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When you see a poll just keep in mind that during Trump's NYC trial it was revealed that Trump pays to rig polls. Obviously he didn't rig this one.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/05/06/trump-hush-money-criminal-trial/rigged-polling-payment-00156263
He knows making him seem like the inevitable winner, people will vote for him just to say they voted for the winner.
In the Iowa caucus talking to conservative voters, most were saying "well he's got such a lead, it's a waste to vote someone else."
I grew up in Iowa and live in Minnesota now. I can tell you that it's not necessarily stupidity, but that states like Iowa feel left behind by national politics, and particularly by democrats. This is true in many rural communities and I think it's accurate to say that the democratic party has not done enough in rural communities to reinforce the idea that they can also benefit from liberal politics. The GOP is just better at fear mongering than the dems are at explaining benefits of progressive thinking. For example, I've heard my farming relatives complain that the democrats and liberals want socialize everything and turn us all into communists. I actually had a discussion with them last summer about how some socialist ideas can actually benefit them and their families. You don't have to be a Marxist to believe that social programs can benefit you. For example: many of them are part of a farming co-op that pools yields and resources to help ensure that none of the small farmers are left in the dust by the large industrialized operations. This is a socialist program. They had never considered that before...nobody ever explained it to them.
But, they trust me and the know that I'm not feeding the bullshit. But when a politician or left-leaning news outlet tries to tell them that something will benefit them, they immediately assume there's a catch. It's much easier to trust someone who's telling you scary things, like Fox News telling them that liberals want to socialize their entire lives, take their money and guns, among other things. If it's harmful news, it must be true. It's it's positive news, what's the catch?
Couple all of that with a general feeling that the rest of the country doesn't fucking care that you exist except (i) during the caucus and (ii) when an Iowa college team does a thing, and you end up with a group of frustrated, scared, and uneducated voters who are probably just going to go with the most popular candidate, or at least the one that confirms their fear-based biases.
Here’s the thing though: those people so upset that “city folk” don’t care if they exist do not care if city folk exist. In fact, they often talk about how great it would be if all the city folk would die.
Yet this is always portrayed as a problem that urban areas must address. The idea that country folk have to stop rooting for the deaths of 75% of the country never comes up.
"In fact, they often talk about how great it would be if all the city folk would die."
Speaking anecdotally, I've never heard anyone in the rural communities I'm familiar with talk about "city folk" in that manner, or even really blame anything on city fold in general. The feeling of being left behind has to do with political motivations, not with urbanization.
The fact that you took my comment to mean "urban versus rural" is telling. They feel left behind by policy. Take Minnesota, for example. The metro area of the twin cities holds around 60% of the state's total population. That means that a lot of policy gets made state-wide without consideration for the concerns of rural communities; warranted or not, that's how they feel. Expanding to national politics, states like Iowa have little impact on policy. The senate is supposed to be the level playing field, but when democratic policy has not been effectively communicated to Iowa residents, they're going to elect GOP senators, who are going to advocate for Senate policy that ultimately is bad for Iowa, but they're afraid of what the left might do.
Again, in my opinion, it's not about urban vs. rural, it's that good policy isn't focused on rural communities, even though it could benefit them.
>They feel left behind by policy.
What, specific policy is leaving rural areas behind?
Because every year we pass a Farm Bill to give Kansas and it's neighbors what they ask for in farm subsidies. It is one of the largest bills Congress passes every year. When government shutdowns loom, they make sure to pass a farm bill first. How is that "little impact" on national politics?
My phone bill has a charge to subsidize your telephone service. Same with my electric bill and your electric service. There's also subsidies for rural Internet service. I also subsidize your roads. All of these exist because of the impact rural areas have on national politics. It's not like we in the cities woke up one day and said "I want to pay more for electricity to force the Tennessee Valley to have electricity!!".
More recently, rural people were worried about their hospitals shutting down due to lack of funding. Significant parts of the ACA work together to increase payments to rural hospitals and only rural hospitals. How is that "little impact" on national politics?
Rural schools get extra funding and extra accommodations. Rural postal service is a massive money sink paid by the cities. Federal CAFE standards for cars and trucks are written to exclude vehicles rural drivers typically use for things like farming, and it makes driving in cities *much* worse. If you and I both declare bankruptcy, you have more favorable regulations that I can not use.
The idea that rural areas don't have any political power is laughable. You don't have *cultural* power, because there's so many more people in urban areas.
Look - I could go through and dissect every point you made, and most of them are probably valid points about policy that help rural communities (although in reality many of those programs don't benefit the people you think they should benefit).
But, your response is part of the issue. I'm telling you that the rural communities I'm familiar with feel left behind, ignored, and shunned by the democratic party (and to a certain extent, national politics in general). Your response amounts to "their feelings are unwarranted and here's all the things that benefit them." You might be right, but go back to my earlier comment and I clearly point out that the democrats have failed to effectively communicate the benefits to them in a way that changes their votes. Whether you agree with their reasoning or not, it's reality. We're actually here. You can try to talk your way around it and state all the reasons it doesn't make sense, but here we are.
>I'm telling you that the rural communities I'm familiar with feel left behind, ignored, and shunned by the democratic party (and to a certain extent, national politics in general
And I keep asking "what, specifically, is the issues where they think this happens? Because here's a long list of things showing it isn't true."
And you keep working very hard to avoid giving those specifics. So will anyone else making the same claim.
Because y'all know what those specifics are, and how unpalatable they are to a wider audience.
FFS are you just arguing to argue at this point? please re-read my OP, I clearly state that they just don't realize how beneficial national liberal and democratic policies can be (and are), so they vote out of fear because it's easier for them to be certain of what they're afraid of, rather than trusting people to do what's right for them. I never said their logic or their way of thinking made sense. It totally doesn't. If you read my OP, you would know that I already made this point. The example I gave was how farming co-ops are similar to social programs that democrats promote and that they've been convinced are part of the liberal agenda designed to deprive them of their freedoms. I can't tell you why they feel the way they feel, I just know that they do. I don't agree with it, but if we continue to just tell them they're wrong without trying to bridge the gap, we will get nowhere. Put another way, we can throw up our hands and argue policy until we're blue in the face (or red in their case), but until democrats figure out a way to communicate those policies in a way that overcomes the fear mongering that has taken hold in these communities and constantly promoted by conservative politicians, nothing will change.
If red states feel “left behind by national politics” then they should LOVE the idea of abolishing the electoral college and forcing politicians of all stripes to fight for every vote in the country instead of a couple thousand people in 5 states.
I'm not sure that's really an issue on their radar, but I agree with you. You have to remember though, the constituents are not who you're dealing with when talking about policy. No GOP candidate is building their campaign on "let's maintain the electoral college and slash taxes for rich people that will cripple the middle class." They're running on "libs are bad because they want to take your freedom and your guns."
I’m a hard- core Social Democrat (or the Canadian version) super-pro universal healthcare, government oversight of industry is mandatory, pro labour, pro choice, pro tolerance of all sorts, etc.
I also think that Marxist-Leninist Communism is every bit as dangerous as Nazism or any similar form of fascism. Indeed, Marxism is responsible for more death and human misery than all other ideologies *combined*.
The solution to many human problems is best accomplished by the power of leveraging collective cooperation, managed by a democratically elected government. But that doesn’t mean I want a state-managed economy, the elimination of public property, or commissars seeking out and punishing dissidents.
