To sum up my position: I think there’s a very erroneous tendency to misread the electorate. Trump’s base only represents about 1/3. It seems much bigger than that (closer to 50%) because they are so loud.
My main contention is that even Republicans who would otherwise vote Trump all else being equal, will drop off as (or if) these trials get underway
It is much bigger than that.
He got 47% of the vote last time. And favorability ratings for Trump were lower then than they are now, while with Biden it is the opposite.
It always tilts me how you treat the 2020 numbers like they’re in a vacuum and not that events led to a lot of people crossing the aisle because of their selfishness during Covid
I believe that. He got most of the Republican vote. And no doubt he will again. But he lost many Republicans after J6 and he will lose more should any trials get underway. I don’t think there’s a similar demographic on the Democrat side
He also got 46% of the vote in 2016.
But covid had to be a net negative for Trump, right? Surely, it didn’t help him
If the election is purely a referendum on Biden, Dems lose. Any shift towards viewing it as something else probably won’t be noticeable until August or so unless something grabs our attention, but Democrats can lay some groundwork now.
There also seems to be some perception that the Republican ground game is going to be weak come election time because of how Trump is just taking party resources to pay for his legal bills, so there’s a good chance he underperforms polls.
That’s what’s happening in the real world, but in the online world where lots of people live they are just mainlining THE SKY IS FALLING economic narratives. They will discard instantly every single reliable metric or statistic you can provide and accept manipulative social media posts instead.
Dems can never win by just saying “everything’s going great”. If they say that, the coin flip voters will just vote R in the hopes of lower taxes. Dems need to speak directly to the needs of Americans and say “we will give you what you depsperately need”. It’s their only competitive advantage. If the Dems come out with an “everything is great” narrative then voters will say “then why do I need to pay higher taxes?” and vote R.
The problem is people who can’t tell the difference between what they want and what they need.
2016 was a totally different election and ‘won’ by Trump because tons and tons of people thought Hillary would wax him and couldn’t pull the lever for her (there was one election I did this for and I immediately regretted it the night of the election). I personally met dozens of people who said that same thing in the run up to the election and I’m sure a lot of them regretted it…and then hoped the same thing would be true in 2020.
I absolutely do not have an issue with anyone who took a chance on Trump in 2016. I have an issue with anyone who was still behind him in 2018, and can’t stand those who voted for him in 2020 in the face of all that happened. By then, they were in it for the racism and trolling. If a person is voting for Trump in 2024, they’re really off the rails and I likely wouldn’t want to interact with a person like this. Most of those people are best off keeping their support quiet. That’s the built in 40 percent that’s never going to change. Trump will certainly get 40 percent of the vote unless something dramatic happens (maybe like declaring bankruptcy in the middle of the election) but that’s really about all that’s completely predictable, in my opinion.
That’s irrelevant. If Dems want peope to vote for them then they need to offer those people what the most want/need. Rs have a default fallback - we offer you tax cuts and fascism. Dems need to beat that offer.
It is my fear, based on local election results and my observation of such, that heightened rhetoric (wherever it comes from, and even when it’s correct) makes the low-info folks stick their fingers further into their ears and actually makes them less likely to vote. So in some ways the greater the danger and the more we scream about it, the less they listen. I think this is part of the purpose of Trump’s constant flooding of the zone. So I am worried turnout will be down overall, but less so for MAGAs because those people are nuts and crave toxicity.
No, I think Covid was a net positive for Trump because selfish people hated the Covid restrictions, testing, masking, etc. They thought Biden was going to keep it that way forever and knew Trump would immediately get rid of all of it if he won. I think the democracy threat was accurately conveyed enough to overpower that, but it was still too close for comfort.
I know a lot of people who are generally left of center who had very bad opinions and actions during Covid. I would guess nearly all of them hated Trump enough to not vote for him, but I heard a lot of Trump adjacent rhetoric related to Covid from people it shouldn’t have been expected from. I think most of that was because they couldn’t stand being around their kids as much as they had to be once schooling went remote. Almost all of the negative Covid stuff I heard from these types of people was related to how hard things were for them with that. They wanted their kids back in daycare.
Most of the people who crossed over for Trump probably didn’t care about ideology at all and a whole lot of usually reliable Democrats are racist af. They were also probably affluent and didn’t think Trump affected them as much as people claimed. It was mainly just pure selfishness that got him the majority of his extra votes, in my opinion.
The states Trump won in 2016 had almost no covid restrictions. It isn’t like Trump was flipping blue states where there actually were restrictions to theoretically be upset about.
You’re factually correct in terms that blue states were the most restrictive, but I think Covid rules acted as a radicalizing event for people in red states in much the same way that Dobbs made abortion laws more salient for pro-choice folks in blue states… Even though abortion restrictions were not directly impacting you, the example of what R’s wanted to do and might try to do if they got more national power made pro-choice folks more determined to defeat Republicans up and down the ballot and to be more skeptical of Democratic politicians who talked about working across the aisle (“how can you find common ground with those unhinged wackos?”)
I don’t even know what you’re trying to say here because I explicitly have stated that a ton of what were reliable Democrats voted for Trump due to Covid restrictions and I think that’s where the majority of Trump’s rise in votes came from. This has nothing to do with red states, it’s about blue people moving to the other side because of Covid. And a ton of people likely did think Biden would have federally mandated Covid restrictions if he won. They knew that would never happen with Trump.
I think one of the big narratives not being explored so far is the tech industry layoffs and how they will affect the election. Are we at all time lows in unemployment? Yes, but there are 100K+ jobs lost in that sector in the last year, and I would bet the employees skew at and at least 60d-40r split. How many of these people are going to hold the current admin responsible?
Definitely not condescending at all lol
Fair enough. I don’t doubt some people were radicalized by Covid. I just think that was outweighted by the people horrified by Trump’s callous handling of 1m+ dying.
It’s literally not. If I don’t understand what you’re trying to say I’m going to say it. It’s completely opposite of my thesis making your thought completely irrelevant to mine.
You saying this about being condescending is definitely a you thing and unless you can ever get past reading my posts this way it will be extremely difficult to near impossible to interact with you on a good faith level. That means I’ll go back to ignoring everything you say if you don’t stop it.
Almost all you’ve ever done in the entire time you’ve interacted with me is post in bad faith when I post in good faith. You love complaining but never give solutions to what you’re complaining about and that rubs me really wrong when anyone does that. All of that is why you were the very first person in the history of the internet after over 20 years of posting on the internet that I put on ignore due to your incessant trolling of me and bad faith posting with me. I guess that’s something to be proud of.