If Trump ends up cheating his corrupt fat rapist ass back into the White House this November, it will be not only because of people's selfishness and stupidity, but also because the MSM has done a fantastic job at normalizing his criminal behavior.
I want to refute any claim that there were cross over votes in Pennsylvania...
The total vote counts are below. One thing to note is that there were 33% fewer votes over all in 2024 than in 2020. I'm not sure what that means but you can see that the percentages for each party are almost exactly the same. One thing this says is there was apparently no cross over. The other thing is that there are enough votes on the Democratic side to totally wallop Trump™ if all the Democrats who voted in 2020 voted for Biden. We clearly need to get out the vote.
OMG that cherrypicked "percent against" table is so insidious. "Contested primary" being the measure leaves out so much.
The whole 'unpopularity' of Biden is such a forced meme. And of course it really is because there's a Black woman too close to power in the White House.
That Independent total for Kemp, Biden and Warnock pisses me off too because of the Abrams Paradox. That should've been Stacey Abrams winning out over Kemp but for some 'strange' reason the voters there decided to fuck her over (and a significant portion of them are upset about Fani Willis). I'm STILL mad about that.
The lazy media still has two toxic ingredients baked into their DNA: horse race politics at all costs, which coincides with ‘both sides’ false equivalency. Look at the NYT graph: the numbers are shaded in a way that gives Trump a significance that isn’t there, and supports their misleading narrative.
Whether Haley endorses Trump or not won't make a difference, because I noticed her percentage of the primary vote remains virtually the same before and after she dropped out, which suggests her voters aren't so much voting for Haley as they're voting against Trump. I doubt they'd care what she says. It'd be one thing if she made a convincing argument for why Trump skeptics should come home to him, but she won't--at most, it'll be "Biden scary" which clearly hasn't worked on those voters yet.
The thing that give me fear here is the polling--it consistently shows a virtual tie, and the last two times Trump was on the ballot he overperformed his polls. He seems to draw in a lot of "occasional" voters who won't show up when he's not on the ballot, and are hard to poll, and unless the polling for 2024 has made some major correction that overly-favors Trump (which would mean Biden is really far ahead of where he is), that is ominous for fall without some major shakeup. The counterpoint to this is that while the polls show the race as tied, it also shows that it is tied in the mid-40s, meaning about 10% of voters are up for grabs, and it is possible they'll come home to Biden as the campaign heats up.
Ah right, good point--I suppose the one caveat is that possibly the general election electorate is going to poll differently (as being more made up of "occasional" voters, while primary voters are a more dedicated, smaller and more educated sub-group) which could explain his shortfall against the polls, while for general elections the polls underestimated him. But it's also just as possible that the polling since 2020 has adjusted to correct for their underestimates of Trump, and now "overestimates" him.
I'm curious what polling analysts think of this issue, and can provide insight on whether the general election polls this time around are more likely to weigh too heavily towards Biden or Trump.
It seems to me that Biden should have an easier time than, at the very least, the NY times would like. But it feels like he's doing everything in his power to keep it a horse race. I know there are decades of US foreign policy behind his inability to fully grasp the political danger regarding his stance on Israel/Palestine (to say nothing of the actual fucking danger to the people on the ground!), but who is he? Cosplay LBJ?
And now even money says he's willing to sign a tic Tok ban. Because he hasn't sown enough apathy in college ages voter with the Middle East Mr Magoo act.
If you don't think Biden understands the issues with the Israel/Hamas/Gaza/ Hezbollah/Iran better than most people on Capitol Hill, you haven't been paying attention.
While these young people have been screaming at Biden for a ceasefire, they're ignoring the fact that Hamas has refused a ceasefire time after time. Netanyahu certainly doesn't want a ceasefire, either.
I didn't say Biden didn't understand the geo-politics involved. I said he doesn't seem to grasp the accute political peril this puts him in. Or at least he seems to be blithely ignoring it.
Also, it doesn't matter what big-brained political derring-do young people are "ignoring." That's not what this is about. It's visceral. And frankly, Hamas, while a pack of evil shit-stains, aren't the ones committing an actual genocide. No one is siding with Hamas here. And to say, "Well, you can't blame Israel for mass murder and the attempted destruction of an entire civilization because the rag-tag group of asshole on the other side is being unreasonable." How's that work?