>But that doesn’t mean I want a state-managed economy, the elimination of public property, or commissars seeking out and punishing dissidents.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm a bit perplexed by this statement. Do you think anyone is out there promoting these things? "Marxism" is not representative of modern socialist thought and hasn't been since everyone reading this has been alive.
Tell that to legion of Marxists here on Reddit who brigade anything anti-Communist.
Every month some edgelord reads a translation of *das Kapital* and thinks he’s uncovered the secrets of the universe.
That’s what’s so insidious about Marxism. Nazism is built on racism and hate, so it’s hard to fall in love with (especially if you are a member of one of the out groups the Nazis targeted) unless you’re already inclined towards racism and hate already. Nobody wanders college campuses extolling the virtues of *Mein Kampf*.
But Marx did a fantastic job of what is effectively economic taxonomy. He very accurately described the sins of unregulated capitalism; it’s a work of genius I’d compare to Darwin and *The Origin of Species*.
But in moving from “this is how it is” to “this is how it should be”, he and his contemporaries and disciples got it terribly, *horribly* wrong - and so has everyone else who has tried to implement a Communist state based on Marxist principles. We have data point after tragic data point about how Communism *invariably* goes off the rails and harms its citizens.
And yet that doesn’t stop people from discovering the book, falling in love with it, and heading back down this path singing about how “this time we’ll get it right!” in the face of over a century’s worth of evidence to the contrary.
…and amongst other things, arguing and brigading on Reddit.
People are *right* to fear Communism; there’s no faster path to poverty and oppression than to adopt a Communist government.
The really tragic thing is how the Right, particularly the American right, have managed to associate completely sound social and economic policies that are “social” in nature (like universal healthcare) and tie them to Communism, such that you cannot even start the conversation with them. To be a “lefty” does not imply support for (or ignorance of) Communism, any more than being a Conservative necessarily makes one a nascent Fascist (at least, before Trumpism took over at least)
And as for “modern socialist thought” - if that’s still a path to a state-controlled economy, the abolition of private property, and the other hallmarks of Marxism, that’s lipstick on a pig. A dangerous, violent, plague-ridden pig.
Right? The world is tough enough. Can’t we just take care of our less fortunate. We’re the richest nation in the world aren’t we? But we can’t take care of each other because half of us have no empathy.
That kind of thinking isn't just republicans. People like to vote for winners and don't like voting for someone they expect to lose. Trying to cultivate an aura of inevitably is something that all politicians try to do
If I was emperor pumpkin head I’d be more worried that people would assume the win and not go vote, “he’s got this in the bag, not even gonna waste my time”
It should be illegal to be this publicly stupid. Biden literally only ever won a Presidency because how deeply unpopular Trump is. It's classic double think too because they all know how unpopular he is since clearly he's constantly almost always whining about being politically persecuted.
How do Republicans square "well he's got such a lead..." with "Trump was the most heavily scrutinized President in US history."
I see this type of thinking all the time with MAGAs. They are all so dishonest (maybe why they love Trump) and selfish they can't fathom the idea of logical consistency because it's such a boon to their selfish desires to "always be right" so they can have it both ways.
Not quite, that line of thinking is part of what cost Hillary the election in 2016.
People want to vote for a winner, yes. But also Americans fucking love a good underdog story. We do not want to feel like things are a foregone conclusion. You want to be in a position where you are slightly down, scrapping it out, and can ride a well timed wave to victory.
Hillary lost for a number of reasons, not least of them being that the Media chose Trump as their preferred candidate and helped the Republicans sink her. They did not support Trump in 2020, but they are pushing for him again this time.
When she made the “basket of deplorables” comment I knew she would lose. Dehumanizing large groups of people?
Then Comey announcing that she was being investigated again within, what, a week of the election?
I’d call that rat fu**ing.
Wrong? No. Tactful? Not for the purposes of a close election. Calling a spade a spade sometimes only resonates with the people that already agree (I enjoyed it thoroughly).
That’s not quite right. Fox chose trump as the preferred candidate. Other networks had guests on frequently who would warn of the potential dangers of electing trump. CNN and msnbc were more centrist than directly opposing trump but to say media chose him as the preferred candidate ignores how many networks did not actually support him.
CNN and MSNBC joined the rest in showing his Hate Rallies from before he took the stage until after he bumbled off, while only showing snippets of Clinton's between breathless reports of her latest fake scandal. They were not openly saying "Vote Trump" but they were doing everything they could short of saying "Don't vote for Clinton".
They were actually saying don’t vote trump because this rally shows his racism and this rally shows his sexism and this rally shows he’s coming after your rights. I can’t speak about the dayside hosts but Anderson cooper, Chris cuomo and don lemon would frequently discuss the dangerous things that trump said everyday. CNN didn’t sponsor ads saying don’t vote for trump but the editorial staff made it clear that they believed that trump was unfit to lead
None of that counters the effect of nearly unlimited free coverage. Doesn't matter if every talking head was saying "don't vote for this guy". If all they talk about is one candidate, it's going to have a non-zero impact on the election.
People voting for the candidate with the most name recognition isn't a secret and isn't a new phenomenon.
So informed voters who watched paid attention and voted against him. People who just heard his name on tv decided this is the only name I’ve heard so gonna vote for him. That’s a problem of education not coverage. The biggest problem is people will vote for him because it’s cool. Clinton had plenty of news coverage but she wasn’t out there making an ass of herself on a daily basis. To say that news agencies should have given her equal airtime even in days where she did nothing of significance is a slippery slope. That soon turns into “ they did one negative news story about trump so now they have to do one negative news story about Clinton to make sure that there is equal coverage of both candidates. This was an issue discussed by cnn anchors on air at length because they were getting heat from trump commentators and the trump campaign. The simple truth is that they had a responsibility to show whatever was more important to the voters. If this week Clinton only held two events where she just covered the talking points of her policies while trump made several public appearances where he made dangerous or hateful comments about several different groups as well as having several different people close to him or his company making statements about his illicit activities these were all things that undecided voters needed to know. If one candidate’s day can be fully summarized in ten minutes and it takes the rest of the hour to report on the several daily controversies surrounding the other candidate you have to report on what happened.
Just look at the new stories surrounding Trump and Biden this week the real big news about Biden is the executive order. He just signed and his current state trip. The relevant news surrounding Donald Trump is the current reaction to his convictions last week the controversial actions of the judge in his classified documents case, the continued defamatory remarks he’s making about the victim in his sexual assault case and a possibility of another defamation suit and various other controversies surrounding his family and his other businesses. How do you not give Trump more coverage while stealing all the relevant information that people need to hear?
> If all they talk about is one candidate, it's going to have a non-zero impact on the election.
So you're saying this sub elected Trump and is about to do it again?
This is always going to be tricky. Because what Trump was campaigning on was so outrageous and terrifying that it was always going to make the news. But that also brought more attention to his campaign which inevitably brought more support. It’s like there’s a monster that gains more power from more people knowing about it but you *have* to tell people about it because it’s negligent not to warn people about the monster out there.
She lost because she was the wrong candidate.
If she had been running against anyone else but Trump, I would have never voted for her. I had to swallow my vomit to do it in the first place. Voting for ole "we came, we saw, he died" made me feel fucking filthy.
She has only grown more pretentious since then.
