2024 Election Thread

[deaddmwalking]

It's been a month since it became clear that, barring any major health changes, 2024 would be another Trump versus Biden rematch. With months to go most polls tell us that voters just aren't tuned in or following things closely - which is totally normal. Since most voters know both candidates from 4 years ago there may be even less reason to tune in that normal.

What has been interesting in the news lately is a combination of younger voters being skeptical of voting for Biden, but an increasing share of older voters appearing to support Biden.

From PoliticoThe polls are suggesting a huge shift in the electorate. Are they right?

It’s a significant reversal from recent history: President Joe Biden is struggling with young voters but performing better than most Democrats with older ones.

NPR has an article that also investigates recent polling: Key voting groups are shifting in the race between Biden and Trump

In the four years since Biden took office, according to the NPR poll, white men with degrees have shifted another 24 points in Biden's favor, and he's gained another 19 with white women with degrees. It's a trend that Miringoff said he is seeing in the surveys Marist has conducted in various states as well.

It could be tough to bring some young voters back on board with so many upset over Gaza. In the survey, 61% of voters 18-29 said they disapprove of the job Biden is doing overall — and he has a lot of work to do to get Latinos even close to the level they supported him at four years ago.

FiveThirtyEight recently launched their Swing-O-Matic that lets you investigate what changes to the electorate by subcategory and turnout. If seniors swung toward Biden by +10 points, but younger voters swung toward Trump by +20 points but nothing else changed, Biden would win (That would be Trump winning seniors by +1 point instead of +11 points, and Biden winning young voters by 9 points instead of 29 points).

I think that appealing to younger voters as the core of your political message is critically important.

The New York Times has an article (free articles limited to non-subscribers, but should be available via incognito mode) How ‘All in the Family’ Explains Biden’s Strength Among Seniors

Warning - This article lists people who will be seniors on or before election day and it may make you feel old.

Yesterday’s hippies have become today’s seniors — and they’re still voting Democratic.

There are a number of articles of various types prognosticating about the election. Also at the New York Times, Simon Rosenberg (Democratic Strategist) shared his upbeat take on the election. Many Democrats Are Worried Trump Will Beat Biden. This One Isn’t.

Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist and consultant, is pushing back against the Democratic doom and gloom.

I would like to be optimistic about a Democratic victory in November. I think the 4 years that Trump was president were the worst years of my entire life. I couldn't go a full day without my outrage meter exploding. And that was when Trump didn't have a plan. I fear what it would be like knowing his plan for organized revenge and an assault on our institutions is fully formed.

[Stahlseele]

You are expected to run a marathon.
Voting Trump means losing your left leg.
Voting Biden means losing your right leg.
They are both unfit for the position, but
you lot do not get to have that choice . .
Pretty sure that in the end they both will
do about 85 to 90% the same things as the
other would, even if for different reasons.

[erik]

You are expected to run a marathon.
Voting Trump means losing your left leg.
Voting Biden means losing your right leg.
They are both unfit for the position, but
you lot do not get to have that choice . .
Pretty sure that in the end they both will
do about 85 to 90% the same things as the
other would, even if for different reasons.

Wow. That's a lot of gibberish with an impressively total and utter lack of basis in reality. What a fucked up and stupid false equivalency.

Pick any issue or any governmental action and compare records. They are not remotely similar other than that they are both old white men.
Moving on.

Regarding the post topic, I do think our odds are much better than polling suggests because polling has become utter shit as people don't answer unknown numbers anymore, especially younger people, who tend to be democratic-leaning voters. And media outlets tend to push narratives that are most compelling to drive interest, such as a close race, so given their polling unreliability combined with a monetary motive to be inaccurate, it's hard to take their assessments seriously.

What will be taken seriously is that the Republican party continues to tie themselves to oppressing women and the backlash against their anti-contraceptive anti-women's rights attempts to rule women is going to be felt at the polls up and down ballots. The Republican party also has been pushing ever harder at going full nazi on trans people, which is a smaller demographic than people who care about women, but not to be underestimated in motivating voters to show up against them. I think there will be landslide in favor of democrats country-wide, but I'm still worried because if the improbable happens and Trump and Republicans seize power it will be unthinkably bad. For everyone. Because Biden and Trump victories are not remotely similar outcomes.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Pick any issue

I pick Israel and migrants on the Mexican border.

