How is it even possible that the choice between the coup attempting, fascist imbecile with nearly 100 felony charges against him, and the moderate, business-as-usual incumbent can even be in doubt?
It's possible because as a country, USA suffer a serious mental illness, causing a huge part of Americans to have a distorted view of reality, and consider sociopathy a virtue and a sign of strength and righteousness.
This is why they can't agree on basic things like gun control even for assault rifles, minorities are stripped of simple human rights, they don't have universal healthcare, and states are allowed to punish abortion as a crime, even when done legally.
Republicans and the Christian right are insane with control, and have gone full authoritarian.
Republicans automatically vote against their own interest because Sean Hannity tells them to, while Democrats must be constantly persuaded to vote for candidates who they perceive as being less than perfect.
Democrats have basically done everything possible do discourage any enthousiasm in there base. Or campaigning on any issue. Even vs Trump you need more than "this is just an old DNC guy who won't do anything" to get party volunteers campaigning.
Seems like they've been campaigning pretty hard on abortion access. Not sure what else a party that covers moderate right and center with a few moderate lefts could all get excited about. Federal legalization of Marijuana might be popular enough.
I'd like to see more progressive campaigns but unfortunately it seems like the party needs everyone who isn't far right to have a chance of beating the christo-fascists. It seems so much harder to motivate voter turnout for Democrats. You can't just feed them anger, hate and fear, you have to convince them you're actually going to make things better.
I didn't want Biden but isn't that who the party voted for in the primary? I guess after Trump, a boring, return to normal sounded good to people and I haven't heard of anyone else running for the Democratic nomination that's even worth consideration. We had the anti-vaccine loon with zero experience, the congressman I'd never heard of who can't name anything he would do differently than Biden and was so incompetent he missed the filing deadline to be on the ballot in some states and the lady who also has no experience but seems like she believes in healing crystals. The whole party is a complicated mess but I still find it almost incomprehensible that there is a still a serious possibility of Trump being elected again.
Democrat PACs have also funded ads on behalf of the most insane Republican candidates with the hope that they'd be easier to beat if they get the nomination. Something like this happened with Hillary and Trump, they wanted him to get the nomination, what a laughingstock the Republicans would be in that case. The insane candidates get increased legitimacy this way, but Democrats want to be able to point to the opponent and call them an extremist, it's a legitimate strategy that has worked for them, but they don't or can't address the broader effect this is having over time.
The Democrats also tell this story that doesn't land with many voters now, like everything is actually okay and it's the Republicans who are to blame, or it's because people aren't comfortable enough to be authentically themselves or some bs. The general economic arrangements are actually fine, as long as people of different identities are distributed within them equally.
There's also for the first time in America's history an ideological consensus within each party, that's basically come about during the last 30 years. All the "checks and balances" the founders envisioned break in this scenario. A single faction/party can control all branches of government and do whatever they want. When Biden started in politics there were segregationist Democrats for instance, there wasn't this broad party identity that aligned behind a single shared view.
Then a lot of this condenses down in to the stupidest do-nothing argument that, "if you don't vote for Biden you're helping the fascists." It doesn't appreciate how voting is the bare minimum of political engagement and barely matters unless you're in a very specific location. So people spend all this time getting upset around the vote, and any complaints about Biden or Democrats is equated to helping the fascists. Don't talk about these problems because it will make Trump look good! Downward spiral thinking all the way.
Should Democrats be concerned about the possibility of Trump winning? Yes. Anyone who didn't learn from 2016 is an imbecile.
That said, polls a year before the election-and therefore a year before we plaster the airwaves with a billion $+ in advertising, before Trump is a convicted felon, aren't worth much. We also should have learned from the "RED WAVE!!1!" fantasies of 2022.
Just to add, there might be plenty of voters on the left that are willing to say "there's no way I'm voting for Biden" in a poll a year from the election.
When they get to the voting booth and see Biden or Trump, though, many will vote for Biden even if they need to hold their noses.