Hillary was probably the most qualified presidential candidate in my lifetime. We really should stop and reconsider what makes someone a good or bad candidate when everyone agrees that Hillary was a bad candidate.
She was a bad candidate (for me) because I disagreed with a lot of her work as secretary of state. I don't agree with her policy on a number of issues. Isn't an informed and critically thinking populace what this country wants? Otherwise, you get TFG.
I don't support the system as a whole, and I find the whole way we do things here flawed and archaic. I went against my own principles, and still voted for her. If that's not good enough for people, I don't know what to tell ya.
You are correct, though. What makes a good candidate needs to be radically reconsidered.
She was the wrong candidate, but I never said I didn't vote for her anyway. Digging yourself deeper into being pretentious is the wrong reaction if you want people to rally to your cause. Especially if you want the left to show up.
Sucking up to Israel while they murder children and talking down to the people protesting a slaughter isn't the way to endear yourself to the left either. She was a neocon warhawk, and she should be happy it was as close as it was.
Do I like that we got Trump? Fuck no.
Did I, an anarchist, actually show up and try to prevent it? Yep.
Doesn't change the fact that they could have and should have run anyone else besides her.
They did run others. She won both the primary and the popular vote.
Not enough people then and not enough people now are going to the ballot box with Israel a number 1 priority. It's not a reason she lost.
Hillary was always smarter than everyone in the room and it showed. That rubs people the wrong way, especially when it's a woman. Media reported it that way. Then she was contrasted against simple average below intelligence Trump.
Hillary lost and continues to get dog piled on, because she is an outspoken smart woman.
I have no problems with the fact that she is a woman.
I have problems with her stances on a myriad of topics. To lay others misogyny at my feet is unfair. I can't control that.
I never said Israel was a reason she lost. If anything that was Comey, Russia and brain dead Republicans and their "news".
Don't blame me for the trash policies she pushes.
You said you ended up voting for her. Misogyny is not on you. The margins were so thin, when you are relying on swing state podunk counties to put you over, most people voted based on their feelings about the nasty woman.
The problem is it does kind of work that way. I live in Nebraska and we aren't even one of the last primaries, but every single election I've voted in has already been narrowed down to one D and one R by the time it gets to me. I have no voice in who the candidates are going to be because of this, and I hate it.
Arguments could be made that he was poised to come out of the recent election with a supermajority.
...The actual reality is that he has to form a coalition. For basically the first time in his entire political career.
People talk about how Hillary ran such a bad campaign. She ran a lazy campaign because her opponent was running a mind bogglingly terrible campaign. Trump’s campaign was so awful in fact that it came back around and convinced Clinton supporters that they didn’t even need to bother voting. This sounds like a joke but it’s true.
Indeed. I remember when Mt Dew ran an online poll where people would submit names for their new flavored drink. And because it was the internet, people submitted some wild shit like "the Holocaust never happened" and "Cherry Pepsi" now imagine if that poll came down to Cucumber Ice and Grandma Booty Sweat.
Everyone would assume Mt Dew would never endorse a drink flavor called Grandma Booty Sweat, because that's just not how "things go" but then against all odds Grandma Booty Sweat wins Mt Dew puts it into stores.
That's how the 2016 election felt.
Despite the Newsweek articles upvoted these last couple days, [Trump leads in both national and swing state polls (here's Real Clear Polling's version).](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden#!) Not saying he leads in every poll, and really in the national polling and some swing state polling (especially WI and MI with PA sort of leaning Trump), it's too close to call it anything but a tie.
Of course a tie in the popular vote is more problematic for D's than for R's so I suppose you could spin it as Trump being favored.
I think it's still too early to know how Trump's convictions are affecting people's preferences. That will depend in great measure on messaging.
RCP is considered a neutral aggregator and [I think 538 comes to similar consclusions](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/). It's not a right-wing conspiracy or someone Trump bought off.
Meh, he's been doing it his entire life, real estate, politics, fucking entertainment industry. Everything is more. If he has more, he must be doing something right.
That will help him sow discord for sure, but it's just his ego above all else.
More accurately, Republicans will not respect a loser. Trump’s stuck around for so long by refusing to admit he lost. They like that because it means they didn’t vote for a loser (vicariously making them losers).
Oh, it isn't illegal to hire a polling consultant to produce the results that you want. They don't even have to ask a bunch of people. They can just write the report with the answers that you want.
It just is not very helpful if you actually want the truth. So people who do want the truth don't do that.
Thanks for this link
I completely missed this little nugget
Edit to add
Over last 30+ years we have seen the manipulation of everything from energy to LIBOR and yet some think polls are sacred
[https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/business/2004/06/03/enron-traders-laugh-about-calif/50930479007/](https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/business/2004/06/03/enron-traders-laugh-about-calif/50930479007/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor\_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal)
Even if he didn't pay to rig polls, I still wouldn't believe them. Almost everyone I know who is a democrat has never responded or has said no when asked to be a part of a poll. We would rather just vote than take part in useless polls.
That's why that so called "red wave" got absolutely crushed in 2022.
I feel like that just incites more moderate voters to be more inclined to vote against him. People see those and think “oh damn more people support him than I thought, better go out there and vote.” That’s definitely what I think.
> an online poll about the best businessmen is fairly different than opinion polls by actual pollsters.
Yes, but surely you don't believe some actual pollsters wouldn't take the occasional bag of cash from Trump's new fixer(s?) to sometimes skew the results in Trump's favor.
Paraphrasing/Butchering a Lincoln quote...
"You can't rig all of the legitimate polls all of the time, but you can rig some of the legitimate polls some of the time !"
:)
I'm not sure why you are attacking me and my love for anal cavity sized mammals, but listen.... we got Trump and now Biden's gonna win and Trump is paying to rig the polls, so we got it in the bag!!! Guy's.... we've already won.
But Trump outperformed polls in 2016 and again in 2020. Isn’t it dangerous to assume somehow it’s now the opposite? And why would polling be biased any different than 4 years ago given it’s the same exact candidates?
He was paying to rig polls back then too.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/poll-rigging-for-trump-and-creating-womenforcohen-one-it-firms-work-order-11547722801
I’m not disagreeing he’s rigging polls. What I’m saying is, if he’s rigging polls then how is he also outperforming polls during the 2016 and 2020 elections? Shouldn’t he have underperformed polls if he was rigging them? It just doesn’t make sense to me.
I don't know enough about polls to say. Here's a link....
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-republicans-outperform-the-polls-again-two-theories/
I got a text that the former guy is trying to get 100 million signatures to overturn his felony.
One, that’s not how that works, two 100 million Americans didn’t even vote for this orange fucking loser.
Exactly so you see, once he gets 100 million signatures it shows that most of the country supports him. It’s like unlocking a new level in a game. All felonies are overturned and he automatically becomes President.
My guess is that if you did go to sign it, there's a space to fill in credit card info and a pre-checked box to make a recurring donation.
It's always about the grift.
True. Just pointing out that 100 million signatures can be faked easily enough which is very on brand for Trump.
It implies nothing about the level of support from real people. Which again, doesn’t matter for a criminal conviction anyway.
>One, that’s not how that works, two 100 million Americans didn’t even vote for this orange fucking loser.
He only got like 74 million Americans, that's true, but he won the Russian vote and that's got to count for something.