No one is defending Hamas. And you know that. Defending Palestinians, sure. Yes. And discounting the majority of young voters and their genuine (and well-placed) anger because there are some people among them who are shitheads is the same as saying Black lives don't matter because those two people set a police car on fire in that one protest.
Some, let’s say half, of these students are female. Is it possible they’ll be more interested in reproductive rights than an app that’s vacuuming up their data and sending it to Beijing? And how are these kids supposed to know who Mr Magoo was?
No. I think they are maybe ALSO upset about the curtailing of reproductive rights. But I think they can tell the bloody difference - even with their tiny, little girl brains - between Republicans taking away those rights and universities shutting down one whole side of a very important conversation (while holding stock options in the companies supplying weapons to the side they'll allow to speak) and will protest accordingly.
Tic Tok is just a side show here, but it's still a straw for that camel to carry.
And also, as the Hopium blog points out, this isn’t 1968. There aren’t young people being drafted, and the cities aren’t burning. There’s no one-two punch of the MLK RFK assasonations. I’m seriously thinking that that old stuttering man is gonna mop the floor with Trump, and that the dread Civil War II is going to be a bigger washout than the most recent rapture.
I hear you, but...I teach. At a college. These are different young people. They don't need the threat of a draft or the assasinations of beloved leaders hanging over them to be explosively reactive. They walk out of the room in collective protest if one person slips up and absent-mindedly says "he" instead of "they" in reference to a non-binary classmate. They police each other to the point of distraction all day long. They are, in the aggregate, extremely unpredictable and almost impossibly sensitive regarding the things they feel matter. And, to many of them, this maters.
Unless the polling is way off (possible, but I haven't seen any analysis showing how their sampling changed since 2020, when polls slightly underestimated Trump) it does seem Biden is having trouble with the youth vote--despite the best youth job market in generations, despite no wars killing of young Americans overseas, despite COVID largely being over, and despite student loan relief. It's as though for a lot of young people it's just not "cool" to support Biden, no matter what he does or doesn't do, and they're checked out. (FWIW, I don't think it's "Palestine" so much as that anti-Biden people are using "Palestine" as a reason to explain that they just don't like him).
Whether they'll come around and vote to prevent their futures getting completely fucked by Trump is yet to be seen. But there is a problem.
You think this is about being "cool?" This is about being seen and heard. That's what they are doing. Trying to get the people ostensibly in charge to see and hear them. And this kind of hand-waving is not helping.
Yeah some of these folks just need an excuse. There's a LOT of issues, and there's structural issues Biden/Harris have been trying to address. Unfortunately a lot of Americans follow the "great man" theory of politics too even though it requires a lot of diplomacy and cooperation to make positive change.
Elections are ultimately about vibes. Voters aren’t Vulcans. I mean, Trump did better with working class white voters than Romney/Ryan despite pursuing the same economic policies.
Clinton and Obama were both under 50 when first elected. There’s reason to believe that young voters connect more with a candidate who presents as young. It’s more personal than political. Heck, Harris is older than Clinton, Obama, and Carter were when they left office.
The upside is that Biden is doing better with suburban white and older white voters than Obama
Might they not vote Biden to impress young women with their feminism? Every young man is just one pregnancy scare away from learning the importance of access to abortion.
One would think! But I'm getting the sense that so much of this is personality driven, rather than issue driven--look at how many "educated" young people blame Biden for Roe being overturned. It's like facts don;t' ;matter.
I have likened Dobbs to a terrorist attack. If Americans got hit, we’d expect the incumbent POTUS to respond meaningfully, and even if we know they aren’t literally responsible, we’d lose confidence if it seemed as if the POTUS were helpless to act.
It’s tough for Biden bc there isn’t that much he can practically do, though some federal intervention might make it seem as if he’s actively trying.
No use for either, but you get what the party wants. I’m voting for “not Trump.”
If Trump ends up cheating his corrupt fat rapist ass back into the White House this November, it will be not only because of people's selfishness and stupidity, but also because the MSM has done a fantastic job at normalizing his criminal behavior.
I want to refute any claim that there were cross over votes in Pennsylvania...
The total vote counts are below. One thing to note is that there were 33% fewer votes over all in 2024 than in 2020. I'm not sure what that means but you can see that the percentages for each party are almost exactly the same. One thing this says is there was apparently no cross over. The other thing is that there are enough votes on the Democratic side to totally wallop Trump™ if all the Democrats who voted in 2020 voted for Biden. We clearly need to get out the vote.
