2024 General Election Thread

That's the dumbest fucking thing you've ever posted, and those Arab Americans in Michigan have no idea what they've just done.

See: my signature.

The red mirage was the “Nikki Haley” voter. Even states with closed primaries had thousands and thousands voting for “Nikki Haley.”

Of course the Democrats, thinking there was a reasonable faction within the Republican Party made a play for this voter and it completely crashed and burned. Those people were always coming home to the Republicans. No matter what.

This country deserves every bad thing that’s about to happen.

I'm jsut up here scratching my head wondering "how could they do this to themselves?".

I honestly believed that the voting majority in AMerica were, if not exactly sane, in possession of a sense of self preservation.

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Yeah....that didn't happen.

It occurs to me that the best hope for limiting the damage Trump can do may be Republican greed.

Trump is surrounded by grifters and con artists — obviously, since he is one himself. The more time and energy they devote to looting the treasury and shoveling taxpayer money into their own pockets, the less time they'll have for other agendas.

Of course, some of the grifters and con men also know that crashing the economy would be fantastic for their own fortunes, so there's that.

How the fuck did Harris lose the popular vote?

Nobody liked Hillary, she won the popular vote.

Biden was a lukewarm not-Trump turd sandwich, he won the popular vote.

People were fucking excited for Harris, and she lost the popular vote. Shit makes no sense.

It’s not entirely unexpected that the Republicans getting elected (Sheehy, McCormick, Moreno, Scott, etc) are multi-millionaire plutocrats who represent the “working class” party. It never ceases to amaze how people will vote against their own economic interests.

In attempting to make some sense out of this, I'm gonna turn to analyzing Michigan, since I live here.

Some facts about Michigan:

1) Two years ago, we re-elected Gretchen Whitmer as governor by an 11-point margin, Jocelyn Benson as secretary of state by a 14-point margin, and Dana Nessel as attorney general by a 9-point margin.

2) This year's Michigan Supreme Court race was won by both of the Democratic Party-endorsed candidates, and not narrowly either — both won by roughly 60-40 margins. Supreme Court candidates in Michigan are endorsed by parties, but their party affiliations do not appear on the ballot, which generally means that only the most informed voters know who they are.

These two facts help discount some explanations for the presidential vote in Michigan, and help boost another.

Explanation #1: It's the economy. This doesn't really work. The economy, both in Michigan and nationwide, is in better shape than it was two years ago, and Michigan both voted with the party in the White House and re-elected its governor.

Explanation #2: People won't vote for a woman. There are a few small caveats here — one is that somebody could be willing to vote for a female governor but not a female president, and the other is that both of the candidates for governor were women. But with Whitmer's blowout in 2022, it's hard to argue that enough Michigan voters were unwilling to vote for a woman to make the difference.

Explanation #3: It's Israel. This seems unlikely to me not because of either of the factors listed above, but because anybody who's invested enough in that conflict to base their vote on it surely knows that Trump would be perfectly happy to see Netanyahu personally murder every last Palestinian in the Gaza strip.

Explanation #4: It's the Trump Voter.

By this I mean not everybody who voted for him, but that particular slice of the electorate that he has a unique ability to motivate. Low-propensity voters who love his bombast, love his cruelty, love his trashiness, are generally uninformed, and can only be moved to vote by his presence on the ballot.

This one tracks. First, because there was no other major change in Michigan from 2022 to 2024 that would logically lead to a significant shift in voting patterns. And second, because of the Supreme Court election. Those low-information Trumpers might go on to vote for the Republican Senate nominee as well — my guess is that some did and some didn't, which is why Elissa Slotkin currently has a narrow lead — and they might even go down the ballot filling in the bubble for every Republican they see — but there's no way in hell they know who the Supreme Court nominees are. This helps explain why there's such a wide gulf between the top of the ticket and the Supreme Court races, when usually they're more closely aligned.

So this morning I had to just accept: This is the country I live in.
Forget about policy for a minute. Just think in general about Trump the person. In a normal world, getting caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by the pussy would kill your campaign. There have been so many times he should have been finished, but he keeps going forward.
Why?
Why is it that, literally, when he's reached his apex of awfulness, that's when he has his strongest electoral showing?
I don't know. People will point to Harris and say she ran a bad campaign. But honestly, no she didn't. Not really. She energized her base, she performed well in the debate, but for some reason...it wasn't even close to enough.
But really, from a reasonable standpoint, it should have been enough. Trump has done enough things that should have repulsed the average American that the only explanation is: America doesn't care.
I'm not sure anymore what it does care about. The law? Not in actuality. Morals and decency? No. The rugged embodiment of the settler spirit? Please.
I don't know what the next 4 years holds, but I'm about as far from optimistic as I can get. All I can do is focus on the good things in my life, my family and my job, and do my best to ignore whatever is happening outside of that.
My final thought is this: America deserves what it gets. Whatever happens, we wanted this, apparently.

