#Swing Voter Alienation

[writergeekrhw]

There's a Reddit screenshot going around (including here on Tumblr, Wil Wheaton reblogged a post about it) where a Trump supporter got whiny that at the Vegas convention this year, a couple of the Voyager actors were asked about their political beliefs by a fan, and they answered by praising Kamala Harris and condemning Trump and Trump supporters. This person on Reddit (not the same person who asked the politics question at the con) was upset because they felt they and their friends "learned that 7 of 9 hates them" and they were roundly made fun of for expecting that a Star Trek convention wouldn't contain anything that contradicts their MAGA beliefs given that, you know, it's such a progressive show where the future is LITERALLY luxury space communism, and where it has always spoken in favor of diversity.

This led to a bigger discussion about the place of politics in fandom spaces. I personally would understand not talking about electoral politics if we were in a normal election, like Obama vs. Romney, even though the Republicans even then advocated a lot of things that I think is at odds with what Star Trek says. But I don't think people who voted for them were necessarily hateful. I don't think they are people I can't share fandom with, you know? We can be friends. But I think with Trump people are hateful, or at the very least they're okay with hate, given how often he spews it and encourages it in his supporters. I'm a lesbian and I absolutely do feel less safe around people who wear MAGA hats in a way I just didn't around Romney or McCain or Bush supporters. My opinion personally is that it's probably a mistake and what got us to where we are today (sending this in late September 2024, where Harris is slightly up in the polls but it's still very close and Republicans are trying to ratfuck the vote in a bunch of swing states - maybe by the time you answer, the election will be over and we'll know?) that we didn't do enough to recognize that Trump support is either bigotry, or support for bigotry, in a way that should be socially unacceptable and treated as such. That we should have deployed more social shaming over it, especially in places that should be understood to be safe spaces for diverse groups of people, like the fandom of a series like Star Trek.

I was wondering what you thought about this topic. Personally, while I don't think American electoral politics need to be in every aspect of a convention, finding out that actors who played characters I like, writers who wrote shows I love, etc. are supportive of my basic civil rights, not just in broad platitudes but also in how they vote, is really heartening and makes me feel more "welcomed" in fandom. It makes me feel safer there. And the fact that Trump supporters feel excluded also makes it a safer space IMO, because I don't feel safe around those people. I have Republican friends - but none of them who have voted for Trump.

I commented on that while I was still on Xitter. I honestly worry Trump may pose an existential threat to our democracy. I think others feel similarly. I suspect Jeri Ryan, who's seen the rot inside the GOP firsthand, has particularly strong feelings about that as well. So it's no surprise she chose to speak out before the election. And it's certainly her right.

I think it's a bit silly for fans of a franchise that has a strong progressive POV to feel alienated when the artists involved in said franchise embrace its philosophy and choose to take a stand for it.

I worry for us all over the next four years, but the voters have spoken. We'll see how it goes.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Michael Podhorzer at Weekend Reading:

But, as we will see, America didn’t swing rightward, but couchward:

The popular vote result was almost entirely a collapse in support for Harris and Democrats, not an increase in support for Trump and MAGA. Trump was no more popular this year than four years ago, while Harris significantly underperformed Biden 2020.

Most of Harris’s losses were due to anti-MAGA surge voters staying home.2 She lost the most ground in deep-Blue urban areas, where the dangers of a second Trump administration seemed most remote. About 19 million Americans who cast ballots for Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024.

Anti-MAGA surge voters stayed home because they were less alarmed by a second Trump Administration than they were four years ago. A key to Biden’s victory was high turnout from less-engaged voters who believed they had something to lose under Trump. In 2024, however, about 15 million fewer votes were cast “against” Trump than in 2020.

As I’ve been saying for years, America has an anti-MAGA majority, but not necessarily a pro-Democratic one. In 2020 (and 2022, in part), alarm about Trump and MAGA was enough to overcome the cynicism and alienation of mostly younger voters who desperately want bigger systemic change, but who oppose the MAGA agenda. This time, their cynicism won out. This was in no small part because the media and other non-partisan civil society leaders were themselves more skeptical of the dangers, and because the inaction of the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress against MAGA threats belied their rhetoric of existential dangers to the nation.3 This map, from the New York Times, does a much better job making clear where Trump’s “gains” came from – namely, from Harris’s losses.

