Election Day 2024 🇺🇸💙🗳️

[GoblinCampFollower]

I just learned about this. An organized effort to deregister voters. This honestly might explain a lot of why the polls were so "wrong" in swing states:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/29/politics/voter-rolls-ballot-challenges-true-the-vote-elections/index.html

 

[Cindy Claveau]

I just learned about this. An organized effort to deregister voters. This honestly might explain a lot of why the polls were so "wrong" in swing states:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/29/politics/voter-rolls-ballot-challenges-true-the-vote-elections/index.html

Yes, but it still doesn't explain how 15 million voters just up and deserted the Democrats.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Yes, but it still doesn't explain how 15 million voters just up and deserted the Democrats.

that's true. There was a lot of people who sat out....but many were in non competitive races. I obviously don't know where some went.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

fun replies there.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

The worst of them are sharing tweets of 'your body, my choice' now. Their token latino sell-out/collaborator 'Nick Fuentes' is among them.

I mean seriously, talk about voting for the "Leopards who eat people's faces party"... how stupid do you have to be to have a latino name and side with the party threatening mass deportations?! Him I get, he's probably making bank off being a sell-out, but the rest who couldn't hold their nose and vote for Kamala?

They'll have no one to blame but themselves.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Yes, but it still doesn't explain how 15 million voters just up and deserted the Democrats.

I smell a whole lot of Republican ratfuckery. I just don't think we'll ever be able to prove it.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I smell a whole lot of Republican ratfuckery. I just don't think we'll ever be able to prove it.

You ain't seen nuffin' yet.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

I smell a whole lot of Republican ratfuckery. I just don't think we'll ever be able to prove it.

As a Democrat in heart and soul, I rather think the problem is that the old American Macho First Fathers bullshit has poisoned a lot of men's minds.

Our commercial culture does everything to engorge that idea (pun intended) and serve at the feet of men's fragile masculinity. A masculinity that the same culture invented and fed for decades.

I don't even think it's a conscious agressiveness. The men I speak to, all of whom are verbally supportive of women's rights, even marching in demonstrations and speaking out, still retain this mysterious "who, me? No, not me" attitude when confronted with something that we women believe is toxic. There's a massive sense of denial coming from a lot of the people who have never had to deal with lower pay, less respect, and loss of their rights.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

on that note...

 

[Textured Surface]

So, I'm reading a comment on the Guardian, written by an American living in Australia for quite some time, one who is eligible to vote in America and did so.

They write that, perhaps it would be better if Americans were introduced to compulsory voting.
I'm interested in your thoughts on this.
The only compulsory part is fronting up to vote.
What you do with that vote is up to you.
You can naturally, vote.
You can eat it, tear it up, make a bow out of it. Draw a dick on it if you want to, and pop it in the box.
Your choice. If you choose not to have a voice. That's perfectly fucking fine, you just need to show up.

How many Americans didn't vote? Would that have made a difference?
Would more people engage and less not have to google about Biden being on the ticket the day of the election if so?

Here, if you don't front up to get your name ticked off, you might cop a small fine, but we also can vote early, do a postal vote, or have a reasonable excuse not to do so avoiding that fine.

We also get to buy a democracy sausage in a slice of bread with tommy sauce for a steal. (about $2 or so depending on the voting place).
It's usually a school and the proceeds go to that school and is run by volunteers.

Actual voting day is ALWAYS a Saturday and is open from 8 am to 6 pm.

Would more people getting out to vote because it's a requirement have made a difference?
Would it mean less needed to be spent on campaigning therefore less donations needed?
Would it help at all?

If so, would it ever happen?

I dunno. Enlighten me.

OMG Willow!!! How are you!? I haven't seen you in ages!

 

[Noodles]

I smell a whole lot of Republican AND RUSSIAN ratfuckery. I just don't think we'll ever be able to prove it.

FIFY

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[detrius]

From the article:

Very often, I spoke to small business owners who would talk about the price of gas or bread, rendering any attempted explanation of global pressures responsible for that ineffective at best, and at worst condescending. Often, they would also tell me that everyone they knew was doing badly, even if they were just fine themselves. Was poor messaging to blame? That didn’t seem obvious. Democrats tried to tell the story of average wages being higher and unemployment being at an historic low, but people just seemed to believe Trump more often than they believed Harris and Tim Walz. There was no easy way to counter that, especially in a campaign lasting barely 100 days.

