2024 Elections Thread

[Sun_Worshiper]

I don't know that anyone is saying that everyone who voted for Trump or who didn't vote for Kamala is racist or sexist. But surely some are. And certainly Trump's very open racism and sexism wasn't a deal breaker for his voters, even if they themselves are not prejudiced. It should also be noted that it is perfectly possible for women or minorities to be racist or sexist, so the fact that Trump did relatively well with these groups (at least according to exit polls, which we should all be cautious about overinterpreting) does not inherently mean that he didn't benefit from their prejudices.

Were racism and misogyny the things that pushed him across the finish line? I don't think so. I think that people are unhappy with the state of the country - cost of living and inflation in particular - and they decided not to support the Democrats in sufficient numbers. But let's not act like racism and sexism have not been contributing factors to the Trump phenomenon.

Btw, Rs should be careful in interpreting their election win as a mandate. If this is really about throwing the bums out, which is the most likely interpretation imo, then it was more Dems losing than Rs winning.

So in 2020, was the only reason Trump lost because of the voters "throwing the bums out"? Was it really a case of the R's losing rather than the D's winning?

I wouldn't say "the only reason," but it was a big contributing factor: Trump handled the pandemic poorly - or at least that was public perception - and enough people in swing states wanted somebody less volatile and more competent in office. He was also incredibly toxic and annoying, which probably helped Biden, but given the margin of the election it sure seems like he would have been coasting to a second term if not for the pandemic and his (mis)handling of it. And this was pretty much how most people interpreted it at the time --> people were voting against Trump more than they were voting for Biden. To the extent that Dems interpreted that as a mandate for them to implement their most extreme policies, that was a misinterpretation of voters' desires.

What were those most extreme policies? This is something people on the left seem loathe to discuss.

Attempted student loan forgiveness and prosecuting Trump were arguably extreme from a partisan perspective. Trade protectionism, stimulus, and arming Israel without conditions were arguably bad policies, although not extreme from a partisan perspective.

But I don't think any of these policies are particularly to blame here. Lots of Biden's policies were popular, even as he was not. Instead, as I've said about 100 times in this thread, it looks to have been a "throw the bums out" election stemming from CoL and inflation.

[ciao_yall]

Hmmm..."So why did so many Democrat voters stay home? Racism? Misogyny?".... there's your Bradley effect.

I confess I am having a very hard time... depression is not my problem, anger is-- I have long been dealing with anger in my life, though 8  years now of CBT has helped greatly-- and I am, well, angry.  No matter how many more Latinos, Blacks, etc., Trump successfully wooed this year, the fact absolutely remains that he would never have come within a light-year of returning to the WH were it not for the enormous and ever-increasing support of my fellow White evangelicals.  And being as I am an evangelical by choice, converting at 19, this pisses me off even more centrally.  How can they do this?  They have toileted all their supposed principles to give us, well...  Church yesterday was much more pleasant than I had feared, since my pastor kept (more or less) his promise of the prior weekend that neither one of us would gloat over our candidate's victory-- it does of course beg the question of the proper border between 'gloating', which he mentioned from the pulpit yesterday that he would not do, and 'rejoicing', which he emphasized with great fulsomeness.  Ah well... I do not know how long I can endure there...

As a White Evengelical, why did you turn away? And why do you think they cling to him?

[kaysixteen]

Turn away from what?

As to why the members of my church cling to him (which I think is a fairly representative white evangelical congregation), various factors include:

1) tribal identity politics
2) extreme social pressure-- I took an enormous amount of heat just for putting my 'evangelicals for Harris' sticker on my car, and I know the pastor received complaints about me (he told me I disrespected my fellow members to put it on, and I got at least one email from a disgruntled member). 
3) heavy closed-loop fact-free information bubble/ epistemic closure
4) this is hard-- ignorance and anti-intellectualism, rejection of education, book-larnin', etc.

and, well....