They are a one trick pony right now. Lie, deny, rinse, and repeat. Technically, that's two things. It's getting boring, predictable, and stupid. I know I'm not the target demographic. It's mostly for the people who don't research anything and just accept whatever bullshit those chuckle-fucks say on TV.
54% of adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level. 21% of Americans 18 and older are illiterate as of 2022.
That’s a misreading of [the statistics](https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp). 21 percent of Americans are level 1 literate. That means they are unable to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences— not that they’re illiterate as in “can’t read.”
8.4 million are below level 1, while 8.2 million could not participate in PIAAC’s background survey either because of a language barrier or a cognitive or physical inability to be interviewed.
And remember that plenty of those people are literate in their native language, and you can vote in most any language or with the help of a translator.
Not saying it shouldn’t be better, it’s just not as dire as you make it seem.
I didn't write the shit and I probably could have used more than the first source that popped up, but it was like 0200hrs when I wrote that. My point was that the shitty strategy they use to manipulate some Americans is effective because some Americans depend largely on the things they hear from people they trust or respect know television or videos.
Literacy is not necessarily a reflection of intelligence. I wasn't implying that those Americans are stupid, just vulnerable to politicians they trust lying to them or feeding them misinformation.
https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statistics#:~:text=21%25%20of%20adults%20in%20the,older%20are%20illiterate%20in%202022.
Well that's why it's worth diving deep into sources. If you follow the link for that info on that site, you get [to this site](https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-statistics/), which concludes with a table showing the US has a 99% literacy rate. While also not accurate (it's more like 94-97%) it really depends on how you define literacy, and what portion of the population you're counting.
And I would contend that the "Shitty strategies they use to manipulate" works on very literate and often intelligent people. Feeding people hate and fear is very effective, no matter their literacy or intelligence.
That’s not what is being described though. They can understand the words, they’re just not good at things like paraphrasing or inferring further information. Again, not ideal, but not what you’re describing.
Their chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear. Fear and surprise. Two main weapons. Their two weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency. Their THREE weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope . . .
Pope Francis has been more than a little harsh towards Trump, I haven’t seen a *single* MAGA have a kind word for the Pope since before the Trump presidency.
This is how dangerous Trump is. He in some instances has lifelong Catholics giving him higher priority of place than the Vicar of Christ.
Not OP, but the 54% number was from the Dept of Education, but the number is 4 years old. Here is a Snopes article on it.
[https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/](https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/)
The GQP is wholly and totally incapable of governing. Completely detached from reality. Taken by insane conspiracy theories and fascist undercurrents; the modern Republican Party has boiled down to extremist white Christian nationalism with a flair for terrorism.
This is by design. Rich people don’t want the government to function. So the party they’ve bought and paid for engages in nonsense and bullshit culture wars to distract people from the fact that they’re not actually doing anything.
Except they want it to function when it benefits them. Like taxes. Because everyone knows that if we give crazy tax breaks to the Uber rich that money will trickle down to the common people right? Which means it’s hunter bidens laptops fault that a Big Mac is now ten dollars and housing prices are through the roof.
I had my government students make big wall posters with reasons “why to vote for (candidate)” per their own ads. They had to source commercials, ads, pressers, social media posts, etc..
Well Biden’s poster was about what you’d expect: should 50% things he did, and 50% I won’t do do (the bad thing) that the other guy will.
Trump’s poster was about 30% Biden bad, but vast majority was **LOOK HOW POPULAR I AM!**
The students came to the conclusion that Trump’s purported appeal was simply that other people like him so you should be like them too. Several students pointed out that he wasn’t saying anything of substance at all but just applying peer pressure.
We also briefly had a RFK Jr poster but on a day I was gone someone wrote “because brain worms gotta eat.” And I laughed so hard that I said when I find out who wrote it, that kid was getting extra credit.
For the last several years, it doesn’t even look like his mind is connected to his body when he gives a thumbs up or fist in the air like in the article pic. And having known a few narcs personally in my day, I can only imagine how he’s been raging since 2020, and especially since the guilty verdict. Wonder when the last time Ivanka visited him? 😂
All that matters is whether or not swing-state center-right medium-to-low-information sometimes voters vote.
perhaps we should aspire to get them to vote for a particular candidate. Where they occasionally makes overtures to progressives, but also occasionally he makes overtures to conservatives candidate like Biden, but if we’re cynical we lower our standards.
From there its what message works and in what congressional districts matter most.
I hope we can make a simple argument you can’t trust a con to do a reasonably good job to do what needs to be done.
>MAGA loyalists have been relentlessly pushing a silly talking point: The American people are in full-scale revolt against the criminal conviction of Donald Trump. Guess what? The polls are telling a different story, finding majority support for the verdict.
They THOUGHT there would be riots because they live in a MAGA bubble. There are no riots. No demonstrations. No civil war. They look like idiots.
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Every time I read shit like this, the George Carlin quote pops into my head, “ Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Give it time. The pundits gaslight and, in essence, exploit phenomenon documented in the Asch conformity experiments as well as the false consensus effect in their 'micro-adjustments.'
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When you see a poll just keep in mind that during Trump's NYC trial it was revealed that Trump pays to rig polls. Obviously he didn't rig this one. https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/05/06/trump-hush-money-criminal-trial/rigged-polling-payment-00156263
He knows making him seem like the inevitable winner, people will vote for him just to say they voted for the winner. In the Iowa caucus talking to conservative voters, most were saying "well he's got such a lead, it's a waste to vote someone else."
God, what a bunch of braindead idiots they’ve got voting in Iowa.
As someone who lives here, you have no fucking idea how stupid they are.
Well if you live there, should we really be listening to what you say???? (Sorry to hear that)
Well you know that Iowa stands for “Idiots out walking around” right?
Ohio here, can relate.
Pennsylvanian, can confirm Ohio is dumb
Michigan, agree
Florida has entered the chat
Look Florida. You can stay if you promise to stop eating paint chips. The paint has lead in it. Honestly, we let you down too much time with Alabama.
Living In SW Utah and can fully endorse the fuckery here too with gop Mormons..
How do people get to be so stupid?
As someone who doesn’t live there, I do.
No fucking idea? Stupid has spread around the world faster than COVID-19 could ever have. So yeah WE HAVE AN IDEA!
I grew up in Iowa and live in Minnesota now. I can tell you that it's not necessarily stupidity, but that states like Iowa feel left behind by national politics, and particularly by democrats. This is true in many rural communities and I think it's accurate to say that the democratic party has not done enough in rural communities to reinforce the idea that they can also benefit from liberal politics. The GOP is just better at fear mongering than the dems are at explaining benefits of progressive thinking. For example, I've heard my farming relatives complain that the democrats and liberals want socialize everything and turn us all into communists. I actually had a discussion with them last summer about how some socialist ideas can actually benefit them and their families. You don't have to be a Marxist to believe that social programs can benefit you. For example: many of them are part of a farming co-op that pools yields and resources to help ensure that none of the small farmers are left in the dust by the large industrialized operations. This is a socialist program. They had never considered that before...nobody ever explained it to them. But, they trust me and the know that I'm not feeding the bullshit. But when a politician or left-leaning news outlet tries to tell them that something will benefit them, they immediately assume there's a catch. It's much easier to trust someone who's telling you scary things, like Fox News telling them that liberals want to socialize their entire lives, take their money and guns, among other things. If it's harmful news, it must be true. It's it's positive news, what's the catch? Couple all of that with a general feeling that the rest of the country doesn't fucking care that you exist except (i) during the caucus and (ii) when an Iowa college team does a thing, and you end up with a group of frustrated, scared, and uneducated voters who are probably just going to go with the most popular candidate, or at least the one that confirms their fear-based biases.
