2024 US Presidential Election

[SGR]

To be fair to myself, (lol) these were positions I held throughout her campaign, and not in hindsight. I think a mistake the left continues to make is to run on sanctimonious performative virtue - I think that as a result of this both Hillary and Harris presumed that Trump would lose his run for himself. In 2008 that might have been a legitimate outcome, but it continues to be the case that most American voters don't want more of the same. They keep telling us this, but nothing about the approach changes. Voters don't care if it means playing dirty, most people just want dramatic change - when the president under which you serve has a less than favorable approval rating, what makes them think promising no change at all would be a strong position? 


I don't disagree, but most American voters simply don't care about this.

Running on the idea that "I'm the best of the options you have" doesn't inspire much confidence. My point is largely that this assertion is not enough for modern voters. They want to support their candidate, not settle on one. Whether it's the right or wrong way to approach politics, we have to understand where voters are if we hope to engage them.

I think you hit the nail on the head with all of this, but specifically the bolded.

This polling information was available before Oct 2024:

Two-thirds of voters say the country is on the wrong track ahead of the 2024 election

Two in 3 voters say the country is on the "wrong track" as voters weigh whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump would be better able to change that less than two months from Election Day.

The latest NBC News national poll finds 65% of registered voters surveyed this month say the country is on the wrong track, while 28% say it's on the right track.

The figure is one of the "warning signs" for Democrats ahead of November, said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the poll along with GOP pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies.

And Democrats to some extent realized that voters wanted a 'change candidate' - and they tried, to some degree to position Kamala Harris, the sitting VP of the current administration, as a 'change candidate' ("turn the page!"). But when she was given complete softball opportunities to make that case to voters in interviews, she flubbed it, essentially telling voters that she wouldn't do anything different from Biden and they were in for largely more of the same - e.g.:

To the broader idea of 'voters want drastic change', I'll again refer to Bernie Sanders - there was a reason he was and is so popular and both him and Trump picked up serious momentum in the 2016 election cycle. There's also a reason why Kamala Harris was the first candidate to drop out from the 2020 Democratic primaries. While there is truth to the idea that we can nitpick this or that about Kamala and easily lay blame in hindsight, the voters within the Democrat party didn't need hindsight when it came to her appeal as a candidate back in 2020.

[Psy-Fi]

New Rule: Tough Love Dems | Real Time with Bill Maher

[Trollheart]

Could someone please explain in simple terms the idea of the electoral college? I don't know any other country that does this, and I have never quite understood it. Everyone votes in a state and then they take an average, do they, to see on which side the state comes down? Or how does it work? I'm really confused about this, and always have been.

And please don't point me to Wiki: I just want a simple explanation if someone can help me understand. Thanks.

[DJChameleon]

Someone else will go into more details but it's essentially put in place so that people that live in states with a smaller population has equal representation as people that live in larger states with higher population sizes.

[jimmy jazz]

Someone else will go into more details but it's essentially put in place so that people that live in states with a smaller population has equal representation as people that live in larger states with higher population sizes.

Does it?

I noticed California had the most points with about 60, some states on the East Coast having not many at all.

Is it not done proportionately?

[DJChameleon]

Does it?

I noticed California had the most points with about 60, some states on the East Coast having not many at all.

Is it not done proportionately?

It doesn't make all the states equal the way they get the numbers is based off of how many representatives each state has plus the two Senators. The states that have smaller numbers have more voting power.

[Jwb]

I'm not surprised that he gained support with the Hispanic vote. My experience from working and dating among that demographic, is that most of them tend to be conservative in their views and the ones who are here legally tend to resent the ones who are here illegally. Most of them also tend to be Catholics and actually attend church services regularly. I think the Democrats are profoundly foolish to assume they can count on the Hispanic vote and take it for granted like they've counted on the black vote and taken it for granted for so long.

I don't think the fact that they are socially conservative on average really answers the question at all tbh. Because that has been the case for decades.  Not only among Hispanics but black voters, Muslim voters etc.  They might have more in common with the Republicans than with Democrats but the Republicans seemed to push these groups away by leaning more into white grievance,  xenophobia and racism. 

I actually agree that the Dems long term approach has seemed to rely on the assumption that these groups won't really stray too far because for a long time it seemed like the Republicans had chosen instead to pander to white working class grievance in the form of emphasizing law and order in our cities and security on the border.  This usually translates to fear mongering rhetoric that amps up the base but then theoretically scares off Hispanic or black voters etc. 

G W Bush made some in roads with Hispanics but that was by taking a softer approach. But by far the biggest shift has come under Trump,  the guy who did more than any other Republican to demonize Muslims and Hispanics alike in his first campaign for office in 2016, and now with this recent one they skipped all the nonsense about the wall and went straight to the bullet point of mass deportation.

I think that people must not believe it's actually going to happen.  My brother in law is Colombian and he and my sister were literally trying to lecture me on how racist Trump is in 2016 and how some of my brother in laws extended family are undocumented and could face deportation. But then this time around they voted for Trump because I guess he's gonna solve inflation somehow? It's like oh OK, I think I get it actually.  You're just retarded.

[Jwb]

Kamala, like Hillary, thought she'd surely be a shoo-in. That arrogance is what makes them not real candidates. 

I don't think Kamala even deserves the lions share of the blame. Biden basically drove the ship into an iceberg,  his female VP tried to keep it from sinking through the sheer power of joy,  and that somehow didn't work.  How surprising.  The obvious takeaway is that we aren't ready for a black female president!

[Trollheart]

Someone else will go into more details but it's essentially put in place so that people that live in states with a smaller population has equal representation as people that live in larger states with higher population sizes.

Yeah but I still don't get it. One man or woman, or whatever you're having yourself, one vote. So why does it matter where you live? Here, the vote of people from the Blasket Islands (population about 10) matters just as much as the vote of someone from Dublin. They're just all added up. So why can't the US do that? Why should it matter what state you're voting in, if it's still just one vote per person? Can't get my head around it, and it must be odd, as no other country in the world does it this way, so far as I know.

[DJChameleon]

Yeah but I still don't get it. One man or woman, or whatever you're having yourself, one vote. So why does it matter where you live? Here, the vote of people from the Blasket Islands (population about 10) matters just as much as the vote of someone from Dublin. They're just all added up. So why can't the US do that? Why should it matter what state you're voting in, if it's still just one vote per person? Can't get my head around it, and it must be odd, as no other country in the world does it this way, so far as I know.

I agree it should be one person one vote and they just use the outcome of the popular vote but if they did that. There probably would never be another Republican president except for Trump this time he did also win the popular vote.

The cities with high populations tend to be Democrat and the rural areas and Suburbs hold Republican voters. So they end up not getting represented in an equal fashion if they only rely on the head count of just using the popular vote.

Whats funny is that Republicans always complain about DEI and the electoral college itself is a practice that uses DEI to help Republicans.

[Psy-Fi]

Democrats Blew $1 Billion: Now Begging Working-Class Voters for More

[SGR]

[DJChameleon]

@Thelonious Monkey

Watch this and learn a thing or two or don't 

[Psy-Fi]

How a long-haired gay giant helped Trump flip Pennsylvania red

[Lucem Ferre]

He makes a compelling case that rather than Democrats turning their backs on their voting base, the Isreal/Palestine issue & campaigning with people like Liz Cheyney to appeal to conservatives, it was actually good old fashioned racism & sexism that was the main reason Kamala lost.

A deep analysis of voting statistics.