Indeed, the defining feature of American politics this century is that neither party can “win” elections anymore; they can only be the “not-loser.” Only thanks to the two-party system can the not-loser be crowned the “winner,” since there is no way to fire the incumbent party without hiring the opposition party. Yet political commentators keep confusing shifts in the two parties’ electoral fortunes with changes in voters’ basic values or priorities. A collapse in support for Democrats does not mean that most Americans, especially in Blue America, are suddenly eager to live in an illiberal theocracy. Consider that only once before in American history have three consecutive presidential elections seen the White House change partisan hands, and that nine out of the last ten midterm or presidential elections have been “change elections,” in the sense that either the presidency, the House, or the Senate changed partisan hands,4 which is completely unprecedented.5

[...]

Harris Lost Ground with Anti-MAGA Voters

As regular readers might recall, Biden won in 2020 thanks to a surge of new and less-frequent voters who hadn’t shown up in 2016, and who voted much more Democratic than 2016 voters. These surge voters were the critical “anti-MAGA but not necessarily pro-Democrat” bloc that Harris needed to turn out again in order to win. This year, based on VoteCast data (see chart in the previous section), we can estimate that about 19 million people who voted for Biden four years ago stayed home. (40 percent of those voting in 2024 had voted for Biden in 2020, and 40 percent had voted for Trump. From there, it’s simple arithmetic.16) Moreover, with the same caveats until the voter files are updated, both VoteCast and Navigator found that in the battleground states, a greater share of 2020 Trump voters than Biden voters cast ballots in 2024, albeit by a smaller margin than in the rest of the country. VoteCast also asked whether voters cast ballots “for” the candidate they chose or “against” the other candidate.17 The results show that about 15 million fewer votes were cast “against” Trump in 2024 than in 2020. That suggests a lot of missing “anti-MAGA but not pro-Democrat” voters.

Michael Podhorzer at Weekend Reading delivers a prognosis as to why Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump: Enough of the anti-MAGA vote chose the couch instead voting at all.

[netscapenavigator-official]

From what I've garnered online, the debate was rather lukewarm.

Trump was derranged, as expected. "I got involved with the taliban," "transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison," and "[immigrants are] eating the dogs…they’re eating the cats," are three very real things that he uttered tonight.

Harris was said to be rather moderate compared to her previous appearances, as (apparently) she's trying to appeal to potential Republican swing voters since she has the left pretty well secured.

However!

None of that matters (apparently), because immediately after the debate, Taylor Swift announced she will be voting for Harris, and signed off her endorsement by referring to herself as a "Childless Cat Lady," adding yet another inch to the grave JD Vance dug himself with that comment.

I wish I was kidding, but when I went to the Reddit homepage to see if Democrats dive-bombed their months of good PR, I could barely find anything relating to the debate because every single posts was a 40K upvote post about Taylor Swift endorsing Harris.

[metamatar]

mangione was a rationalist or adjacent? ideology without a wikipedia page produced this guy?

Mangione’s list of follows on X is very young guy in tech circa 2024. He appears to be a fan of wellness and self-help gurus like Andrew Huberman, Tim Ferris, James Clear, and Ryan Holiday; he’s interested in but perhaps also worried about AI, following industry figures like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and a few AI influencers and sharing posts about superintelligence.

Pundit-wise, the mix skews a bit, but not much, toward people who might describe themselves as “heterodox” thinkers, or a decade ago as New Atheists or skeptics: We’ve got the Sam Harris podcast, Richard Dawkins, and Bret Weinstein; we’ve also got Scott Galloway, Jonathan Haidt, and the New York Times’ Ezra Klein. He brushes up against the manosphere: there are posts about declining birthrates, banning sex toys, and about how Jordan Peterson should stop “overcomplicating” things. As for actual politicians, he follows RFK Jr., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and State Senator Stanley Chang of Hawaii (the X account tags Mangione’s location as “Honolulu”). He follows Rogan, but also Steve-o from Jackass.