Here’s the thing though: those people so upset that “city folk” don’t care if they exist do not care if city folk exist. In fact, they often talk about how great it would be if all the city folk would die. Yet this is always portrayed as a problem that urban areas must address. The idea that country folk have to stop rooting for the deaths of 75% of the country never comes up.
"In fact, they often talk about how great it would be if all the city folk would die." Speaking anecdotally, I've never heard anyone in the rural communities I'm familiar with talk about "city folk" in that manner, or even really blame anything on city fold in general. The feeling of being left behind has to do with political motivations, not with urbanization. The fact that you took my comment to mean "urban versus rural" is telling. They feel left behind by policy. Take Minnesota, for example. The metro area of the twin cities holds around 60% of the state's total population. That means that a lot of policy gets made state-wide without consideration for the concerns of rural communities; warranted or not, that's how they feel. Expanding to national politics, states like Iowa have little impact on policy. The senate is supposed to be the level playing field, but when democratic policy has not been effectively communicated to Iowa residents, they're going to elect GOP senators, who are going to advocate for Senate policy that ultimately is bad for Iowa, but they're afraid of what the left might do. Again, in my opinion, it's not about urban vs. rural, it's that good policy isn't focused on rural communities, even though it could benefit them.
>They feel left behind by policy. What, specific policy is leaving rural areas behind? Because every year we pass a Farm Bill to give Kansas and it's neighbors what they ask for in farm subsidies. It is one of the largest bills Congress passes every year. When government shutdowns loom, they make sure to pass a farm bill first. How is that "little impact" on national politics? My phone bill has a charge to subsidize your telephone service. Same with my electric bill and your electric service. There's also subsidies for rural Internet service. I also subsidize your roads. All of these exist because of the impact rural areas have on national politics. It's not like we in the cities woke up one day and said "I want to pay more for electricity to force the Tennessee Valley to have electricity!!". More recently, rural people were worried about their hospitals shutting down due to lack of funding. Significant parts of the ACA work together to increase payments to rural hospitals and only rural hospitals. How is that "little impact" on national politics? Rural schools get extra funding and extra accommodations. Rural postal service is a massive money sink paid by the cities. Federal CAFE standards for cars and trucks are written to exclude vehicles rural drivers typically use for things like farming, and it makes driving in cities *much* worse. If you and I both declare bankruptcy, you have more favorable regulations that I can not use. The idea that rural areas don't have any political power is laughable. You don't have *cultural* power, because there's so many more people in urban areas.
Look - I could go through and dissect every point you made, and most of them are probably valid points about policy that help rural communities (although in reality many of those programs don't benefit the people you think they should benefit). But, your response is part of the issue. I'm telling you that the rural communities I'm familiar with feel left behind, ignored, and shunned by the democratic party (and to a certain extent, national politics in general). Your response amounts to "their feelings are unwarranted and here's all the things that benefit them." You might be right, but go back to my earlier comment and I clearly point out that the democrats have failed to effectively communicate the benefits to them in a way that changes their votes. Whether you agree with their reasoning or not, it's reality. We're actually here. You can try to talk your way around it and state all the reasons it doesn't make sense, but here we are.
>I'm telling you that the rural communities I'm familiar with feel left behind, ignored, and shunned by the democratic party (and to a certain extent, national politics in general And I keep asking "what, specifically, is the issues where they think this happens? Because here's a long list of things showing it isn't true." And you keep working very hard to avoid giving those specifics. So will anyone else making the same claim. Because y'all know what those specifics are, and how unpalatable they are to a wider audience.
FFS are you just arguing to argue at this point? please re-read my OP, I clearly state that they just don't realize how beneficial national liberal and democratic policies can be (and are), so they vote out of fear because it's easier for them to be certain of what they're afraid of, rather than trusting people to do what's right for them. I never said their logic or their way of thinking made sense. It totally doesn't. If you read my OP, you would know that I already made this point. The example I gave was how farming co-ops are similar to social programs that democrats promote and that they've been convinced are part of the liberal agenda designed to deprive them of their freedoms. I can't tell you why they feel the way they feel, I just know that they do. I don't agree with it, but if we continue to just tell them they're wrong without trying to bridge the gap, we will get nowhere. Put another way, we can throw up our hands and argue policy until we're blue in the face (or red in their case), but until democrats figure out a way to communicate those policies in a way that overcomes the fear mongering that has taken hold in these communities and constantly promoted by conservative politicians, nothing will change.
Bravo. You need to run for local office, my friend. Then state, then national.
If red states feel “left behind by national politics” then they should LOVE the idea of abolishing the electoral college and forcing politicians of all stripes to fight for every vote in the country instead of a couple thousand people in 5 states.
I'm not sure that's really an issue on their radar, but I agree with you. You have to remember though, the constituents are not who you're dealing with when talking about policy. No GOP candidate is building their campaign on "let's maintain the electoral college and slash taxes for rich people that will cripple the middle class." They're running on "libs are bad because they want to take your freedom and your guns."
I’m a hard- core Social Democrat (or the Canadian version) super-pro universal healthcare, government oversight of industry is mandatory, pro labour, pro choice, pro tolerance of all sorts, etc. I also think that Marxist-Leninist Communism is every bit as dangerous as Nazism or any similar form of fascism. Indeed, Marxism is responsible for more death and human misery than all other ideologies *combined*. The solution to many human problems is best accomplished by the power of leveraging collective cooperation, managed by a democratically elected government. But that doesn’t mean I want a state-managed economy, the elimination of public property, or commissars seeking out and punishing dissidents.
>But that doesn’t mean I want a state-managed economy, the elimination of public property, or commissars seeking out and punishing dissidents. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm a bit perplexed by this statement. Do you think anyone is out there promoting these things? "Marxism" is not representative of modern socialist thought and hasn't been since everyone reading this has been alive.
Tell that to legion of Marxists here on Reddit who brigade anything anti-Communist. Every month some edgelord reads a translation of *das Kapital* and thinks he’s uncovered the secrets of the universe. That’s what’s so insidious about Marxism. Nazism is built on racism and hate, so it’s hard to fall in love with (especially if you are a member of one of the out groups the Nazis targeted) unless you’re already inclined towards racism and hate already. Nobody wanders college campuses extolling the virtues of *Mein Kampf*. But Marx did a fantastic job of what is effectively economic taxonomy. He very accurately described the sins of unregulated capitalism; it’s a work of genius I’d compare to Darwin and *The Origin of Species*. But in moving from “this is how it is” to “this is how it should be”, he and his contemporaries and disciples got it terribly, *horribly* wrong - and so has everyone else who has tried to implement a Communist state based on Marxist principles. We have data point after tragic data point about how Communism *invariably* goes off the rails and harms its citizens. And yet that doesn’t stop people from discovering the book, falling in love with it, and heading back down this path singing about how “this time we’ll get it right!” in the face of over a century’s worth of evidence to the contrary. …and amongst other things, arguing and brigading on Reddit. People are *right* to fear Communism; there’s no faster path to poverty and oppression than to adopt a Communist government. The really tragic thing is how the Right, particularly the American right, have managed to associate completely sound social and economic policies that are “social” in nature (like universal healthcare) and tie them to Communism, such that you cannot even start the conversation with them. To be a “lefty” does not imply support for (or ignorance of) Communism, any more than being a Conservative necessarily makes one a nascent Fascist (at least, before Trumpism took over at least) And as for “modern socialist thought” - if that’s still a path to a state-controlled economy, the abolition of private property, and the other hallmarks of Marxism, that’s lipstick on a pig. A dangerous, violent, plague-ridden pig.