Now, if we're seeing these polls in September of next year, then I'll start getting worried.
We also should have learned from the “RED WAVE!!1!” fantasies of 2022.
This is an incredibly important point. Rupert knows why, but the media want you to believe that Trump is far more popular than he actually is. They are invested in the drama, which drives engagement. They should be focused on the fact that he's embroiled in a RIDICULOUS number of court cases and how no one should be taking him seriously as a function of that. If that was the message they were repeating 24/7, his polling would be at 25%.
Remember that polling only collects data from people who respond to polls. How many of you don't have landlines? How many of you don't answer your cell phone if it's from an unknown number?
The only poll that matters is the one where you cast your ballot. Participate in that one.
Edit: And you know that nobody would ever spoil a poll.
The results from PA’s midterm election will be more interesting. There’s a bunch of loonies trying to get on school boards and an anti-choicer running for state Supreme Court, so Dems may overperform.
I'm in IL, in a district which is in between suburban and rural. Last year the crazy fucks tried to take over our school board, too. Like there was a statewide effort entirely focused here. This was in an off-year minor election, and those tend to have very low turnout.
None of them were elected. The communication about these chucklefucks was strong, and it got enough sane people to go to the polls. If there's an organization in your area that does that kind of communication, go help them. It matters.
People guard their cell phone numbers a whole lot more than they did land line numbers, and even if the pollster is picking numbers at random, my very next sentence addresses that:
How many of you don't answer your cell phone if it's from an unknown number?
It's relevant to the efforts to promote an agenda, where to spend money, what voters are thinking about the race, and how the issues will shape up. A year is a long time, and a lot can happen in that time.
The polls of 3,662 registered voters were conducted by telephone using live operators
Think of the people you know who would actually answer a call from an unknown number and sit on the line with a stranger while they ask questions. Tell me some other things about them.
In 1000 years from now (if humanity survives that long, which is increasingly unrealistic), historians will look back on this time period and study it as the largest scale mass occurrence of Stockholm syndrome the world has ever ever seen.
The people supporting trump have somehow been convinced to fall in love with their oppressors. It's mind blowing to be witness to it.
It's a state that politicians actually care about because it could go either way. For example, no Democrat will waste time in Florida. No Republican will waste time in California. But Georgia or Pennsylvania could go either way.
American presidential elections are carried out at the state level, and in almost all the states the winner in that state takes all of the state's electors (which are people, but you can think of them as points needed to win the overall election).
What the media and political junkies call a "battleground" or "swing" state are the states which are traditionally very close races or otherwise polling closely going into the election, making them hard to predict the outcome based on statistics.
It's entirely possible for Trump to win in Oregon or for Biden to win in Kentucky, but when you look at past and present statistics it's not very likely to happen either way.
Since America doesn't use the popular vote in presidential elections, only states that are nearly evenly divided matter. All other states votes are taken for granted.
Those polls are rigged, republicans ship over their people from neighboring states to falsefy those polls just like they faked the election in 2016.
A lot of these republicans carry numerous fake passports to skew these polls. Wouldn't be surprised if Trump is planing on stealing the next election with the backing of his Saudi and Russian friends.
There are plenty of things he could do and there are plenty of things he could talk about. He's doing some of the former (union stuff for example), though he could do more, and fuck all (positive) of the latter. We'll see how it plays out in the actual election but his PR is kinda ass right now.
Did we forget about how Democrats had control of both houses of Congress when Biden was elected, yet still failed to accomplish anything significat?
And Manchin is still head of the energy committee, hes on appropriations and armed services too... If Democrats actually wanted to push back on his obstructionism they would have stripped his committee assignments. They haven't, making it obvious that they want to keep him around as the current rotating villain.
You haven't been paying attention.
Just the fact that the signed a bill to make the gov negotiate drug prices is massive!
Dems have been trying to do that for 30 years...
Remember when he knocked down gas prices conservatives were complaining about?
The list goes on. I don't even like Biden but your implication is simply wrong here.