2024:
Republican votes: 1,000,582 47.6%
Democratic votes: 1,100,849 52.4%
2020:
Republican votes: 1,443,499 47.7%
Democratic votes: 1,595,508 52.3%
'Dogs know best what to do with polls.'
- John Diefenbaker, Canadian Prime Minister 1957 - 1963
OMG that cherrypicked "percent against" table is so insidious. "Contested primary" being the measure leaves out so much.
The whole 'unpopularity' of Biden is such a forced meme. And of course it really is because there's a Black woman too close to power in the White House.
That Independent total for Kemp, Biden and Warnock pisses me off too because of the Abrams Paradox. That should've been Stacey Abrams winning out over Kemp but for some 'strange' reason the voters there decided to fuck her over (and a significant portion of them are upset about Fani Willis). I'm STILL mad about that.
The lazy media still has two toxic ingredients baked into their DNA: horse race politics at all costs, which coincides with ‘both sides’ false equivalency. Look at the NYT graph: the numbers are shaded in a way that gives Trump a significance that isn’t there, and supports their misleading narrative.
Whether Haley endorses Trump or not won't make a difference, because I noticed her percentage of the primary vote remains virtually the same before and after she dropped out, which suggests her voters aren't so much voting for Haley as they're voting against Trump. I doubt they'd care what she says. It'd be one thing if she made a convincing argument for why Trump skeptics should come home to him, but she won't--at most, it'll be "Biden scary" which clearly hasn't worked on those voters yet.
The thing that give me fear here is the polling--it consistently shows a virtual tie, and the last two times Trump was on the ballot he overperformed his polls. He seems to draw in a lot of "occasional" voters who won't show up when he's not on the ballot, and are hard to poll, and unless the polling for 2024 has made some major correction that overly-favors Trump (which would mean Biden is really far ahead of where he is), that is ominous for fall without some major shakeup. The counterpoint to this is that while the polls show the race as tied, it also shows that it is tied in the mid-40s, meaning about 10% of voters are up for grabs, and it is possible they'll come home to Biden as the campaign heats up.
One upside is that Trump has underperformed his polling since 2020
But Trump hasn't been on the ballot since then--couldn't this indicate that Republicans, without Trump on the ballot, are underperforming?
I hope he is being overestimated by these polls (maybe they overcorrected since 2020?) but it's hard to tell.
I was referring specifically to his primary performance. The results were usually worse than the polls suggested
Ah right, good point--I suppose the one caveat is that possibly the general election electorate is going to poll differently (as being more made up of "occasional" voters, while primary voters are a more dedicated, smaller and more educated sub-group) which could explain his shortfall against the polls, while for general elections the polls underestimated him. But it's also just as possible that the polling since 2020 has adjusted to correct for their underestimates of Trump, and now "overestimates" him.
I'm curious what polling analysts think of this issue, and can provide insight on whether the general election polls this time around are more likely to weigh too heavily towards Biden or Trump.
The problems are not just the candidates but also the constituencies. Trumpists are sheep. Dems are cats.
It seems to me that Biden should have an easier time than, at the very least, the NY times would like. But it feels like he's doing everything in his power to keep it a horse race. I know there are decades of US foreign policy behind his inability to fully grasp the political danger regarding his stance on Israel/Palestine (to say nothing of the actual fucking danger to the people on the ground!), but who is he? Cosplay LBJ?
And now even money says he's willing to sign a tic Tok ban. Because he hasn't sown enough apathy in college ages voter with the Middle East Mr Magoo act.
He'll still probably win... probably. But man...
If you don't think Biden understands the issues with the Israel/Hamas/Gaza/ Hezbollah/Iran better than most people on Capitol Hill, you haven't been paying attention.
While these young people have been screaming at Biden for a ceasefire, they're ignoring the fact that Hamas has refused a ceasefire time after time. Netanyahu certainly doesn't want a ceasefire, either.
I didn't say Biden didn't understand the geo-politics involved. I said he doesn't seem to grasp the accute political peril this puts him in. Or at least he seems to be blithely ignoring it.
Also, it doesn't matter what big-brained political derring-do young people are "ignoring." That's not what this is about. It's visceral. And frankly, Hamas, while a pack of evil shit-stains, aren't the ones committing an actual genocide. No one is siding with Hamas here. And to say, "Well, you can't blame Israel for mass murder and the attempted destruction of an entire civilization because the rag-tag group of asshole on the other side is being unreasonable." How's that work?
