#republicans can't win the popular vote anymore but they don't even try to

[britneyshakespeare]

i was just reading a news article shaking in disbelief that claimed that from their poll t**mp had a growing favorability and an overall 2-point lead (still within the margin of error) of the national popular vote before i read that the sample was only of 1,000 voters. in the entire nation. big hefty fuckin claims for that small a sample

[lethalbutterfly]

Several months before the election, my boss, a Trump supporter, was saying something about how the 2020 election was rigged, Trump only lost because "they" (presumably just a general sense of conspiratorial authoritarian democrats in government?) gave all the mail-in ballots to Biden.

And my response to this was something along the lines of "Even if that were true, what do you propose we do about it? I hate to say it, but if you can't trust the process by which votes are counted, then you don't actually believe in democracy. There's no place to go from there other than having you personally count the votes yourself, or to just not have elections altogether."

My position on this is that the make-or-break issue for me this election was weather or not Democracy should exist. There were plenty of other reasons why I voted for Kamala, but that one was the most important. Trump said during a rally he would "fix it so you don't have to vote anymore" he said during the debate that he still does not accept the results of the previous election. There was one party actively advertising themselves as disestablishing the checks and balances of our government as they have been done 2016, and going on to promise rigged elections, and they've laid plenty of groundwork for it:

Gerrymandering favors the republican party in most places. Statistically, the higher the voter turnout, the greater the margin democrats win by. In the entire >300 year history of our government, there have been only 3 times that the electoral vote has disagreed with the popular vote- ALL THREE times in favor of the republican party (granted their platform was drastically different back in 1876 when it benefited Hayes, they weren't the insane racist maniacs they are today, the fact that the other 2/3rds of this deeply anomalous occurrence happened within the most recent 25 years of our country's existence is another anomaly in and of itself). And last but not least, the same sentiment echoed by my boss in the wake of the 2020 election, the conspiracy that the votes themselves simply cannot be trusted, which is difficult to argue and disprove without intimate specialized knowledge of how votes are counted, and which makes it very easy for someone who lost the vote to forcibly claim the presidency, if there's widespread sentiment that he didn't REALLY lose despite what the numbers say.

What I'm trying to build up to here is that, since I positioned free elections as my #1 issue for this election, I cannot very well go around and claim that the election is wrong, can I? I wish it were a mistake. The world would be better off if it were a mistake, but there's no evidence for that, and trying to delegitimize the election is the strategy used by those who don't want there to be elections at all. Or at least don't want elections to be heeded. Was the election fair? No. There was voter suppression and disenfranchisement just like there always is, but it was out in the open, just like it always is, not in privately stuffed ballots or secretly hacked machines. We can fight against the unfairness of the election by trying to reduce or eliminate gerrymandering and the electoral college in favor of a popular vote, and by supporting ranked choice voting, but fighting for those goals is going to be extremely difficult when the presidency (and the Supreme Court for that matter) is held by the party whose power is cemented by those things.

Maybe it won't be for everyone, but it has been a small solace to me that this is the will of the American people, and not a miscarriage of justice carried out by a fully rigged system. It was not the decision of oligarchs that there should not be a democracy, but democratically elected that there should not be a democracy (ironic).

And before anyone reading this gives into Despair at the way I'm phrasing this, I would like to add something else:

I have several friends who are both more politically minded and just generally more intelligent than I, and they belive that, in spite of Trump's campaign promises to the contrary, there WILL still be an election in 2028. He will, most likely, not be able to get so far as fully abolishing elections in a single term. It will be an election less fair than what we just went through, more people are going to be disenfranchised depending on how much of Project2025/Agenda47 gets passed. And I know that the mere existence of voting in 4 years being considered a victory is setting the bar so low it's a tripping hazard in hell. But it is not unrecoverable. In 2020, we turned Georgia and Nevada blue. Trump voters are going to feel betrayed when their grocery prices are driven further up by deregulation and inflation. This election teaches us that regardless of who is really responsible for the hardships of Americans, most voters will simply blame whatever party is in charge at the time.

It's going to take a lot more work, but it's possible.

(I myself regret not doing more to send out calls and texts for the campaign, speak up against misinformation, and just monetarily donate tbh. I intend to do these things when 2028 rolls around, as well as look for other opportunities along the way.)