5) abortion.  I fought it myself,because whilst I never have and never would have voted for Trump, let's jus say it was very difficult to overlook abortion (and that's why I remain only an Independent.)  But for some of my fellow members, and I suspect many evangelicals as well, it is just a bridge too far.  Yesterday as I was getting into my car, one man came over to chat-- a 72 yo retired mailman who is likely the most mature Christian in the church.  Should be an elder.  He acknowledged my absolutely right to have voted for Harris, to put the sticker on the car, to not keep my mouth shut, etc., and then told me he understood that I have various things/ issues that made me vote for her (and all-but said he agreed with me on several of these), but then honestly acknowledged that, for him, abortion is 98% of the reason for his vote.

[ciao_yall]

Turn away from what?

As to why the members of my church cling to him (which I think is a fairly representative white evangelical congregation), various factors include:

1) tribal identity politics
2) extreme social pressure-- I took an enormous amount of heat just for putting my 'evangelicals for Harris' sticker on my car, and I know the pastor received complaints about me (he told me I disrespected my fellow members to put it on, and I got at least one email from a disgruntled member). 
3) heavy closed-loop fact-free information bubble/ epistemic closure
4) this is hard-- ignorance and anti-intellectualism, rejection of education, book-larnin', etc.

and, well....


5) abortion.  I fought it myself,because whilst I never have and never would have voted for Trump, let's jus say it was very difficult to overlook abortion (and that's why I remain only an Independent.)  But for some of my fellow members, and I suspect many evangelicals as well, it is just a bridge too far.  Yesterday as I was getting into my car, one man came over to chat-- a 72 yo retired mailman who is likely the most mature Christian in the church.  Should be an elder.  He acknowledged my absolutely right to have voted for Harris, to put the sticker on the car, to not keep my mouth shut, etc., and then told me he understood that I have various things/ issues that made me vote for her (and all-but said he agreed with me on several of these), but then honestly acknowledged that, for him, abortion is 98% of the reason for his vote.

Fair enough. I can respect your beliefs.

Still, abortions have always been had by women with the connections and means to get them. My great-uncle was a doctor who did them for all the nice ladies in the community.

But it's used as a way to guilt people into voting against their own interests for EVERYTHING else. Living wages, health care, rent control, the environment,  etc etc etc.

BUT THINK OF THE BABIES scream people who honestly couldn't care less

[Sea_Ice]

Let's try this again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/11/us/politics/democrats-trump-harris-turnout.html

Fascinating.

In Pennsylvania, the biggest electoral prize on the battleground map, Mr. Trump's victory received an outsize boost from an unlikely place — the five counties with the highest percentage of registered Democrats: Allegheny, Delaware, Lackawanna, Montgomery and Philadelphia.

Ms. Harris won these counties, but not by the margins needed to overcome Republican-heavy areas of the state. Total turnout was down from 2020 in all five Democratic strongholds, which could partly explain how Ms. Harris received 78,000 fewer votes than Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump added 24,000 votes to his total in these same counties.

So why did so many Democrat voters stay home? Racism? Misogyny?

If you believe the non-mainstream media, and perhaps a few conspiracy theorists, they didn't all stay home.

I have limited tolerance for listening to them, but at least one pro-Dem talking head is drawing connections between strongly Dem areas in swing states that are collectively showing:  an estimated 15-18 million missing votes; had 60 or so bomb threats to polling places sourced from Russia; could have or did use Starlink to report results; and, those specific satellites have now conveniently de-orbited.  Add to this reports from 2020 that pro-Trump operatives hacked into voting machines or were able to access the code, and all the Tech-bros backing Trump this time (not to mention the 2025 group!) and you can easily conclude that this election was stolen.

I'm trying very hard to find some Zen about this - or apply the Serenity Prayer to my everyday life! - since I have no influence in any of these matters.  All I can do is take care of myself, be kind to those I interact with, and refrain from appearing to support those who are obviously wrong or worse!

[marshwiggle]

If you believe the non-mainstream media, and perhaps a few conspiracy theorists, they didn't all stay home.

I have limited tolerance for listening to them, but at least one pro-Dem talking head is drawing connections between strongly Dem areas in swing states that are collectively showing:  an estimated 15-18 million missing votes; had 60 or so bomb threats to polling places sourced from Russia; could have or did use Starlink to report results; and, those specific satellites have now conveniently de-orbited.  Add to this reports from 2020 that pro-Trump operatives hacked into voting machines or were able to access the code, and all the Tech-bros backing Trump this time (not to mention the 2025 group!) and you can easily conclude that this election was stolen.