Defending terrorists because they're "not committing genocide" isn't the way to go about it.
And if you watch and listen to the protests, plenty of students are supporting Hamas and attacking Jews.
Strawmen all the way down.
No one is defending Hamas. And you know that. Defending Palestinians, sure. Yes. And discounting the majority of young voters and their genuine (and well-placed) anger because there are some people among them who are shitheads is the same as saying Black lives don't matter because those two people set a police car on fire in that one protest.
It's not a valid response.
Some, let’s say half, of these students are female. Is it possible they’ll be more interested in reproductive rights than an app that’s vacuuming up their data and sending it to Beijing? And how are these kids supposed to know who Mr Magoo was?
No. I think they are maybe ALSO upset about the curtailing of reproductive rights. But I think they can tell the bloody difference - even with their tiny, little girl brains - between Republicans taking away those rights and universities shutting down one whole side of a very important conversation (while holding stock options in the companies supplying weapons to the side they'll allow to speak) and will protest accordingly.
Tic Tok is just a side show here, but it's still a straw for that camel to carry.
And also, as the Hopium blog points out, this isn’t 1968. There aren’t young people being drafted, and the cities aren’t burning. There’s no one-two punch of the MLK RFK assasonations. I’m seriously thinking that that old stuttering man is gonna mop the floor with Trump, and that the dread Civil War II is going to be a bigger washout than the most recent rapture.
I hear you, but...I teach. At a college. These are different young people. They don't need the threat of a draft or the assasinations of beloved leaders hanging over them to be explosively reactive. They walk out of the room in collective protest if one person slips up and absent-mindedly says "he" instead of "they" in reference to a non-binary classmate. They police each other to the point of distraction all day long. They are, in the aggregate, extremely unpredictable and almost impossibly sensitive regarding the things they feel matter. And, to many of them, this maters.
And for the record, I don't think they're wrong.
Unless the polling is way off (possible, but I haven't seen any analysis showing how their sampling changed since 2020, when polls slightly underestimated Trump) it does seem Biden is having trouble with the youth vote--despite the best youth job market in generations, despite no wars killing of young Americans overseas, despite COVID largely being over, and despite student loan relief. It's as though for a lot of young people it's just not "cool" to support Biden, no matter what he does or doesn't do, and they're checked out. (FWIW, I don't think it's "Palestine" so much as that anti-Biden people are using "Palestine" as a reason to explain that they just don't like him).
Whether they'll come around and vote to prevent their futures getting completely fucked by Trump is yet to be seen. But there is a problem.
You think this is about being "cool?" This is about being seen and heard. That's what they are doing. Trying to get the people ostensibly in charge to see and hear them. And this kind of hand-waving is not helping.
Yeah some of these folks just need an excuse. There's a LOT of issues, and there's structural issues Biden/Harris have been trying to address. Unfortunately a lot of Americans follow the "great man" theory of politics too even though it requires a lot of diplomacy and cooperation to make positive change.
Most voters just need an excuse. That's how we got here. So I wouldn't dismiss that kind of action just because it's not rational.
Yep--almost like it's "vibes" driving this, rather than a rational decision to not support him.
Elections are ultimately about vibes. Voters aren’t Vulcans. I mean, Trump did better with working class white voters than Romney/Ryan despite pursuing the same economic policies.
Clinton and Obama were both under 50 when first elected. There’s reason to believe that young voters connect more with a candidate who presents as young. It’s more personal than political. Heck, Harris is older than Clinton, Obama, and Carter were when they left office.
The upside is that Biden is doing better with suburban white and older white voters than Obama
Might they not vote Biden to impress young women with their feminism? Every young man is just one pregnancy scare away from learning the importance of access to abortion.
One would think! But I'm getting the sense that so much of this is personality driven, rather than issue driven--look at how many "educated" young people blame Biden for Roe being overturned. It's like facts don;t' ;matter.
I have likened Dobbs to a terrorist attack. If Americans got hit, we’d expect the incumbent POTUS to respond meaningfully, and even if we know they aren’t literally responsible, we’d lose confidence if it seemed as if the POTUS were helpless to act.
It’s tough for Biden bc there isn’t that much he can practically do, though some federal intervention might make it seem as if he’s actively trying.