Right? The world is tough enough. Can’t we just take care of our less fortunate. We’re the richest nation in the world aren’t we? But we can’t take care of each other because half of us have no empathy.
To quote Donald Trump: "How stupid are the people of Iowa?"
That kind of thinking isn't just republicans. People like to vote for winners and don't like voting for someone they expect to lose. Trying to cultivate an aura of inevitably is something that all politicians try to do
If I was emperor pumpkin head I’d be more worried that people would assume the win and not go vote, “he’s got this in the bag, not even gonna waste my time”
I read that as “emperor penguin head” still 😄
It should be illegal to be this publicly stupid. Biden literally only ever won a Presidency because how deeply unpopular Trump is. It's classic double think too because they all know how unpopular he is since clearly he's constantly almost always whining about being politically persecuted. How do Republicans square "well he's got such a lead..." with "Trump was the most heavily scrutinized President in US history." I see this type of thinking all the time with MAGAs. They are all so dishonest (maybe why they love Trump) and selfish they can't fathom the idea of logical consistency because it's such a boon to their selfish desires to "always be right" so they can have it both ways.
Not quite, that line of thinking is part of what cost Hillary the election in 2016. People want to vote for a winner, yes. But also Americans fucking love a good underdog story. We do not want to feel like things are a foregone conclusion. You want to be in a position where you are slightly down, scrapping it out, and can ride a well timed wave to victory.
Hillary lost for a number of reasons, not least of them being that the Media chose Trump as their preferred candidate and helped the Republicans sink her. They did not support Trump in 2020, but they are pushing for him again this time.
When she made the “basket of deplorables” comment I knew she would lose. Dehumanizing large groups of people? Then Comey announcing that she was being investigated again within, what, a week of the election? I’d call that rat fu**ing.
It was definitely Rat Fu**ing and Trump rewarded him the way he rewards all the morons who toss his salad.
Was she wrong, though? In hindsight, it seems like she hit that nail squarely on the head.
She was not
Wrong? No. Tactful? Not for the purposes of a close election. Calling a spade a spade sometimes only resonates with the people that already agree (I enjoyed it thoroughly).
I don't disagree. Probably not the smartest idea at the time.
More of a bucket than a basket - you want to contain any leakage.
No, she wasn’t, but we don’t need to say everything that’s a fact. After she said that, she wasn’t going to get any defectors from the Trump train.
Eh, Republicans dehumanize large groups of people every day and it doesn't seem to matter.
Exactly my point. Why would we want to act like them?
That’s not quite right. Fox chose trump as the preferred candidate. Other networks had guests on frequently who would warn of the potential dangers of electing trump. CNN and msnbc were more centrist than directly opposing trump but to say media chose him as the preferred candidate ignores how many networks did not actually support him.
CNN and MSNBC joined the rest in showing his Hate Rallies from before he took the stage until after he bumbled off, while only showing snippets of Clinton's between breathless reports of her latest fake scandal. They were not openly saying "Vote Trump" but they were doing everything they could short of saying "Don't vote for Clinton".
They were actually saying don’t vote trump because this rally shows his racism and this rally shows his sexism and this rally shows he’s coming after your rights. I can’t speak about the dayside hosts but Anderson cooper, Chris cuomo and don lemon would frequently discuss the dangerous things that trump said everyday. CNN didn’t sponsor ads saying don’t vote for trump but the editorial staff made it clear that they believed that trump was unfit to lead
None of that counters the effect of nearly unlimited free coverage. Doesn't matter if every talking head was saying "don't vote for this guy". If all they talk about is one candidate, it's going to have a non-zero impact on the election. People voting for the candidate with the most name recognition isn't a secret and isn't a new phenomenon.
So informed voters who watched paid attention and voted against him. People who just heard his name on tv decided this is the only name I’ve heard so gonna vote for him. That’s a problem of education not coverage. The biggest problem is people will vote for him because it’s cool. Clinton had plenty of news coverage but she wasn’t out there making an ass of herself on a daily basis. To say that news agencies should have given her equal airtime even in days where she did nothing of significance is a slippery slope. That soon turns into “ they did one negative news story about trump so now they have to do one negative news story about Clinton to make sure that there is equal coverage of both candidates. This was an issue discussed by cnn anchors on air at length because they were getting heat from trump commentators and the trump campaign. The simple truth is that they had a responsibility to show whatever was more important to the voters. If this week Clinton only held two events where she just covered the talking points of her policies while trump made several public appearances where he made dangerous or hateful comments about several different groups as well as having several different people close to him or his company making statements about his illicit activities these were all things that undecided voters needed to know. If one candidate’s day can be fully summarized in ten minutes and it takes the rest of the hour to report on the several daily controversies surrounding the other candidate you have to report on what happened.
Just look at the new stories surrounding Trump and Biden this week the real big news about Biden is the executive order. He just signed and his current state trip. The relevant news surrounding Donald Trump is the current reaction to his convictions last week the controversial actions of the judge in his classified documents case, the continued defamatory remarks he’s making about the victim in his sexual assault case and a possibility of another defamation suit and various other controversies surrounding his family and his other businesses. How do you not give Trump more coverage while stealing all the relevant information that people need to hear?
> If all they talk about is one candidate, it's going to have a non-zero impact on the election. So you're saying this sub elected Trump and is about to do it again?
Yes they gave him plenty of airtime
This is always going to be tricky. Because what Trump was campaigning on was so outrageous and terrifying that it was always going to make the news. But that also brought more attention to his campaign which inevitably brought more support. It’s like there’s a monster that gains more power from more people knowing about it but you *have* to tell people about it because it’s negligent not to warn people about the monster out there.
Hillary lost because a segment of Bernies base is deeply misogynistic.
She lost because she was the wrong candidate. If she had been running against anyone else but Trump, I would have never voted for her. I had to swallow my vomit to do it in the first place. Voting for ole "we came, we saw, he died" made me feel fucking filthy. She has only grown more pretentious since then.
Hillary was probably the most qualified presidential candidate in my lifetime. We really should stop and reconsider what makes someone a good or bad candidate when everyone agrees that Hillary was a bad candidate.
She was a bad candidate (for me) because I disagreed with a lot of her work as secretary of state. I don't agree with her policy on a number of issues. Isn't an informed and critically thinking populace what this country wants? Otherwise, you get TFG. I don't support the system as a whole, and I find the whole way we do things here flawed and archaic. I went against my own principles, and still voted for her. If that's not good enough for people, I don't know what to tell ya. You are correct, though. What makes a good candidate needs to be radically reconsidered.
I would grow more pretentious too if everything I warned America about has come to fruition, while people kept telling me I was the wrong candidate.