Apparently this is now the standard for U.S. elections, since (*at least) 2016. Saying it was stolen is a lot easier for the loser than trying to figure out what they did wrong.

Every time someone gets dumped by a romantic partner, it's much more palatable to write the dumper off as an awful human being than to consider whether there might be something about the dumpee that would put off a lot of people.


(*We can never forget "hanging chads".)

[ciao_yall]

I'm not sure I'm going to buy conspiracy theories about this election.

That said, DJT is naming a lot of kooks to his cabinet. Let's hope history repeats itself and they are too incompetent to accomplish much before DJT gets distracted, changes direction, and fires them.

[apl68]

Turn away from what?

As to why the members of my church cling to him (which I think is a fairly representative white evangelical congregation), various factors include:

1) tribal identity politics
2) extreme social pressure-- I took an enormous amount of heat just for putting my 'evangelicals for Harris' sticker on my car, and I know the pastor received complaints about me (he told me I disrespected my fellow members to put it on, and I got at least one email from a disgruntled member). 
3) heavy closed-loop fact-free information bubble/ epistemic closure
4) this is hard-- ignorance and anti-intellectualism, rejection of education, book-larnin', etc.

and, well....


5) abortion.  I fought it myself,because whilst I never have and never would have voted for Trump, let's jus say it was very difficult to overlook abortion (and that's why I remain only an Independent.)  But for some of my fellow members, and I suspect many evangelicals as well, it is just a bridge too far.  Yesterday as I was getting into my car, one man came over to chat-- a 72 yo retired mailman who is likely the most mature Christian in the church.  Should be an elder.  He acknowledged my absolutely right to have voted for Harris, to put the sticker on the car, to not keep my mouth shut, etc., and then told me he understood that I have various things/ issues that made me vote for her (and all-but said he agreed with me on several of these), but then honestly acknowledged that, for him, abortion is 98% of the reason for his vote.

This is something I've thought a good bit about as well.  I live in a region where it's safe to say that people voted for Trump by a wide margin.  That includes most people I know.  Generally decent people, some even truly admirable, loving and generous toward their fellow human beings.  Far more kind and decent in their interactions with others, far more willing to give of themselves on behalf of others in general, than any number of Trump critics I'm aware of.

Trump "cultists"--truly enthusiastic supporters--don't appear to be all that common.  There's far more of a sense that he's the least-bad option.  As for how people can persuade themselves that somebody like Trump is a viable option for President, I believe it comes down to a desperate desire to believe that there still is a reasonable option, if only you make enough allowances and hope hard enough that somewhere in that candidate still lurks a mind that's at least a crack open to reasonable direction. 

It's a forlorn, desperate hope that I've been unable to manage myself.  Which is why I refused to vote for either candidate.  To most people I know, though, it just seems unthinkable not to vote for somebody. 

[Sun_Worshiper]

Let's try this again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/11/us/politics/democrats-trump-harris-turnout.html

Fascinating.

In Pennsylvania, the biggest electoral prize on the battleground map, Mr. Trump's victory received an outsize boost from an unlikely place — the five counties with the highest percentage of registered Democrats: Allegheny, Delaware, Lackawanna, Montgomery and Philadelphia.

Ms. Harris won these counties, but not by the margins needed to overcome Republican-heavy areas of the state. Total turnout was down from 2020 in all five Democratic strongholds, which could partly explain how Ms. Harris received 78,000 fewer votes than Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump added 24,000 votes to his total in these same counties.

So why did so many Democrat voters stay home? Racism? Misogyny?

If you believe the non-mainstream media, and perhaps a few conspiracy theorists, they didn't all stay home.

