According to a report from the Washington Post, Donald Trump's inner circle grew increasingly alarmed at his complacency during the Democratic National Convention and had to convince him to hit the road instead of spending his days playing golf and complaining.With the Democrats sucking up all the m...
Factually, that's what he did during his time in office as well. I'm not sure what they thought had changed.
What worries me is we'll have a repeat of 2016 where everyone just assumed Hillary was going to win so they didn't vote. Hopefully people will go out and vote regardless.
Absolutely. When I saw the headline I thought the same thing. Bad actors will try to sew exactly that thought in liberal circles as long as Dems have the momentum.
We can't buy into it and need to resolve ourselves to fight like hell until election day, regardless of what "the polls" or "the experts" say. We need to make Kamala win in an indisputable landslide. We need to send a message that will make Trump and his acolytes political pariahs from now on.
thats not entirely accurate. Yes there was not as much enthusiasm behind Hillary as there was behind Obama, and she had a lot of (mostly invented) baggage, but she lost beacause she didnt campaign in a meaningful way lost a few swing states by a small margin (because yes, most reasonable people assumed she’d be the next president—and so many reasonable people assumed that eventuality that she won the popular vote by a wide margin).
Trump is noise and makes money for media outlets so they give him a massive and constant boost of brand recognition. They could’ve all been even mildly responsible in 2020 and just stop talking about the out of office former president but instead they kept him in the zietgeist which allowed him to run again this year.
I am still finding hope in the fact he did not win reelection the first time against a walking corpse elder statesman, and has not won elections for most of his endorsed down-ballot candidates in the past X years.
Anyway, people who do not want him in office should go and vote against him.
(and people who do want to see him in office again, sorry you shouldn’t vote for a lot of reasons but the biggest one being they’ll know who you are and that’s how they get you and also vaccines are mandatory for the polls so you should stay away and they’ll also forcibly swap your genitals and ITS REALLY TRUE FOLLOW ME ON FACETUBE)
The possibility worries me, but this situation seems closer to Obama's campaign than Hillary's. Somewhere inbetween for sure, but people are enthusiastic.
Yes, I figured as much when you said you voted 3rd party. Unless we get ranked choice or some other form of voting, we are going to get a president from one of the two main parties for the foreseeable future. Until then, a vote for the person who shares 90% of your views instead of 75% will help the guy who shares 5% of your views with you. Not to mention that the 75% candidate had about a decade of being dragged through the mud prior to the election to make her seem worse than she really is.
I (and a lot of others) are not going to "Toe the line" for whoever the DNC shoves down our throats if we don't feel like it. The DNC learned a good lesson in 2016. I'm not ashamed that I didn't vote for Hillary just because she was "better than Trump". I didn't like either candidate, so I voted third party to help boost their numbers to help get away from a 2 party system. I'm not sorry for that, and whatever shit you give me isn't going to change my opinion.
In 1992, Ross Perot got about 20% of the popular vote as a third party candidate. How did that "help get away from a 2 party system"? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm curious.
What "lesson" do you think the DNC learned in 2016?
What's your plan to institute ranked voice voting & national popular vote?
I wasn't old enough to vote in the 1992 election. I was only 15.
I think the DNC learned that pushing a candidate that wasn't well liked isn't going to win them an election, just because that's who they wanted to put in the spotlight. (Anecdotal based on my personal conversations. I haven't researched it.)
Reducing the 15% National electorate requirement by the FEC for presidential debates would be a start. This allows lesser known parties and candidates a voice on the national stage and gives them more national coverage.
I'm just a random person. I personally don't have a plan how to institute ranked choice voting, but I would absolutely vote for a ranked choice voting system rather than keeping the current 2 party system.
1968, 1980, 1984: They learned that turning off moderate voters by putting too progressive of a candidate can lose you an election hard (McGovern, Carter, Mondale).
1992: They learned that a strong third party candidate can cannibalise voters from a weak or ineffectual major party, much like Perot took votes from the Republican Party when Bush-41 went back on his 'no new taxes' pledge.
2000: They learned that trying to placate moderates by picking a more moderate candidate costs them the election as surely as placating progressives with an ultra-progressive candidate does, just by thinner margins.
2008: They learned that hate for Republicans is far more effective of a strategy than building coalitions...
2010: ...but they learned that Progressives turn into fair-weather friends when they don't get exactly what they want.
2012: But that Republican hate is still useful....
2014: ...and our fair-weather friends are still useful to Team Red.
2016: We relearned the lesson we should have learned in 2000 by placating moderates and running a dynasty.
2020: But that Republican hate is still useful!
We barely averted Biden as the Moderate Placator in 2024, running on the fear and hate of the Republican Party to make an otherwise moderate in Kamala Harris our standard-bearer, but if she keeps up with the talks about price controls, we MIGHT just find out if the lessons of 1968, 1980, and 1984 still apply.
And Jackie's Fridge is right. In an election split 51 (Left) and 49 (Right), if you can convince 3 Left-Leaning voters to vote Third Party, you have convinced them to throw away their votes and assure all 51 voters on the Left get what they DON'T want while the Conservatives win on a 49/48/3 split. Unless and until you use a voting system that allows those 3 votes to NOT give the win to the 48 voters, voting third party is just helping the major party most opposed to your platform win. And if you need any evidence of how this screws up Leftists, look no further than our northern neighbour, Canada, specifically Ontario, where vote-splitting between the two major Left-Wing parties (Liberal, New Democratic Party) lets the Conservative party run the show.
"Boosting their numbers" in the single biggest election doesn't make them a viable party. Third party candidates got an average of 5% of the vote in the 2016 presidential election (unless you include Utah to blow the bell curve to a whopping 7%).
Getting that party's candidates established in local governments across the nation so they gain a following, experience, and momentum is what does make them viable. It's not easy, but it's the only way. Zero people care who didn't win the presidential election or why - it's winner take all. No message is received.
The only people that can claim that are folks that voted for Hillary. Not voting or voting third party, you're still participating, you're just pulling the lever that reads, "I'll go with whoever the majority is".
That year it turned out to be Trump. You did choose, a passive choice is still a choice.
You're right. I did make a choice. I made a choice to not vote for either of those fuck heads. I'm not sorry I didn't vote for Hillary. You want my vote, put up a better candidate. Still don't think it was my fault.
Look, you can do what you want, but you should stop pretending you somehow aren't partly responsible for a Trump presidency because you went third party.
If a restaurant offers chicken or beef, and you say "whatever everyone is having", and they gave you chicken?
You did choose. You chose chicken.
You said, "I don't really care what I get, let other people decide."
Letting other people decide for you is still a choice.
Young people need to get enthusiastic to vote; and Hillary didn't do that for them. Hillary didn't do that for me-- because she's best buds with Jamie Dimon and his ilk, and would only be joining a picket line when hell froze over-- but I still got out and made the only realistic vote against Trump because I'm a grownup.
It's different this time because Democrats are finally being convincing that they're not aligned with the billionaires, and because we've seen what a Trump presidency was actually like now. I think that will get more of the youth vote (with lots of GOTV effort, of course).