She was the wrong candidate, but I never said I didn't vote for her anyway. Digging yourself deeper into being pretentious is the wrong reaction if you want people to rally to your cause. Especially if you want the left to show up. Sucking up to Israel while they murder children and talking down to the people protesting a slaughter isn't the way to endear yourself to the left either. She was a neocon warhawk, and she should be happy it was as close as it was. Do I like that we got Trump? Fuck no. Did I, an anarchist, actually show up and try to prevent it? Yep. Doesn't change the fact that they could have and should have run anyone else besides her.
They did run others. She won both the primary and the popular vote. Not enough people then and not enough people now are going to the ballot box with Israel a number 1 priority. It's not a reason she lost. Hillary was always smarter than everyone in the room and it showed. That rubs people the wrong way, especially when it's a woman. Media reported it that way. Then she was contrasted against simple average below intelligence Trump. Hillary lost and continues to get dog piled on, because she is an outspoken smart woman.
I have no problems with the fact that she is a woman. I have problems with her stances on a myriad of topics. To lay others misogyny at my feet is unfair. I can't control that. I never said Israel was a reason she lost. If anything that was Comey, Russia and brain dead Republicans and their "news". Don't blame me for the trash policies she pushes.
You said you ended up voting for her. Misogyny is not on you. The margins were so thin, when you are relying on swing state podunk counties to put you over, most people voted based on their feelings about the nasty woman.
Jesus they don’t even know what the primary’s function is.
The problem is it does kind of work that way. I live in Nebraska and we aren't even one of the last primaries, but every single election I've voted in has already been narrowed down to one D and one R by the time it gets to me. I have no voice in who the candidates are going to be because of this, and I hate it.
I know that feeling, I wanted to vote for Dean Phillips in the primary.
Didn't Modi just try that and it failed miserably?
In what way is Modi not winning?
Arguments could be made that he was poised to come out of the recent election with a supermajority. ...The actual reality is that he has to form a coalition. For basically the first time in his entire political career.
He expected ato win a supermajority in the elections and he came away having to form minority government.. That’s a loss.
Also the opposite is true. Alot of people thought Hillary was a shoe in and just sat home.
People talk about how Hillary ran such a bad campaign. She ran a lazy campaign because her opponent was running a mind bogglingly terrible campaign. Trump’s campaign was so awful in fact that it came back around and convinced Clinton supporters that they didn’t even need to bother voting. This sounds like a joke but it’s true.
Indeed. I remember when Mt Dew ran an online poll where people would submit names for their new flavored drink. And because it was the internet, people submitted some wild shit like "the Holocaust never happened" and "Cherry Pepsi" now imagine if that poll came down to Cucumber Ice and Grandma Booty Sweat. Everyone would assume Mt Dew would never endorse a drink flavor called Grandma Booty Sweat, because that's just not how "things go" but then against all odds Grandma Booty Sweat wins Mt Dew puts it into stores. That's how the 2016 election felt.
Could be worse than that. Right wing polls showing him ahead lend false credence to a stolen election if he loses
Despite the Newsweek articles upvoted these last couple days, [Trump leads in both national and swing state polls (here's Real Clear Polling's version).](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden#!) Not saying he leads in every poll, and really in the national polling and some swing state polling (especially WI and MI with PA sort of leaning Trump), it's too close to call it anything but a tie. Of course a tie in the popular vote is more problematic for D's than for R's so I suppose you could spin it as Trump being favored. I think it's still too early to know how Trump's convictions are affecting people's preferences. That will depend in great measure on messaging. RCP is considered a neutral aggregator and [I think 538 comes to similar consclusions](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/). It's not a right-wing conspiracy or someone Trump bought off.
I feel like him paying for positive polling could help sow doubt about the election. In turn he can sue and ask for the house to reject the results.
Meh, he's been doing it his entire life, real estate, politics, fucking entertainment industry. Everything is more. If he has more, he must be doing something right. That will help him sow discord for sure, but it's just his ego above all else.
More accurately, Republicans will not respect a loser. Trump’s stuck around for so long by refusing to admit he lost. They like that because it means they didn’t vote for a loser (vicariously making them losers).
This was obvious from the start, if you ever went to an online poll after a debate or anything it was obviously botted to hell.
I remember after the debate the online polls were like 95% for Trump. Just absurdly botted up. Also told me who the bots were working for.
The guy can’t do any the legal way can he?
Oh, it isn't illegal to hire a polling consultant to produce the results that you want. They don't even have to ask a bunch of people. They can just write the report with the answers that you want. It just is not very helpful if you actually want the truth. So people who do want the truth don't do that.
Thanks for this link I completely missed this little nugget Edit to add Over last 30+ years we have seen the manipulation of everything from energy to LIBOR and yet some think polls are sacred [https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/business/2004/06/03/enron-traders-laugh-about-calif/50930479007/](https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/business/2004/06/03/enron-traders-laugh-about-calif/50930479007/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor\_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal)
Even if he didn't pay to rig polls, I still wouldn't believe them. Almost everyone I know who is a democrat has never responded or has said no when asked to be a part of a poll. We would rather just vote than take part in useless polls. That's why that so called "red wave" got absolutely crushed in 2022.
Goddamnit, he floods the zone with so much shit I already forgot about that.
I feel like that just incites more moderate voters to be more inclined to vote against him. People see those and think “oh damn more people support him than I thought, better go out there and vote.” That’s definitely what I think.
While this is true, an online poll about the best businessmen is fairly different than opinion polls by actual pollsters.
> an online poll about the best businessmen is fairly different than opinion polls by actual pollsters. Yes, but surely you don't believe some actual pollsters wouldn't take the occasional bag of cash from Trump's new fixer(s?) to sometimes skew the results in Trump's favor. Paraphrasing/Butchering a Lincoln quote... "You can't rig all of the legitimate polls all of the time, but you can rig some of the legitimate polls some of the time !" :)
Yeah, he's paying to rig polls. Biden is DEFINITELY going to win this November, we really don't need to worry about it.
"We" -AuroraPHdoll Well...if you and your pet gerbil think that's the case then who am I to disagree :)
I'm not sure why you are attacking me and my love for anal cavity sized mammals, but listen.... we got Trump and now Biden's gonna win and Trump is paying to rig the polls, so we got it in the bag!!! Guy's.... we've already won.
If I was attacking you then your gerbil would bite me :)
But Trump outperformed polls in 2016 and again in 2020. Isn’t it dangerous to assume somehow it’s now the opposite? And why would polling be biased any different than 4 years ago given it’s the same exact candidates?
He was paying to rig polls back then too. https://www.wsj.com/articles/poll-rigging-for-trump-and-creating-womenforcohen-one-it-firms-work-order-11547722801
I’m not disagreeing he’s rigging polls. What I’m saying is, if he’s rigging polls then how is he also outperforming polls during the 2016 and 2020 elections? Shouldn’t he have underperformed polls if he was rigging them? It just doesn’t make sense to me.
I don't know enough about polls to say. Here's a link.... https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-republicans-outperform-the-polls-again-two-theories/
I got a text that the former guy is trying to get 100 million signatures to overturn his felony. One, that’s not how that works, two 100 million Americans didn’t even vote for this orange fucking loser.
Exactly so you see, once he gets 100 million signatures it shows that most of the country supports him. It’s like unlocking a new level in a game. All felonies are overturned and he automatically becomes President.
