2024 General Election Thread

The guy who thinks he's a girl wants to lecture others about not having a grasp on reality.

The slug who thinks he's a human is trying to speak. Cute.

How much of this is actually ticket-splitting, and how much of it is Trump cultists showing up to vote for him but not bothering to vote for anyone else?

The numbers in Michigan point pretty strongly to the latter.

Congratulations, you are the recipient of what I'm pretty sure is my first-ever GFY reaction.

In case it wasn't clear enough, fuck right the hell off with that shit.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/09/trump-victory-explanation-scrutiny

There's gonna be as many explanations for the result as there are voters, but this one about Biden and Harris overseeing the dissolution of the massive social safety net temporarily created during covid bears some consideration.

Riffing off a comment seen elsewhere: Hey, remember when a bunch of young men were passionate and excited about socialism and voting for a Democrat ticket, and the Dems labelled them "Bernie Bros" and told them to fuck off?

Remember when Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie and the Dems gave him shit for it?

Ohoitnik wants to not respect others chosen change of identity.

Simple illustration:

Poll opinions on issues without mentioning party, voters want what liberals offer. So why do they keep voting for the party who fights all of these?

Because their indoctrination has divorced them from reality and reduced them to a tribe.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/DiaufQ3WFwYDym416

Google searches for "did Biden drop out?" and "what is a tariff?" spiked the day after the election.

Greg Sargent reports that Dem internal data shows that undecided voters refused to blame Trump for Dobbs despite his constant bragging, among several other points where real facts made no impact.

We live in the midst of deeply ignorant people who are absolutely sure, nevertheless, of their own malinformed opinions.

To be very blunt: Trump or post-Trimp,the reactionsries have hacked the American brain and I don't see how we get it back.

Possibly something like another depression or world war might be a severe enough shock to provoke a reset.
Maybe.

The way I see it, presidential elections over the last few decades have almost always come down to personality contests. Policy is a secondary concern. The Democrats just need to find a properly charismatic candidate capable of expressing a simple message that gets people fired up, and they're back.

A Bernie-type candidate that runs on a platform of "Make America Great Again, but for real this time" could do really well. "America was great when the wealthy paid their fair share." "America was great when FDR broke up monopolies." "America was great when the air was clear and the water was clean." "America was great when a working man could support his family with a regular job."

In retrospect I think Harris failed because she ran on what I'd call a "nice guy/incel" narrative. "Look how shitty the guy other guy is! He's a criminal and a liar! I won't abuse you like him! Obviously you're going to choose me, I lack all those bad qualities! Look, your awful grandpa (Dick Cheney) thinks you should pick me too!"

Any self-described "nice guy" can tell you exactly how effective that approach is. (It's not. Stacey goes for the Chad and the nice guy goes home alone.)

In all honesty, their social conservatism is mostly wider than deep, but there are red lines. Parental rights always strike a nerve, as does any perceived unfairness.

You generally find a sense of tolerance up to a point - few care much where a transperson goes to toilet, or if someone has an abortion in the first few weeks - and that tolerance evolves over time, but if you push too far, you get a backlash.

And I don't think lacking education is part of it, it's more a mix of personality and family culture. I mean, that kind of personality is probably not inclined to further education, but the reverse isn't necessarily true.

I think most people believe they're good and on the right side of history, regardless of what that history shows. No doubt there are Republicans out there who think they're protecting children even as they vote for a sexual predator. Not many of us likely believe we could possibly be the villain of the story, even as we're telling the local moral police unit where we last saw those pesky trans people hiding in that abandoned building downtown. It all comes down to framework: how do we perceive ourselves, each other, THE Other, and our role in society?

There are no simple answers to that. Hell, we're not even working from the same framework mentally. It's amazing to learn that a large percentage of the population has no inner monologue, for example, or that there are people who only experienced empathy after they took a hefty dose of LSD. So it feels like an uphill battle to get everyone onto the same page, and even when we can do that, now you have to sort through all of our life experiences because those have helped form who we are and how we see the rest of the world.

Look at how billions of Christians, over the centuries, have interpreted 'love thy neighbor' as they do everything from offering bread to a homeless man all the way up to stabbing a heretic in the chest for wronging their one true god.

It's a clusterfuck, is what I'm trying to say, and all of this post analysis has so many possible answers, and most likely all of them are right to some degree because the Democratic party is such a big tent, in theory, and a lot of people are shouting to be heard.

Dozens of local candidates across the country have been running on "parental rights" and "fairness" since 2022 and the overwhelming majority of them lost.

People outside the Christianists bubble do NOT buy in on that noise,

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/arizona-senate-results

https://apnews.com/article/mike-gar...-republicans-98b6a4f98355e21c3b125d1002bc944f

This aggravates the hell out of me. The ticket splitters who say they want Trump in the White House and a progressive Democrat in the Senate. Dios mio!

The swing states that went congress-blue on ticket splitting disprove the "identity politics! " horseshit.
If this year was a referendum on "wokism" Dems should have been punished across the board.
Nope!
So, anyone who bought into that did so because they wanted to. Gee, I wonder why. I said in sarcasm.
I'm not about to tell those people to climb into a dumpster, and will their hearts to stop beating, but....yeah, I am.
Fuck off.

Yep, I've been watching the narrative of "the Democrats went too woke" being parroted on mainstream news talking heads shows, and I just... I just hate most political pundits these days because they can say the absolute worst, dangerous shit on national television with no consequences whatever.

Jon Stewart talked about it on TDS yesterday, I think.

Edit- Adding to my post.
Oh, and Trump ran a campaign ENTIRELY on fucking identity politics.
So, y'know, sip some rat pee in the dumpster while you're there.

It was a referendum on the economy, and to a lesser degree, the border.

I'm taking particular delight in the screechbags wailing "I hope you like your cheap gas! " As if the cost of living is a trivial concern compared to their pet identity politics.

I take particular delight in reprisal being the only thing you delight in anymore.
I like you better this way, Mason.

While spite is a powerful reason to keep living, that creature has chosen to be spite and nothing else and is worthless to everyone, including itself.

Some years back I read a column by the great Jim Murray where he reminisced about the Great Recession. "A loaf of bread was a nickel. But nobody had a nickel. You bought the day old bread for a penny.

Might as well be.

Republicans are not going to lower gas prices.
Democrats are not going to …. Let you be who you think you are.

The HR-ification of the Democratic Party

"Prices haven't risen! All is well!" When a person resides in Let's Pretend Land, anything is possible.

Who said prices haven’t risen?

Retailers as they raise prices?

I'm hoping things like this means that many people are reaching the upper limit of just what they'll tolerate.

Most Texas school board candidates who support book bans lost their elections

Source: https://www.lonestarlive.com/news/2...o-support-book-bans-lost-their-elections.html

Not to mention shrinkflation.