Senate January 6th was not a Facebook ad: the 2024 US Presidential Election Thread

I wasn't either. Is that a bad thing?

 

Never been prouder to be a member of a 10%.

 

I’m not being pessimistic. I’m not even being a “realist/pragmatic/practical/etc.”

I’m just being analytical and looking at evidence.

When people here are repeatedly saying “oh this early vote means Kamala will win, this ground game means Kamala should win” then we should remember this. She could definitely win, maybe to the same level as Biden. But evidence now suggests it’s closer to 2016 than 2020… not all the way to 2016, but much closer to it than 2020 was. We can only hope the evidence is wrong, like in 2016, but in the other direction.

If I didn’t have optimism, not only would I most likely be dead or some kind of zombie, I wouldn’t be working as hard in the civics education job as I do.

Also, maybe my coworkers being actual pessimists about this, and every day for the last month or two there being at least an hour of worktime being related to the election, or the strategic planning and scenario planning based on election results (especially if Trump wins and goes through with his promise to gut the Department of Education, ban civics that teaches students skills, etc.) might be coloring my thinking.

There’s definitely some difference, like the context on abortion right now.

But to other points:

-early voting was still big in 2016, and even in 2020 it was a more balanced outcome than many predicted

-for battleground states, most people were simply wrong about what was a battleground state in 2016: Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and Texas were considered battleground while Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania weren’t. Imagine if Minnesota or Illinois or Oregon votes for Trump this year - they’re not considered battleground. Imagine if Trump wins New Hampshire or Maine - while they’re slightly considered battleground, they’re not “really” considered battleground, more if we’re losing them then we already lost. Same with if Harris wins Indiana or Alaska or Ohio: they’re not considered true battleground states this year, and it will make Republicans criticize why there wasn’t more campaigning there

-Harris campaigning and fundraising more is good, but as you also noted, HRC did out-fundraiser Trump 2:1, and posters here were saying she was campaigning more than Obama. So it’s a good sign but still not sure how much it takes, how much is a factor. But yes, it is a factor.

-it really doesn’t seem like Trump being convicted is a big factor for undecideds. Focus groups, I read, even said Democratic attacks on it were a turnoff for some undecideds in swing states, especially among young men who have been convicted too (even if for many different reasons)

-Trump’s 2016 GOTV at this point could be seen as the same or worse

-for incumbency advantage/disadvantage: that’s one of the big unknowns in this race. But we know some aren’t happy about the economy, or foreign policy, and it comes down to the swing states

I knew I was hearing this stuff about a ground game before, and a few weeks ago even more people seemed a little too confident. It was worth looking through the old thread for an hour to copy and paste. If citing evidence that Hillary wasn’t actually seen as XYZ in defenses of how Harris will win isn’t being in a “finest hour,” oh well. If Harris wins by a blowout, I will be so happy that it’s turned around.

You might not remember, but others were posting that way in 2008. You’re right that overall there does seem to be more excitement, it’s just so hard to quantify, and it seems to have slowed down after not shifting much on consequences for Israel’s actions. It was said there was more campaigning/rallies for Hillary than Obama… and there was definitely cringe popular media stuff for her too As for Biden’s comment - if Romney’s 47% comment and Hillary’s basket comment, and Trump campaign’s own PR comment this week which wasn’t even said by him, are being remembered, than this probably could be too especially as it has also spread like wildfire online.

Just that neither of you made a post that didn’t age well from the end of October 8 years ago.

 

This feels like the media trying to hang on to headlines in the leadup to the election, and not much more.

Biden isn't running, Harris is. If she'd said it, I'd be much more concerned, but no-one's paying attention to the ramblings of Joe any more. Worst thing Harris or her surrogates could do is give this more oxygen. Stay focused on the closing argument, and let Trump and Co flail and stew.

This ****'s already baked in. No-one's changing their vote over this.

 

I assume this is also Vaderize's fault...

Pennsylvania Residents Peppered With False Texts Claiming They Already Voted

 

Ah, that would explain that Like the other day in the thread where I said, "Trump just won Indiana."

 

IT WAS ME!!!!!!

 

Next Tuesday:

 

Still haven't seen that one, I do enjoy most of Alex Proyas films

 

Anyway making my way to Pittsburgh now. Any restaurants or bars I should check out? Note I have signed up for 8 hour shifts so I won’t be able to do anything during the day.

 

Trump believes he is losing Pennsylvania. And is preparing more lawsuits and whining.

Former Republican CA governor has endorsed Harris/Walz. He only gave an anti-endorsement of sorts of Trump in 2020 IIRC.

 

I am thinking of doing extra grocery shopping this weekend.

 

Trump has been throwing a fit about Pennsylvania which means he must be losing on the GOP internal polling

vote. Continue the momentum. Volunteer if you can. Only we can save democracy

 

That’s right!! Only by electing Harris, the person chosen by the people of the Unites States to be the democratic standard bearer, can we save democracy!!