His strongest interest by far is in the work of Tim Urban, publisher of Wait But Why?, a writer and illustrator popular with tech types who publishes science explainers and cloying, slightly anti-woke political writing about how polarization is bad and rationalism can save the world. Any scrap of new information — a manifesto, an interview with friends, the active Reddit account implied by these follows — will grant retrospective meaning to at least part of this list of follows. As it stands, though, in this brief moment before we find out more, we’ve got a 20-something politically alienated tech professional who listens to the same podcasts as a lot of his peers. This isn’t obviously the account of a future killer . If anything, it’s closer to the young male swing voter we’ve recently been hearing so much about.

[tomorrowusa]

Q: What sort of idiot alienates a large number of key voters in swing states nine days before an election? A: Donald Trump.

Trump and his cronies may try to blame his disastrous MSG rally on everybody but Trump. But we all know that Trump micro-manages his rallies. He even curates the music playlist. Any attempt to assign blame to anybody but Trump is pure Trump bullshit.

Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally Sunday evening was supposed to provide his closing argument against Kamala Harris. Instead, Trump and his supporters are being forced to answer for hateful and racist rhetoric delivered from the podium Sunday night with just eight days left in the campaign. [ ... ] And Trump’s opponents are using the rally as proof of the former president’s divisiveness, going as far as likening the rhetoric from Sunday’s rally to the sinister 1939 Nazi rally that took place in the same venue. “My reaction is that was a combination of 1933 Germany, 1939 Madison Square Garden last night,” former Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday morning. “What you saw last night is a divisive America. That’s race baiting. It’s all the things that we were doing in the ‘30s and ‘40s.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.), called Sunday night’s event a “hate rally.” “This was not just a presidential rally, this was not just a campaign rally. I think it’s important for people to understand these are mini January 6 rallies, these are mini Stop the Steal rallies,” she said on “Morning Joe.” [ ... ] New Jersey congressional candidate Nellie Pou, who is Puerto Rican, said the rally was reminiscent of Trump’s widely criticized handling of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in 2017. “These words are a warning of how he would treat Puerto Ricans if he were to set foot again in the White House,” she wrote on X.

I'm presuming this list of states showing numbers of Puerto Rican residents (via Wikipedia) is up to date. These are just the top twelve states.

If I counted accurately, there are three swing states on this list: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. Not only that, but Puerto Ricans make up 3.6% of Pennsylvania's population. The figure for North Carolina is 1.1% and 1.0% for Georgia.

As luck would have it, VP Kamala Harris was in Pennsylvania on Sunday – before and during Trump's racist shit show in NYC. The Harris campaign released this video BEFORE the start of Trump's Nazi-revival rally. It just happens to deal with Puerto Rico. 🇵🇷

Harris unveils new Puerto Rico policy plans in Philly campaign swing

It was a classic case of being in the right place at the right time with the right message.

Puerto Ricans have the opportunity in this election to tell Trump what they think of his campaign calling them "garbage".

[nyxnoxxx]

people blaming non voters and third party voters for the outcome of the election need to understand that it's the PARTY'S responsibility to win over voters, it's the PARTY'S responsibility to listen to their base and adjust their policies based on what they call for, it's the PARTY'S responsibility to not alienate their constituents

the dems refused to listen to people calling for an end to the support of israel and for an end to funding genocide. the dems chose to swing right and appeal to conservatives and treat leftists and palestine supporters with outright contempt. they ran the worst presidential campaign they could have, and WE will be suffering the consequences

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Corey Walker

Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, said in a new interview that Democrats’ general support for Israel’s defensive military operations against Hamas in Gaza contributed to their poor performance in last month’s elections.

Clayton made the remarks while appearing on the media outlet Zeteo this week to explain why she believes her party lost big across the US, most notably in the presidential election. Speaking with Mehdi Hasan, a journalist and outspoken critic of Israel, Clayton argued that the Democratic Party “abandoned” wide swaths of its voter base, adding that the party’s support for Israel likely alienated many younger voters.

When asked by Hasan whether the Israel-Hamas war resonated with the electorate in North Carolina, Clayton argued that the ongoing military conflict in Gaza “absolutely” eroded the Democrats’ standing with young voters.

As The Algemeiner reported, a survey of swing voters by Blueprint, a Democrat-leaning research firm, found the issue of Israel and the Palestinians barely registered as motivation for choosing Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential race. Voters were more worried about inflation, immigration, and certain cultural issues. Among those voters for whom it was a factor, the survey found more people concerned that Harris was too “pro-Palestine” than those upset she was too “pro-Israel.”