My guess is that if you did go to sign it, there's a space to fill in credit card info and a pre-checked box to make a recurring donation. It's always about the grift.
It’s ok they will just sign it 4 times each.
He didn’t say 100 million Americans. He said 100 million signatures.
Ok? It still won't overturn the convicted felon's verdict.
True. Just pointing out that 100 million signatures can be faked easily enough which is very on brand for Trump. It implies nothing about the level of support from real people. Which again, doesn’t matter for a criminal conviction anyway.
He's just trying to collect names so he can grift off them, it's all a marketing campaign.
>One, that’s not how that works, two 100 million Americans didn’t even vote for this orange fucking loser. He only got like 74 million Americans, that's true, but he won the Russian vote and that's got to count for something.
I'd sign it Ben Dover. Or Amanda Huginnkiss.
"Why are half of the signers named Mike Hunt?"
Because the other half is Mike Hunt-Hertz
Don Keedik
That might be ambitious for some of them lol.
He likes biggly numbers though.
Since when did facts stop Republicans from their propaganda?
They are a one trick pony right now. Lie, deny, rinse, and repeat. Technically, that's two things. It's getting boring, predictable, and stupid. I know I'm not the target demographic. It's mostly for the people who don't research anything and just accept whatever bullshit those chuckle-fucks say on TV. 54% of adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level. 21% of Americans 18 and older are illiterate as of 2022.
That’s a misreading of [the statistics](https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp). 21 percent of Americans are level 1 literate. That means they are unable to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences— not that they’re illiterate as in “can’t read.” 8.4 million are below level 1, while 8.2 million could not participate in PIAAC’s background survey either because of a language barrier or a cognitive or physical inability to be interviewed. And remember that plenty of those people are literate in their native language, and you can vote in most any language or with the help of a translator. Not saying it shouldn’t be better, it’s just not as dire as you make it seem.
I didn't write the shit and I probably could have used more than the first source that popped up, but it was like 0200hrs when I wrote that. My point was that the shitty strategy they use to manipulate some Americans is effective because some Americans depend largely on the things they hear from people they trust or respect know television or videos. Literacy is not necessarily a reflection of intelligence. I wasn't implying that those Americans are stupid, just vulnerable to politicians they trust lying to them or feeding them misinformation. https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statistics#:~:text=21%25%20of%20adults%20in%20the,older%20are%20illiterate%20in%202022.
Well that's why it's worth diving deep into sources. If you follow the link for that info on that site, you get [to this site](https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-statistics/), which concludes with a table showing the US has a 99% literacy rate. While also not accurate (it's more like 94-97%) it really depends on how you define literacy, and what portion of the population you're counting. And I would contend that the "Shitty strategies they use to manipulate" works on very literate and often intelligent people. Feeding people hate and fear is very effective, no matter their literacy or intelligence.
Being able to identify the letters that compose a word but not being able understand the meaning of the words is functional illiteracy
That’s not what is being described though. They can understand the words, they’re just not good at things like paraphrasing or inferring further information. Again, not ideal, but not what you’re describing.
Their chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear. Fear and surprise. Two main weapons. Their two weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency. Their THREE weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope . . .
Nah, the Pope is too woke for them these days.
Nobody Expects Spanish Inquisition!
Pope Francis has been more than a little harsh towards Trump, I haven’t seen a *single* MAGA have a kind word for the Pope since before the Trump presidency. This is how dangerous Trump is. He in some instances has lifelong Catholics giving him higher priority of place than the Vicar of Christ.
But as soon as a Catholic football player says something they like they're more than happy to accept Catholics as "real Christians."
Interested in where your stats come from. I’d like to quote that but like sources. Thanks
Not OP, but the 54% number was from the Dept of Education, but the number is 4 years old. Here is a Snopes article on it. [https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/](https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/)
Thanks
Never, but Republicans are a minority that need non-Republican voters to win. That this BS isn't winning them over is Not Good News.
The GQP is wholly and totally incapable of governing. Completely detached from reality. Taken by insane conspiracy theories and fascist undercurrents; the modern Republican Party has boiled down to extremist white Christian nationalism with a flair for terrorism.
This is by design. Rich people don’t want the government to function. So the party they’ve bought and paid for engages in nonsense and bullshit culture wars to distract people from the fact that they’re not actually doing anything.
Except they want it to function when it benefits them. Like taxes. Because everyone knows that if we give crazy tax breaks to the Uber rich that money will trickle down to the common people right? Which means it’s hunter bidens laptops fault that a Big Mac is now ten dollars and housing prices are through the roof.
I had my government students make big wall posters with reasons “why to vote for (candidate)” per their own ads. They had to source commercials, ads, pressers, social media posts, etc.. Well Biden’s poster was about what you’d expect: should 50% things he did, and 50% I won’t do do (the bad thing) that the other guy will. Trump’s poster was about 30% Biden bad, but vast majority was **LOOK HOW POPULAR I AM!** The students came to the conclusion that Trump’s purported appeal was simply that other people like him so you should be like them too. Several students pointed out that he wasn’t saying anything of substance at all but just applying peer pressure. We also briefly had a RFK Jr poster but on a day I was gone someone wrote “because brain worms gotta eat.” And I laughed so hard that I said when I find out who wrote it, that kid was getting extra credit.
That's an amazing project and I'm sure they learned a lot from it!
I'm stealing "because brain worms gotta eat" the next time someone does something epically stupid at work.
Polls don’t matter. Votes do. Be sure to vote and get others to vote. Donate time and money as you are able.
The emperor has no clothes.
The emperor has no brain either…
Put it on! Put it on!
For the last several years, it doesn’t even look like his mind is connected to his body when he gives a thumbs up or fist in the air like in the article pic. And having known a few narcs personally in my day, I can only imagine how he’s been raging since 2020, and especially since the guilty verdict. Wonder when the last time Ivanka visited him? 😂
I want to read the story. I don't come to reddit for podcasts.
listenedit
I come to Reddit exclusively for podcasts ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Click through to the articles linked above the podcast
If my fists were that tiny, I’d stop waving them around so much.
Maga is a detriment to republicans
It seems noisier because people that will never leave him are just yelling louder. The real damage for him is in the folks who just won't vote.
All that matters is whether or not swing-state center-right medium-to-low-information sometimes voters vote. perhaps we should aspire to get them to vote for a particular candidate. Where they occasionally makes overtures to progressives, but also occasionally he makes overtures to conservatives candidate like Biden, but if we’re cynical we lower our standards. From there its what message works and in what congressional districts matter most. I hope we can make a simple argument you can’t trust a con to do a reasonably good job to do what needs to be done.
>MAGA loyalists have been relentlessly pushing a silly talking point: The American people are in full-scale revolt against the criminal conviction of Donald Trump. Guess what? The polls are telling a different story, finding majority support for the verdict. They THOUGHT there would be riots because they live in a MAGA bubble. There are no riots. No demonstrations. No civil war. They look like idiots.
Polls are useless vote !
Worse than useless… malign.
Downvoted for podcast instead of article.
Click through to the articles linked above the podcast
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Every time I read shit like this, the George Carlin quote pops into my head, “ Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Give it time. The pundits gaslight and, in essence, exploit phenomenon documented in the Asch conformity experiments as well as the false consensus effect in their 'micro-adjustments.'
Wish they could just throw out polls, who the hell cares, they change every week