Because the self-beatings will continue until the message gets across.

Tammy Baldwin currently holding her Senate seat by about 27k, nut "milk" is on notice.

Wisconsin House incumbents also holding to maintain a 2-2 split, I know the Dems were really hoping Cooke could flip Van Orden and she looks to have come pretty close. Democrat incumbents both got >70% of the vote.

With Sherrod Brown losing in Ohio that’s lights out for the state. Ohio is going to be Midwest Alabama for the next 50 years or more.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20...dates-rcna178894/rcrd63789?canonicalCard=true

not sure how well that link will work, but "Ten states floated ballot measures designed to protect or expand abortion access, and in each of those states the measures received a larger share of the vote than Harris did." Bar graphs at the link. 9 states saw a majority in favor, and they're also counting Nebraska as a loss, but I gather some of them needed more than 51% to pass.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20...asures-pass-7-states-fail-3-others-rcna178718

Actually I'm not. I didn't vote for him in 2016 or 2020 and I don't really think he was a good president, but Ron Paul joining him pushed me over the edge as well as other factors.

I have a feeling we're going to see those words several times over the next four years.

I can't speak exclusively about the US, but in general incumbents have been booted out because of inflation, which for me, is a bit of tip of an iceberg.

I think a lot of voters are just fed up with how parties see them.

Take the working classes, globalisation and rising energy prices have destroyed a lot of industries, and, due to property prices, the middle classes have sprawled into their neighbourhoods bringing gentrification along for the ride, and over a few years displacing and pricing out the locals. Sure, you get to see some investment going to those places too, but it's usually what the interlopers think the natives should want. A brand new theatre featuring a interpretation of MacBeth by Mongolian throat singers isn't going to get a thank you.

Ethnic minorities are almost taken as a given by left-wing parties, who seem horrified when it turns out the heavily religious communities turn out to be socially conservative. I mean, read the fucking label. And, yes, some of those minority communities have levels of misogyny straight out of the mainstream 1950s, and that will have impacted them voting for Harris.

Immigrants, and their children, are just assumed to be cool with more immigration, when it's usually the reverse. Hypocritical? Ladder-pulling? Maybe, or maybe having gone through the process, they've got a much more cynical eye, might be of value to ask them.

Women, and pro-choice, again, assumptions get made.

Many on the left have gotten lazy, hiding behind lazy and trite phrases like "right side of history", thinking that's it. No, start earning votes, stop assuming various demographics opinions are in lockstep with the parties because the party thinks they should.

Those assumptions don't help. The Dems need to get some kind of Maslow Hierarchy for policies, and figure out how to keep the wider hierarchies happy whilst pursuing policies for the narrower ones.

Someone like Trump was always going to appear, it's an abject failing that he's been allowed to win not just once, but twice.

This article is two years old, but it tracks with my personal experience with Hispanic Trump voters. I know at least as many brown people who vote for him as I do white people. Just yesterday I was leaving a polling place after getting some video and an older Hispanic couple enthusiastically told me that Trump was going to win.

Why Democrats Are Losing Hispanic Voters
The left has alienated America’s fastest-growing group of voters just when they were supposed to give the party a foolproof majority.

I've heard those same kind of complaints about Latinx myself.

As for the US?

Proverbs 26:11

It's curious that you only choose to reveal this information after he wins. You've spent a very long time denying being a Trump supporter.

Progressive policies should be the icing and cherry on the cake, not the actual cake, or even look like the actual cake.

They're too easy to wedge and weaponise, and when dealing with minorities, it's too easy to tar a whole group with bad member for political ends.

The cake is what gets those voters who may not like icing and cherries to still vote for you.

Yeah I wasn't a Trump supporter for the longest time.

It's qwhite obvious why.

I've always had the opinion that were not for COVID and people very much wanting to get back to normal that Biden would have lost

If you truly are voting for him for the first time, you're a bigger fool than Dayton ever was.

@Uncle Albert , I'm not surprised your only reply to my dismay at the election was a gleeful "GFY" emoji. Your replies are barely monosyllabic at the best of times, but I'm sure you're thrilled the racist misogynist triumphed over a woman yet again.

"I never said lock her up."

"I never said I wouldn't ban all abortions."

"I never promised I wouldn't gas Portland's mayor."

If it weren't for @Lanzman's grossly negligent management of the Asteroid Attractor Ray Project, none of this would have happened.

Until yesterday, at which point you suddenly made the leap? ROFLOL.

Actually it was Sunday night when I made my final decision.