Nonetheless, Hasan, citing anti-Israel protests at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, suggested that Democrats’ support for Israel disillusioned and enraged many young voters. 

Clayton defended the “Uncommitted Movement” — an effort launched by anti-Israel activists to persuade the Democratic Party to officially endorse an arms embargo against the Jewish state and not support outgoing US President Joe Biden — as “using political power in the right way.”

She added that Democrats should be “embracing” anti-Israel efforts like the Uncommitted Movement, saying “that is something that we want so see more of in our party.”

The North Carolina Democratic Party has been plagued with accusations of antisemitism in the year following Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7. Members of the state party refused to support a resolution condemning the terrorist attacks in Israel, sparking outrage among Jews within the state.

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

Assuming it’s actually true that only 56% of Jews voted for Kamala this time, it feels like a real oversight that non-Jewish media sources never seemed to ask whether a seeming indifference to antisemitism within the Democratic Party and/or suggestions about stopping aid to Israel might alienate Jewish voters in swing states, in the way that a similar question was asked about Muslim/Arab voters constantly. To be clear, any Jews who voted for Trump should be ashamed of themselves and I feel they’ve almost certainly shot Jewish rights in the foot for the next 2-4 years, but I feel like rumblings of this happening have been talked about in Jewish spaces for a while and apparently the Gentiles didn’t notice

[captain-stretch-nuts]

Well this sucks. Sucks a lot.

I can't say the result surprises me though. Ultimately this loss is the result of severe Democratic party resource mismanagement as well as Republican infiltration of Democratic party ranks. I can't blame anyone except the upper ranks of the Democratic party because voter engagement isn't a problem anyone can solve alone. If an entire organization dedicated to getting millions of people to vote for them fails to do so, that is their fault.

The biggest mistake the DNC made was having Kamala puff her chest about supporting Netanyahu instead of going all-in on a ceasefire for the sake of preservation of life, respect for human dignity -- values that dem voters young and old traditionally hold high. Supposedly they continue to entertain that nonsense because of the value of Israeli intelligence in the region of the Middle East but how useful is that data when Netanyahu is the one handing it to you? Is it worth alienating your most energetic voterbase? It definitely isn't.

That is the act of mismanaging the most useful resource as a political party: willingness to vote for you. Energy. Dems got it when they replaced Joe as the candidate for Kamala, and they completely hamstrung themselves because someone way up high in the DNC, perhaps multiple people, are bad faith actors who are convinced that swing voters are everything. They aren't. Politics has become too complicated of a topic for the average voter so even if the older swing voters recognize voting as a civic duty, they will vote for their personal best interests instead of moral issues, geopolitics, or even basic policy decisions. More importantly there are comparatively fewer of them than there are left-leaning youth, who grow in number every day. Even the Republicans are appealing and pandering to their young white male voterbase which is hilarious because that is a shrinking percentage of the youth.

It comes down to the DNC being too scared to appeal to a new voterbase who would love to vote for Dems if they would only stop trying to appeal to the worst members of their party, within and without.

[corporationsarepeople]

Mainstream news organizations suddenly became more blunt about Trump’s decline – and derangement. “Trump’s age finally catches up with him,” the Washington Post wrote Saturday. “Trump kicks off Pennsylvania rally by talking about Arnold Palmer’s genitalia,” AP headlined its coverage of the Latrobe debacle. “Donald Trump’s vulgar rally ramble fuels questions about his state of mind,” the Financial Times wrote.

As always, the New York Times immediately “sane-washed” the story. On its breaking news politics page, a short report said Trump told “golf stories” about Palmer without mentioning his lewd remark. But shockingly, after wide social media outcry, reporter Michael Gold told a critic to direct his questions to senioreditor@nytimes.com, because “I filed something that included the thing you mention as omitted, but I’m not given the power to publish what I say.”

Maybe the pressure worked. Later in the day, the Times ran a longer piece by Gold, headlined “At a Pennsylvania Rally, Trump Descends to New Levels of Vulgarity,” which included the Palmer story verbatim, and warned that Trump’s crude talk could alienate “swing voters.”