Oops.

Look. Stahlseeles post WAS lazy haiku slush nonsense and almost certainly was made in total ignorance of actual differences between the candidates.

But no. You do NOT anymore get to say "pick ANY issue" it was never a great hill to die on and it keeps on shrinking substantially.

And in fact before I close out this post I will demonstrate by picking another issue.

Creeping fascism and being a threat to democracy. As demonstrated by the total all levels of state and media coordinated and violent fascist suppression of peaceful protesters.

Again. Oops, the fascists are already here and however fascist Trump will certainly be, we (well not me we) ALREADY have brown shirt thugs beating their political opponents with impunity supported by law enforcement, the media, and the supposedly different on fascism and freedom current president.

So... STOP SAYING DIFFERENT ON ANY ISSUE. Even the lesser evil argument is tainted. All you are allowed to have now is to cherry pick the few relatively minor issues on which they still are different. Which is, frankly, not enough for you to any longer comfortably out argue a moron who knows nothing and writes almost exclusively in some sort of broken English haiku format you couldn't parody if you tried.

[erik]

Fuuuuuuuuuck off. You are wrong, so yes, I do get to say "pick ANY issue" and will continue. Well I would continue but I'm sick of reading this idiocy. So a response-rant and then I sign off again.

Israel.
This has to by hypothetical for Trump since he has no direct influence here. But Trump would like for nothing more than to see Israel go full nazi and create a tremendous distraction for him, based on his total disregard for human life and being an absolute 1000% failure at international politics. He would have put zero pressure on Israel to keep the conflict from expanding. Political figures wishing to curry favor with Trump's fanatics have written shit like "finish it" on artillery shells.
Biden has been pressuring Israel and delaying arms shipments (the stuff that is going through are crap like jets for 2026+, not artillery shells or offensive munitions). Our advisors had been trying to get theirs to listen to not repeat our mistakes we made in Iraq. Biden is in a tough spot where the united states does not want to completely flip on a long time ally, but we cannot support their genocide either. We are going through a lot of effort to set up relief. The groundwork is being laid for independent military peacekeeping and Palestinian state. I cannot imagine Trump doing that.

Mexico border.
Biden worked on and was willing to sign legislation that would help fix a lot of problems with border processing (getting more judges, clearing up backlogs).
Trump torpedoed the legislation by forcing house republicans to vote against their own fucking bill, because solving problems ruins an issue he wants to campaign on.

Fascism.
Trump wants to murder political opponents and for the presidency to be a kingship free from any legal prosecution from crimes. Trump is constantly purity testing his party members. Trump has outright said he admires dictators and hitler. Trump is constantly inciting violence and refusing to respect electoral process.
Biden does not.

How the fuck do you construe them as equivalent? I don't care. You're wrong, you have no chance of ever being convinced because you don't get that wrong without having totally lost the way back, so I don't care.

[Omegonthesane]

Biden has not, in fact, put any pressure on Israel to do anything. Biden putting pressure on Israel would look like providing no military aid at all, none, not so much as a sausage until they played ball, not like providing 1% less good gear than Trump might hypothetically do.

Mexican border, the kids in concentration camps didn't stop at any point.

Fascism, Trump can talk the talk, but Biden's walking the fucking walk with his treatment of protesters against the Gaza genocide and his total lack of action to reverse the Dobbs decision (which would, at this point, look like intense interference in SCOTUS to achieve in one week what the Democrats allowed the GOP to do in fourty years).

Fundamentally, you don't get to cry "lesser evil" once you're supporting a genocide, you know, the thing that is meant to be the crime beyond crime that justifies, nay, mandates immediate military intervention from foreign powers to put a stop to it.

The only area where you can really point a serious difference is Ukraine, where for all the worst reasons and all the worst intentions Trump might try to bring a hopeless war to a slightly faster end and accidentally save a few Ukrainian lives. That comparison really doesn't help unless you bang on endlessly about morality and international law - which you can't do, because Genocide Joe is providing military aid to Israel when he should be deploying US troops to fucking invade Israel.