If your democrat friends start muttering about stolen election conspiracy theories, the time to have a sit down with them and express your concerns is NOW, while you still have a chance to reach them, not 6 months from now when they're fully conspiracy-pilled.

Here's some of the talking points and why they're bullshit:

'10 million votes don't just disappear!' -> Joe Biden's 81 million votes were a statistical outlier, sparked by the recent experience of the Trump presidency. The democrats failed to maintain that sense of urgency, but Harris still got more votes than Hillary Clinton, more than Obama and more than any previous democratic candidate. These numbers are not weird at all.

'The Republicans tried to infiltrate election- and vote counting organizations!' -> yeah, they did, and yet hundreds of independent legal observers didn't see anything go wrong enough to raise any alarms. Independent exit polls are also very consistently similar to the counted votes. Tons of international organizations specialized in this stuff observed the election and didn't see a reason to raise the alarm.

'But I know a dozen democrats whose mail-in votes were not counted!' -> In any election a certain number of votes are registered as invalid because something was wrong with the ballot. In a country the size of the US, that translates to many thousands of votes. The internet allows these people to find each other, creating the false impression that a suspiciously large group of voted was not valid.

'Musk used Star Link to mess with electronic voting!' -> Electronic voting machines are not connected to the internet and dozens of independent media have already debunked this myth. It is absolutely impossible to use Star Link to fake election results.

'There is voter disenfranchisement!' -> This is true. This has always been true, for every election. It's an issue worth talking about but it's not a special secret conspiracy that's unique to this election.

But just as importantly as the facts: sit down with your friend and talk about the anxiety that's behind their conspiracy leanings. Acknowledge their pain and fear. Help them find ways to feel less powerless and regain their sense of agency. Take them to a mutual aid event, involve them in a fundraising event for a marginalized group, invite them to a local community effort. If they spend more time feeling connection and empowerment and less time doom scrolling online, they're far more likely to stay in reality.

[feelingbluepolitics]

We Can't Overlook Elizabeth Warren.

Behind the early ups and downs of this Democratic primary, there is one quality we are all looking for, both progressives and moderates: The ability to beat trump.

Warren is the one candidate already running directly against trump.

This is about whether we support the anti-corruption candidate who directly confronts and undercuts not just trump, but his entire agenda and everything trump stands for.

Right now, Warren is a bit like Ukraine's anti-corruption candidate, Zelinsky, who is holding out against Russia even while it is uncertain that America has his back. He didn't look like the toughest or the most fierce either, but he ran on a solid and heartfelt campaign against corruption. The strength of those principles resisted trump's attacks time after time, withstood every threat and every trump minion, brought trump's targeted corruption efforts to a standstill, and led to trump being exposed and impeached. The people of Ukraine united against corruption in their Revolution of Dignity, and chose the person who represented anti-corruption as the core of his campaign.

Ukraine versus Russia isn't where we are, though, as Democrats against the trump-led Republicons. Democrats together, with Independents and new voters and shocked, repulsed, moderate Republicons, are unstoppable. But building that coalition begins with Democrats united. Why would others join us if we fragment the power we have? As Blue Voters, as Democrats, we need to be positioned to work together.

"What it takes is a united Party. We can't have a repeat of 2016 when we roll into the general election with Democrats still mad at Democrats, Democrats still angry, some Democrats staying home. We need to have a Party that is united." (Warren, MSNBC's All in With Chris Hayes, 2/12/2020.

Bernie is uniting the progressives.

Buttigieg, maybe Klobuchar, are coalescing the moderates.

For all that many of us say and mean, "Vote Blue No Matter Who," we will lose moderates who are too nervous to support Bernie, the "self-described socialist," at the top of the ticket. People tend to fear the unknown. It is a terrible risk that people could consider trump the "known" factor, the disaster who telegraphs every despicable move so that at least people know what's coming, while seeing Bernie as the unknown, the greater fear of what "socialism" means in America between one day and the next.