- - -

If Trump does win, I’d expect him to step down fairly quickly. He will refuse if he has enough mental faculties left to know the difference, of course, but his cabinet could remove him and his major donors will insist on Vance replacing him as soon as possible. Vance is their guy.

[krakhatoa]

the mfers too stupid to use their goddamn brains and are instead blaming third party voters when Harris would NOT have won even if every single third party voter in the swing states went to her just shows how stupid you bitches be and refuse to ACKNOWLEDGE THAT A PARTY DELIBERATELY ALLOWING A FOREIGN COUNTRY TO CONTROL THEM IS THE FUCKING ISSUE THAT LEAD TO THIS LOSS

do some goddamn math with the data IN FRONT OF YOU TO SEE ITS NOT THE THIRD PARTY VOTERS BUT THE LIBS AND DEMS ALIENATION OF PPL CARING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS THAT LEAD TO THIS LOSS

[coochiequeens]

How the democrats alienated another voting block

Supporters of former President Donald Trump watch as he holds a rally in the historical Democratic district of the South Bronx on May 23, 2024 in New York City. The Bronx, home to a large Latino community, has been a Democratic base for generations of voters and the rally occurred as Trump looks to attract more non-white voters. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Donald Trump made significant inroads among several traditional Democratic Party constituencies, cutting into Democratic margins among Black and Hispanic voters. A new paper looking at his gains among Hispanic voters puts forward a provocative argument to explain some of that movement.

It contends that Hispanic voters who hold socially conservative, anti-LGBTQ views but might otherwise have voted Democratic have become turned off by Democratic politicians’ use of the gender-neutral term “Latinx,” which is being used “to explicitly include gender minorities and broader LGBTQ+ community segments.”

Based on their analysis of a set of population surveys conducted in recent years, Marcel Roman, an assistant professor of government at Harvard, and Amanda Sahar d’Urso, an assistant professor of government at Georgetown University, say Latinos are less likely to support a politician who uses the term “Latinx” in their appeal to voters.

They say the move away from Democratic candidates using the term appears to be driven by the subset of Latino voters who hold negative attitudes toward the LGBTQ community and is not based on a broader reaction against the new term, which first began to appear about 20 years ago.

“We find that backlash is not driven by concerns related to respect for the Spanish language or anti-intellectual beliefs – that Latinx is a bourgeois, coastal, white imposition on working-class Latinos,” Roman said in an interview. “The reason why it generates backlash against some aspects of the Democratic Party is it’s a signal of inclusivity toward LBGTQ+ and gender non-conforming” members of the Latino community.

Their paper also digs into Hispanic voter patterns in areas where they say the use of Latinx has had particularly high “salience,” measured by the level of internet search activity, which Roman and d’Urso say serves as a reasonable proxy for its presence in the political discourse of local candidates. Among Hispanic voters with negative views toward LGBTQ people, they found that there was greater movement toward Trump from the 2016 election to the 2020 election if they lived in areas with higher Latinx “salience.”

Nationally, there was about an 8 percentage point swing toward Trump among Hispanic voters from 2016 to 2020. Biden still captured a majority of Hispanic votes four years ago – 61%, according to one estimate – but if the movement by Hispanic voters toward Trump continues in the current election, it could be ominous for Democratic chances.

The paper says use of the term among Democratic politicians surged in recent years. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren both used it in the 2020 presidential campaign, and Joe Biden used it in a 2021 speech on Covid vaccine compliance. Among Democratic members of Congress, the study says, just 10% used Latinx in social media posts during the 2015-2016 session, but by the 2019-2020 session fully half had done so. By contrast, they say, not a single Republican member of Congress has invoked the term on social media.

Amid his harsh rhetoric toward immigrants, Trump has nonetheless won support among Hispanic voters who don’t see themselves in those attacks.

“The us-versus-them framing has long characterized political alliances, across the ideological spectrum,” the New York Times said in a story Tuesday on Trump’s appeals to Black and Latino voters. “But Mr. Trump has been far more direct than any recent presidential candidate in inviting Black and Latino voters to be part of the ‘us,’ so long as they acknowledge that there is a ‘them.”

Underscoring the findings by Roman and d’Urso on the power of anti-LGBT views among a swath of Hispanic voters is Trump’s explicit attempt to win support on the issue.