[Kaelik]

Biden has been pressuring Israel and delaying arms shipments (the stuff that is going through are crap like jets for 2026+, not artillery shells or offensive munitions).

This is absolutely not true. He temporarily delayed literal actual bullets for assault rifles for one division and then immediately backed off and sent them again when Israel leaked the info to their lobbyists who started shit talking him in the press. He has absolutely been supplying them artillery shells and bombs throughout the conflict including now, still.

You can make up whatever hypothetical shit about Trump you want to explain why he will somehow double genocide the Palestinians, but we absolutely do not need people lying about Biden for apologia by pretending he's not sending them bombs.

We are going through a lot of effort to set up relief. The groundwork is being laid for independent military peacekeeping and Palestinian state.

LMAO. Besides the US literally vetoing the Palestinian state resolution, the "lot of effort" was building a pier that broke down instead of using the land border because Biden was pretending the land border didn't exist because Israelis were blocking it.

Mexico border.
Biden worked on and was willing to sign legislation that would help fix a lot of problems with border processing (getting more judges, clearing up backlogs).
Trump torpedoed the legislation by forcing house republicans to vote against their own fucking bill, because solving problems ruins an issue he wants to campaign on.

This is an absolute braindead thing to say about the legislation which did not actually fix any issues, and instead was about giving more money to enforce more draconian border controls with more violence, a thing Biden specifically said he would do when he announced that if the bill passed, he would personally invoke the provision in the bill that let him completely close down the border, 100% to all refugees and asylum seekers in violation of various treaties the US is a party to.

This paragraph is only different from Deaddm's recent "I want all the immigrants deported, natural immigration rates, white birth rates" post recently in that you could just be completely misinformed about what the bill does. Actually supporting that psychotically evil bill which even as proposed in Congress was supposed to be the gift to the GOP to buy their votes for Ukraine funding would be in fact very bad!

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I don't care. You're wrong, you have no chance of ever being convinced because you don't get that wrong without having totally lost the way back, so I don't care.

On the topic of losing the way and not caring.

If by some chance you are lying and you do care what people think. My advice is, don't say such stupid shit in person to anyone if you don't want to be reviled and possibly punched in the face.

I for one used to accept the lesser evil position about Biden. Then, things changed because of how terrible he was.

During his term in response to his failures and his actions he has progressed from a barely passable lesser evil to no longer the lesser evil, to a known evil that needs to be stopped right now.

The things Biden is doing right now are actually WORSE than anything Trump actually did. This is GENOCIDE. And at home it is fascists beating college kids to support a genocide.

And when you defend and promote someone doing a genocide and a fascist suppression you had better genuinely not care, because it's going to hurt your personal and family life just as much if not more than coming out as rabbid full believer QAnon.

[deaddmwalking]

Kaelik and NPP appear to want the whole system to burn out in revolution, so in that sense electing Trump is more likely to bring it out.

There are major tax cuts that are ending in 2025 that greatly favor the wealthiest Americans. That alone is a reason to have Democrats in office.

The situation as I see it - Republicans use scapegoating to claim that there are simple solutions to all of our problems. Somehow closing the border and making people use a public bathroom based on their gender at birth is supposed to solve all.our problems. Well, problems take more than that. A more just and equitable society with true opportunity is a long boring grinding slog of long-term policies slowly blossoming into real improvements.

The last 4 years where I haven't had to doom-scroll about how we're setting all of our international commitments on fire have been a relief. There have been real meaningful problems where I don't think the government has handled things the way I prefer in every administration, but Biden hasn't been as bad as Trump. More importantly for me, Biden hasn't been as bad as Trump promises to be.

Is there anyone who can claim that they remain uncertain that Trump is actively trying to create a Fascist dictatorship?

Democrats and Republicans are not the same. Pretending they are is foolish and likely counterproductive.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

The last 4 years where I haven't had to doom-scroll about how we're setting all of our international commitments on fire have been a relief.

But setting fire to the ICC the ICP and the UN is invisible to you.

Trump set fire to less and smaller international commitments that the ones Biden has set fire to in SIX FUCKING MONTHS.

Blind, vile, idiot.

In your case I advise you to tell EVERYONE you meet how you support the genocide.