what people actually mean by that and with how much conviction, otherwise its too much of an abstract signal

Has there been a deep-dive into how much of Trump's base has died over the past 4 years? I feel like that number is not insignificant. Perhaps I just perform a search...

In this cohort study evaluating 538,159 deaths in individuals aged 25 years and older in Florida and Ohio between March 2020 and December 2021, excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before. These differences were concentrated in counties with lower vaccination rates, and primarily noted in voters residing in Ohio.

src: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807617

found this from a few years back:

"Excess death rates were 2.8 percentage points (15%) higher for Republican voters compared with Democratic voters (95% PI, 1.6 to 3.7 percentage points)."

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/political-party-affiliation-linked-excess-covid-deaths

xp!!

I posted that Bump piece partly in response to Neanderthal:

None of the things that are true today will change unless massive violence breaks out in the streets because nobody has to listen to the average American anymore otherwise. But few seem to have the stomach because for most, things rarely get bad enough to the point where they feel they have no other choice. It's a persistent state of "wow this is really bad but I still have much to lose and I have family that I can't make these decisions for".

The only major movements in making change have come through civil disobedience, civilian uprising through obstruction, or rioting.

That definition of "tearing the system down" seems more prevalent than, I dunno, a new convention in Philadelphia with powdered wigs 'n' shit.

thanks for that piece, YMP

"Excess death rates were 2.8 percentage points (15%) higher for Republican voters compared with Democratic voters (95% PI, 1.6 to 3.7 percentage points)."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzvk0fWtCs0

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/07/voter-age-biden-trump-2024-election-00150923

fwiw, biden is starting to run away with the 65+ group.

some of that is probably real political realignment (e.g. perhaps people are now getting more small c "conservative" as they age, i.e. preferring the low risk option, rather than more republican per se).

but it's totally plausible that some of biden's improvement in that group is due to the its composition changing because the republican members were more likely to die during the pandemic.

the job creators (*peace be unto them*) are anticipating a january '25 2scoops restoration, merely

https://thehill.com/business/4666442-all-three-major-stock-indexes-close-at-record-highs/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/17/upshot/they-supported-biden-in-2020-what-made-them-change-their-minds-in-2024.html

There are a lot of people who are a) unhappy with the state of the country and the economy, and b) perceive Biden as weak/incompetent/in over his head. They may not personally like Trump (or even hold conservative beliefs), but they view him as strong and able to shake things up.

Cool.

I mean, he will shake things up. The people who voted for him, he'll shake them up as bad as most.

It's possible we're going to see a lot of one-term turnover in the White House as the new norm in the U.S.

That story isn't saying anything we haven't heard repeatedly.

Oh, for sure, I just feel like it crystallizes things. Like, forget about everything else: This is what the election is going to come down to.

I still don't understand how someone who is not insane can look at Trump and see him as "competent".

Shaking things up is always a net positive, just ask any infant