“In one of the Trump campaign’s most widely broadcast Spanish-language television ads, attacking Ms. Harris for her support of transgender medical care for immigrants, it closes with ‘Kamala Harris is with them. President Trump is with us.’”

Roman said Democrats appear to have recognized the electoral costs that may come with use of the term Latinx. “The Democratic Party has kind of course corrected,” he said, with Harris and Biden not using the term since early 2021. “The Democratic Party at the national level recognized it may do more harm than good,” he said. But Roman said some “damage may be done” already in terms of the association of the term with Democrats.

Based on his findings, Roman said abandoning the term Latinx is a strategically smart move by Democrats. For his part, however, Roman sees the term as a welcome evolution in language precisely because of what it signals. “I think, in general, inclusive language is good,” he said. “It’s not the phrase that’s the problem. It’s that people hold queer-phobic attitudes – that’s the problem.” Shifting that reality, he said, is “a much larger undertaking.”

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

By now, every pundit in America has their own 2024 election take, mostly confirming their prior opinions. Every Republican has a take, too, which is that Americans voted resoundingly for — well, for whatever policy that Republican cares about, from opposition to transgender rights to support for prayer in schools. And of course, progressives, especially younger ones, have every right to feel afraid, angry, or alienated. But the data tells a specific story, not a choose-your-own-adventure. And that is that swing voters voted mostly out of economic insecurity and discontent. They actually liked Kamala Harris more than Donald Trump (Harris’ favorability was 48 percent, compared to 44 percent for Trump). But Harris was the incumbent, and incumbents don’t win elections when people think the economy is bad. This is not just an American phenomenon. As the Financial Times reported, in every developed country in the world, the incumbents lost this year. This is unprecedented. If, like me, you’re being kept awake at night thinking about this election, this explanation helps. Yes, people were willing to put up with Trump’s criminality, coup attempts, and extreme xenophobia, and that is still terrible. Many were also on board with scapegoating immigrants for our economic woes, which is as factually preposterous as it is morally offensive.  But they didn’t vote for MAGA. They didn’t vote against women, or wokeness, or coastal elites, or climate regulation, or government regulation in general, or queer people. Not directly, anyway. They voted against the incumbent party, like every other developed country in the world this year. The shock waves from the Covid-19 pandemic — inflation, empty shelves, housing prices — are global, and this is a global trend. Everywhere in the world, voters have chosen to throw the bastards out because of the economy.  In fact, if you look closely at the Financial Times data, Trump actually did worse than most other non-incumbents. Yes, he won a clear victory. But it was not as big a victory as parties in France, Italy, or even New Zealand.  [...] So what happens when the emperor is revealed to have no clothes — or even worse, the garb of the same financial “elites” he claims to be against? Obviously, the MAGA faithful will stay with Trump no matter what — after all, his failure to bring about revolution in 2017 spawned the QAnon conspiracy theory, which said he was really about to do it, any day now. But the economic voters that gave him his victory could abandon Trump if he can’t deliver results. And he cannot. While Trump is busy trying to throw his enemies in jail, he has no plan — not even “concepts of a plan” — for the kitchen-table concerns that actually put him into office. Maybe, just maybe, voters will see they’ve been conned. That is the best we can hope for.

Jay Michaelson for Rolling Stone on Donald Trump and how he'll make America worse off (11.11.2024).

Jay Michaelson wrote in Rolling Stone that some of who voted in Donald Trump due to “muh economy” or “muh grocery costs” could be in for a shock.

[lacefuneral]

"FUCK YOU if you voted third party YOU CAUSED THIS!!"

me when i don't understand:

what the electoral collage is. even if harris received the most votes by civilians, that doesn't matter. in 2016, clinton won the popular vote, but still lost the election. she had less electors, resulting in a trump victory. we, as united state citizens, do not directly choose who runs the country.

that trump received millions of votes more than all third party votes combined so even if the united states was a direct democracy (which it is not) everyone who voted third party voted for harris, it wouldn't have even made a dent against trump

that gerrymandering exists. each state is broken up into voting districts, and the total from each district determines the result of the election. the shape, size, and amount of districts can drastically affect the results of an election. in my state of pennsylvania, essentially only the districts that directly encapsulate a major city resulted in democrat-majority vote. the rest of the state, broken up into tiny pieces in the rural areas, all came back with republican-majority.