Oh wait, that’s right, nobody chose Harris, we were TOLD that she is our only choice to save democracy. Somebody somewhere in some closed room chose Harris, and we were all like “OK, cool. No problem, that works or whatever.”

 

With respect, no you absolutely are not.

1. There is no "evidence" about what will happen next week in a single discussion thread made 8 years ago on a Star Wars message board. Period.

2. There is no need to correct anyone's analysis. Almost every third post is talking about how close this election is, and that it is very possible Trump could win. I would challenge you to find me someone that hasn't conceded Trump's victory isn't very possible. That doesn't change the interpretation of one data point.

3. The last sentence brings to something stupid about your larger approach. You are criticizing a lot of things that were true. Trump had stopped campaigning. He was broke. He is a racist. And economic fundamentals like a growing economy should favor Harris's victory, just as they should have Clinton's before. Analyzing historic trends in US elections and applying there lessons to the current is not some wild-eyed, partisan approach. It's the most obvious way to understand what is happening. It could absolutely be wrong, but it is not hubristic.

Even if none of the above, were true, you don't need to balance anyone else's thoughts. You can just do your own analysis. More than that, in multiple posts you have cited only negative polls about Harris, even when there are concurrent polls that are positive. That is not being analytic, it is being deliberately negative. It is extremely weird. Stop.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/30/virginia-voter-rolls-supreme-court-00186238

This is definitely not good. I'm even more worried about the Pennsylvania case currently on appeal.

 

Look, the role of the Vice President is to take over for the President if he becomes incapable of fulfilling his duties. This applied to Nixon and to previous administrations where it had happened. Now, granted this time it was during an election cycle, but nobody voted for Ford to replace Nixon and for Truman to take over for FDR. Afterwards, yes. But not at the time they were sworn in. Would it have been preferable if this had been during the Primaries? Yes. But there's no hard rule that prevents this and I guarantee you that Trump would have been replaced in 2020, if he had not recovered from Covid.

In the end, the Vice President is just as valid a replacement on the ticket during an election cycle as they are outside of one.

 

The only reason Harris was the default pick was because Democrats were in denial about Biden, despite obvious concerns being expressed about his fitness for years, and/or they desperately did not want a contested primary.

 

There's lots of conservatoriums and places of nature. There's the National Aviary, the Pittsburgh Zoo, the Botanical Garden, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Andy Warhol Museum, and John Heinz History Center.

Otherwise, there's the UNESCO world heritage site Fallingwater and the Kentucky Knob tour.

 

This is an argument you use because it's all you have. But the truth remains that had Biden removed himself from candidacy a year earlier, we would have gotten a full primary. And sure, maybe Harris would have won that. But we will never know because due to a combination of DNC hopium and negligence, we never got one. And no matter how many times you repeat your talking points, this fact remains in the back of our minds.

 

Technically nobody (except delegates) voted for Biden or Trump or Walz or Vance, they voted for delegates at a private convention to vote for Biden. There is no direct election. It’s a privately run electoral college. And the delegates chosen by voters chose Harris because Biden told them to so there would be less chaos than there already was.

 

Down here in PR, people are scared Luis Dalmau might actually win the governorship.

Luis Dalmau is the leader of the pro-independence party, which historically has never really been a contender. But the political landscape in PR has been changing, and this time around, the PIP (pro-independence party) has allied itself with other smaller political parties in order to beat the two main political parties (the PNP or pro-statehood party and the PPD or pro-status-quo party) that have dominated government since the 1940's (the PNP and the PPD are, for all intents and purposes, the Republican and Democratic parties of PR).

They have rallied around Luis Dalmau, and while not all of them are pro-independence, they are using him to deliver a message to the traditionally dominant parties: people have had enough of the same thing, decade after decade, and they want change. This is of course the movement that the younger voters have flocked to, and celebrities like Bad Bunny are in favor of.

A lot of people are worried that if Luis Dalmau wins, it will be seen state-side as a message that PR wants to cut ties with the USA, and that it will lead to the USA deciding to finally cut us loose.

I guarantee you that if Luis Dalmau wins, this island is going to empty itself. A huge amount of people will just move to the USA. Even if Dalmau does not look for independence, people will still see it that way and flee what they believe is the coming of a banana republic. People are talking here that a Dalmau win is the same as turning PR into Venezuela or Nicaragua.

 

I don't like it either. But it's 1,600 people I doubt VA will be that close. And in VA you can register as you walk up to vote. This literally happened to a guy in my office who moved and forgot to update his registration.

So while it's bad, this news alone is not enough to panic. But it does unfortunately make me think all Republicans are bad because this **** Governor. He lost bad in midterms and still keeps trying this ****. In VA you can't be Governor for more than one term, good cause he'll be gone. Bad cause he doesn't care.

 

The term "banana republic" comes from the US intervening in the domestic politics in Latin American countries sometimes literally on behalf of banana-growing US companies. It's funny that the concerns about Puerto Rican independence boil down to "the US will punish us." Not an invalid concern!