The next group of voter was extremely focused on Harris as a candidate. She was as baggage-free as a vice-president could have been, and many voters spoke of how much they admired her. But there were too many others. Multiple times, I was told that Harris was a “communist”, “clueless” and that she had “thrown black men in jail for carrying one blunt”. One Latin American voter told me at length that she had “seen it all before in South America”.

I think one big reason for this tribal thinking is the total segregation of America's population.

People get up at 6am, brush their teeth, have breakfast, drop their kids off at school on their way to work. Then they work maybe ten hours, pick up some crap at Wal-Mart on their way home, shove a frozen pizza in their microwave and fall into their beds until the next morning. If they have a day off, then they're living in a neighbourhood together with people in the same income bracket - so they spend their whole lives interacting only with people who look and think like them: families, coworkers and neigbours.

I think this satellite image of Scottsdale, Arizona illustrates this quite well (look at the way the streets are laid out):

(Google Maps Link if the picture doesn't show up)

This is how you'd have to drive to get from one house in the neighbourhood in the center bottom to another house just a few meters away:

The houses are 2.1 miles "apart".

I'll add that you could theoretically walk through the park on the right side of the picture, but that would still be about 1000 meters because you'd have to pass the gate at the entrance of that development.

And this isn't limited to Arizona, other places do it as well. Like this trailer park wasteland of Wichita, Kansas:

(Google Maps)

Also 2 miles "apart".

And it's not as if these examples of bad planning are particularly hard to find. Here's another one (this time, the "distance" is just 1 mile):

(Google Maps)

This is what that place looks like:

Why is there no pedestrian bridge? And have you noticed the lack of public parks and playgrounds in those satellite images?

US cities are designed to keep people apart.

Is it so hard to build something like this?

(Google Earth)

It's no wonder that Americans fall for this tribal bullshit if they're so isolated from each other.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Something else worth mentioning is that public perceptions often lag behind what the economy is really doing. By every objective, quantifiable metric the economy has already recovered. ...but many people don't FEEL it yet. They'll conveniently feel it once Trump takes office.... I bet anyone there will be tons of headlines and posts about how they think it's so cool Trump fixed the economy so quickly. ...which is of course actually impossible.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

There's an interesting analysis here

I propose a different explanation than inflation qua inflation: the Covid welfare state and its collapse. The massive, almost overnight expansion of the social safety net and its rapid, almost overnight rollback are materially one of the biggest policy changes in American history. For a brief period, and for the first time in history, Americans had a robust safety net: strong protections for workers and tenants, extremely generous unemployment benefits, rent control and direct cash transfers from the American government.

Despite the trauma and death of Covid and the isolation of lockdowns, from late 2020 to early 2021, Americans briefly experienced the freedom of social democracy. They had enough liquid money to plan long term and make spending decisions for their own pleasure rather than just to survive. They had the labor protections to look for the jobs they wanted rather than feel stuck in the jobs they had. At the end of Trump’s term, the American standard of living and the amount of economic security and freedom Americans had was higher than when it started, and, with the loss of this expanded welfare state, it was worse when Biden left office, despite his real policy wins for workers and unions. This is why voters view Trump as a better shepherd of the economy.

It’s important to note that Trump is resolutely not a social democrat, and these policies came into place during an emergency rather than due to ideological conviction. Indeed, he is currently running on the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history and Republicans’ Project 2025 would decimate the social safety net and immiserate millions. Beyond this, Biden wanted to continue many of these policies, but there wasn’t a political pathway. Instead, they quietly expired. To voters, however, the material reality is that when Trump left office, this safety net existed, and by the time of the 2024 election, it had evaporated.

 

[Free]

MY explanation: Our country has gone insane.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

They write that, perhaps it would be better if Americans were introduced to compulsory voting.

Hell yes.

And single transferrable vote.

And democracy sausage.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

There's an interesting analysis here

This was interesting. The collapse of the COVID welfare state was something I hadn't considered and actually does make it a bit more understandable why some people incorrectly felt the economy was better when Trump left office. My friends and I make too much to receive any COVID benefits, so this wasn't something I thought about as much. This helps explain why some poor people felt abandoned even as Biden worked so hard to fix the core economy.

...though this certainly doesn't make the votes for Trump more rational and also doesn't change the fact that we definitely have a larger percentage of truly ultra nationalist voters. I still think this will be a growing problem no matter what happens with the economy.

 

[Noodles]

And democracy sausage.

I think we are already getting the democracy sausage at the moment, if we want it or not.