Conservatives have long fear mongered against "socialism" and blotted out the distinctions between socialism and democratic socialism. We can start saying, "Well, it's like Denmark, it's like thriving countries in Northern Europe, not like Venezuela." But pictures of unrest hit harder and more viscerally than pictures of foreign success. Fox, dug into the political landscape for a long time now, has a formidable head start. There is also an ingrained version of American exceptionalism, where we Americans want to be who we are and not anybody else. We just want to be better at who we are.

Young Democratic Socialists and leaders like AOC are the brightest future, but we have to get there to reach it. trump stands in the way. As against trump, there will be inevitable, additional, multiple and damaging fights over Bernie and his platform before and after he faces trump directly.

It is unfair, and it is frustrating beyond measure. But ultimately, what most progressives want is the progress represented by Bernie's decades of vision, and they must consider whether that is more important, or if having Bernie himself as the standard bearer is more important.

In a better world, in a better America, Bernie could be president. That isn't where we are.

In a steadier world, a moderate candidate could make a suitable candidate for president, to run the country with small, incremental course corrections here and there.

It isn't as though progressives won't also look for bipartisanship! That is not a qualification unique to moderates! It's just that more progressive leaders don't stall while waiting for it. We cannot afford to do that. That is absolutely not where we are. On so many fronts, we are in a cataclysmic phase in our nation's history and in the future of the world. This is not the time for cautious incrementalism, for trying to back up to a safer-seeming status quo that isn't there anymore, or really never was.

To choose a moderate who seems confident about grasping the reins and taming the runaway is to be looking at the wrong moving picture entirely. What it really is, is pulling a blanket over our heads during a massive earthquake, and imaging that as reasonable because we'll just pat everything back into place afterwards.

We need to stop overlooking Elizabeth Warren. We need to support her before we lose her.

She is a fighter, which is why bloated billionaires and corporate CEOs fear her.

Her authenticity and her resolution are why Mark Zuckerberg is absolutely set against her.

What better protection can there be against the dangers Facebook represents to our elections than Zuckerberg having confessed in advance he will do anything to try to prevent a Warren presidency? She has a built-in shield like no other candidate because he's already on record against her. If people are suspicious about the mass of disinformation coming at us, it can't work as well.

Warren is a fighter, but she fights to unify us. As she says, everybody on the political left, up and down the ticket, can run on anti-corruption as a platform. We need them to.

That is the fight that can completely destroy trump. Every time trump brings up his economy, Elizabeth is positioned to show who "trump's" economy is really working for and why.

For all that people are talking about "electability" -- an amorphous and meaningless quality on its own, whatever it is -- any of our candidates have it if most voters nationwide support that candidate. That is actually what "electability" really comes down to. At this fraught junction, progressives are in no mood to support moderate candidates, although many, with trump as the alternative, will if they must. Moderates are always nervous of progressives; Bernie has long been the unimaginable for them, and Republicons excel at exacerbating fear.

If both progressive and moderate Democrats remain determined to win it all on their own respective merits, we stand to lose all. We need Warren for so many reasons which become more obvious once we look.

Those who hated Hillary saw her as a corrupt insider, with too many set implacably against her from the outset. Warren isn't a career "insider," and she is running against corruption. trump's projections of corruption, his go-to comfort zone, are useless against Warren.

Warren also resolves a deep residual disappointment over American backwardness, of not yet electing our first woman president. Warren also resolves some of the terrible disappointment of having Hillary's extensive knowledge and extraordinary qualifications wasted. Warren not only has detailed plans for every situation we face, she is willing to listen to and adopt a stronger detailed version, like Jay Inslee's climate plan. With Warren we will not face trying to move forward with "one person alone," one "brand," to fix the range of severe problems we face.

Warren parted the political walls to come in first from outside to set up protection for every single American as a financial consumer. Every single American, every person living in this nation, of every age, race, religion, origin, and political affiliation. That is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren, before she ran for any office, proposed the CFPB and established it, setting it up so solidly it has withstood incessant Republicon attempts to get rid of it entirely.

Warren stepped up to help protect every American from being cheated financially before she ever ran for office.

Klobuchar believes that she is the one who can best bring everyone together. The single most popular proposal across all of America though? That's Warren's wealth tax, which draws "broad support from voters, across party, gender and educational lines. Only one slice of the electorate opposes it staunchly: Republicon men with college degrees." (The core profile of those who will pay it.)