that if leftists are truely to blame, wouldn't these blue areas in swing states like mine actually be red? because in left-leaning areas, especially regions like philadelphia and pittsburgh, there is a lot of palestine activism? a lot of socialists in these areas, due to history of labor unions and present issues like poverty and police brutality? my district remains blue. i, or any pennsylvanian leftist, is not responsible for the swathes of red districts that exist away from urban areas. these are regions harris failed to court, and trump managed to charm. recall where trump's assassination attempt occurred and where he later returned: butler county. that region is red on the map. harris wasted her time campaigning only in our cities, which leans blue every election. it's the outer regions that are "purple." those are the ones you need to court. full of a mixture of conservatives and wish-washy moderates that "don't follow politics."

that the united states as a whole is leaning farther and father right due to radicalization. anti trans legislation, the repeating of roe v wade. have you been watching the news the last couple of years? not to mention that polls show that the US is greatly dissatisfied with the biden administration due to various factors, including skyrocketing cost of living. disgruntled moderates want change, so they flip conservative.

that harris was not elected as the nominee. she was not who democrats voted for. she was an emergency replacement candidate. and the platform she ran on was "i'm indistinguishable from biden", which alienated moderate voters who wanted something different.

that harris is a woman of color. racism, misogyny, and misogynoir exist in this country. especially at this period in time. moderate voters are less likely to vote for a candidate who isn't an old white man unless that candidate brings something to the table that appeals to them. harris failed to do so.

[bhodi-anjo-daishin]

Weird how fast the election was called, weird there was a record voter registration but low turnout. We aren't seeing a single audit, considering the results in the swing states with particularly female Democrats winning down ballots but Trump still winning the top of the ticket.

Weird how many people in the swing states voted Trump but didn't vote for the Republican candidate on the same ballot. Weird that weeks before the election Trump kept saying he didn't need our votes, that he already had enough votes! Weird that he kept saying Democrats were cheating until he won and then the claim ended.

Weird that Trump could be the first Republican president to win the popular vote in 20 years after running a hate filled campaign that alienated half the country & promised to do things that would hurt them.

Weird that Harris was filling stadiums and raised a billion dollars and lose the popular vote to a man that had no ground game at all and by the end of his campaign was having a tough time filling school gyms.

A judicial, manual recount of the swing states is required. It's that or just roll over and accept it!

[gothicprep]

jd vance, in case anybody missed this, was on tucker carlson in 2021 and made a comment about how america is being run by childless cat ladies who are miserable and hate their lives and want everyone else to be as miserable as they are. he's walked this back and said he didn't mean it Like That. but as it turns out, a lot of republican women are childless cat ladies for reasons having nothing to do with being socially liberal. turns out, they're not thrilled with it.

there are two pieces to this. there are the specific politicians he mentions as representative of the cat lady phenomenon and it's interesting who he picks – harris, aoc, and buttigieg. put a pin in that. there's also the comment itself, which strikes me as worse. this isn't something that was or could be misinterpreted. it's very clear what he meant. this seems like a way of offending a lot of people among his potential base. it's not commentary on abortion or even a pro-natalist, positive towards children stance. it's just insulting and the type of thing you'd expect to see right wing internet trolls say about taylor swift. in that context, you can say, "okay, this is a provocateur or a troll or a bot or whatever". it's much more alienating coming from a politician. it's very on par with hillary clinton's "basket of deplorables" or obama's "bitter clingers".

why a basket? i've always wondered about that.

anyway, you're expressing this sort of snide contempt for your perceived political enemies in a way that ends up alienating people who might have actually been gettable voters for you. he had a certain archetype in mind. he's not thinking about the swing voter who desperately wanted kids, couldn't for whatever reason, and now has pets instead. she still overheard. and the thing is, in social situations, you don't know which person is which.

i'll let you in on a little secret: when someone who's in their 30s or older says "i chose not to have kids" it's a coin toss whether that person is being sincere or telling you a polite social fiction. people don't say to an acquaintance that they desperately tried to have children, but had fertility struggles or couldn't find a stable relationship. these things are incredibly personal.

the other thing is, like a month after this interview, buttigieg and his husband adopted a kid, so get wrecked james