Klobuchar, a very skilled politician with a solid record, is still promising that as the moderate, she will bring everyone with her, but Warren, with her breakout proposal in the Democratic presidential primary, which appeals across coalitions, already did it.

Warren, a relative political newcomer as of her first election in 2012, mirrors Mayor Pete's freshness in politics, which also dates to 2012. She ran a Senate race and won. He ran for mayor.

Warren is not completely inexperienced with higher government, and it isn't an asset to be completely untested and inexperienced. Brilliance is one thing, but nobody on the debate stage is anything less. It is hubris of an astounding degree to plan with self-confidence to go from young mayor to President of the United States.

Warren, for example, knows exactly who to bring into her administration. She has been working with and reaching out to top people in their fields since before she entered politics herself. She can bring in the leaders who can bring in the staffers and experts who we have critical need for after trump has gutted every department and agency, leaving only hollow props fronted by trump loyalists. Buttigieg, in contrast to Warren, knows few contacts except, presumably, his McKinsey and Company contacts and their lobbyists, which is not a reassuring prospect.

One of the best articles on why Warren should be getting our votes sooner rather than too late is this one:

Warren's own words speak best, though, if we listen to her. On CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, 2/12/2020, Warren said this:

"Jesse Jackson made a wonderful statement,

'It takes two wings to fly.'"

And I think that's where we are right now in the Democratic Party. A lot of good people in this Party. A lot of good ideas.

"But we need someone who's going to be able to unite this Party and to be able to fight hard for core Democratic values. To fight on behalf of hard-working middle-class American families. To fight on behalf of people who've just been getting the short end of the stick over and over and over.

"You know, I came to politics late, but that was my life's work. And I'm running for president because I know how bad it's gotten for hard-working people, but I can see the ways that we can make this better. We get in this fight together. We can turn this around. We can make this a country that isn't just working for rich people, but a country that actually invests in all our children. A country that actually builds a future for everyone. It's what makes this so exciting."

That's Warren for president.

[rampagingpoet]

Can't have third parties with first-past-the-post. Not unless they're all very different than each other and pulling in about a third of the vote each.

The good news is there are efforts in the US to improve the situation somewhat. For example, the National Popular Vote Compact and getting ranked choice voting into local elections.

The National Popular Vote Compact would get rid of a lot of weird incentives re: the Presidential elections specifically. Right now it is optimal to win three districts at 51% of the vote each instead of crushing it in one district with 75% and losing two others, even if the latter represents more total votes in favour. De facto cutting out the electoral college by awarding the majority of bound delegates to the candidate that wins the national popular vote would resolve that. There would be less incentive to gerrymander electoral college districts (because drawing different lines no longer matters to the total vote), and there'd be less incentive for the parties to piss off their core bases in states where they have a lot of support to chase votes in swing states specificly.

Separately, there are initiatives to move from FPTP to ranked choice voting, at least in some local and state elections. Those matter both because local and state elections can have tremendous impact and because many politicians that go on to run nationally get their start there. And candidates who got elected because of ranked choice voting are more likely to support expanding it as much as possible.

Of course, it gets a lot harder to do anything to fix this if a plurality of the electorate decides they don't want married women to be able to vote anymore. The threat of the Republican Party isn't just that their politicians are trying to dismantle democracy to seize power, it's that half the electorate thinks that's a good thing. Trump saying he's going to fix it so his base never needs to vote against the Democrats again would mean nothing if his base was like 3 million people. Unfortunately it's more like 75 million people.

(And yeah that's half the electorate because it's half the people that actually show up)

My personal opinion is that keeping the Republicans out of power while working to dismantle FPTP is more likely to be a successful strategy than refusing to vote. But if you don't want to vote for the Democrats, please at least show up at the polls. Whether you vote third party or spoil your ballot, the threat "I won't vote for a party unless ..." holds more weight coming from someone that votes at all instead of staying home.

(this is also why I'm against saying you won't vote Blue unless X and then voting Blue anyway - it undermines the credibility of the threat)

Can I get controversial for a second and say that it's really funny how many usamerican liberals seem to actually really really really want a one party state with show elections every few years but are too far up their own arse to realise that that's often what they're appearing to argue for