I have limited tolerance for listening to them, but at least one pro-Dem talking head is drawing connections between strongly Dem areas in swing states that are collectively showing:  an estimated 15-18 million missing votes; had 60 or so bomb threats to polling places sourced from Russia; could have or did use Starlink to report results; and, those specific satellites have now conveniently de-orbited.  Add to this reports from 2020 that pro-Trump operatives hacked into voting machines or were able to access the code, and all the Tech-bros backing Trump this time (not to mention the 2025 group!) and you can easily conclude that this election was stolen.

I'm trying very hard to find some Zen about this - or apply the Serenity Prayer to my everyday life! - since I have no influence in any of these matters.  All I can do is take care of myself, be kind to those I interact with, and refrain from appearing to support those who are obviously wrong or worse!

Please, liberals, don't go down this conspiracy theory road. Stolen election conspiracies were massively destructive in 2020 when Republicans embraced them and they will be now if Dems do the same.

[kaysixteen]

Random replies:

1) apl, you live in a buckle of the Bible belt area, where evangelicalism dominates and Trump supporters are thick on the ground, meaning many of these will be sincere people whose commitment to Trump is marginal.   Around here, however, evangelicals are thin on the ground and white evangelical Trumpers feel like they are an oppressed minority.  The level of paranoia is extreme, and this produces weird reactions-- my church's membership and attendance have slimmed down greatly over the last three years or so, for a variety of reasons, esp since we started livestreaming when covid started, but try as I might, I cannot get more or less anyone to accept that the pastor's having turned our services into more or less overt Trump rallies might have something to do with this, esp wrt the increased departures of young adults.  And even the pastor himself has not-so-subtly decried the 'Trump can do no wrong' attitude that he reports having heard from some members.  What is also clear enough is the slow moving of the Overton Window wrt various  things regarding Harris, the 2020 election, more or less anything even tangentially related to modern American political life-- I really did not know what to say, for instance, when the pastor (enthusiastically amened by several men at our lunch table), stridently denied on several occasions that Harris was black (Trump of course had said such).  Attitudes and increasingly *behaviors* that would never have been acceptable even 15 years ago are now accepted, even in some cases normative.  I have just this past sunday taken out of mothballs my Trump 1.0-era injunction: 'never give to Pres. Trump any powers that you would not want Pres. AOC to have, because she will use those powers, and you will not like what she uses them for'.  I got a shrug.  I am also going to rehash the hypothetical 'what if Barack Obama had done that?'  We will see.  What bugs me even more now than it did 8 years back was that Trump has been president, we have seen his corruption, and he is no longer even attempting to hide what his plans for term 2.0 are, many of which plans are stunningly at variance with previous American evangelical norms.  Yet these people either shrug this off, deny facts/ gaslight, or increasingly even, moved Overton Window-style, seem to want and positively affirm such plans and overt corruption.  This is really bad for me, and makes me even more want to begin (I plan to do so tomorrow) a prelim local internet search for alternative congregations.

2) I get that apparently some lefties (including some overt grifters) are promulgating conspiracy theories wrt this election's having been stolen.   No mainstream Demo pols are doing this and all are speaking out against it.  But it is also true that at least some MAGAists are using this year's results as further ammo for their ongoing view of the 2020 election-- I heard this at church Sunday-- the idea being that Kamala's low vote total relative to Biden's demonstrates that indeed many of those Biden votes were fake.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Random replies:

2) I get that apparently some lefties (including some overt grifters) are promulgating conspiracy theories wrt this election's having been stolen.   No mainstream Demo pols are doing this and all are speaking out against it.  But it is also true that at least some MAGAists are using this year's results as further ammo for their ongoing view of the 2020 election-- I heard this at church Sunday-- the idea being that Kamala's low vote total relative to Biden's demonstrates that indeed many of those Biden votes were fake.

No comparison can reasonably be made between a little babble on the internet on the D side and the full throttled embrace of conspiracy theories by Republican party leadership and voters. That having been said, any conspiracy talk from Democrats is too much and will be seized on Republicans and their surrogates to create the illusion that both sides are equally prone to this kind of thing.

Dems lost fair and square. We'll need to learn from mistake and do better next time.

[ciao_yall]

Someone is always going to say something silly. By all accounts it was a smooth election, and there are so many eyes on the process that millions of votes can't just disappear.

I wonder if there is a fear among evangelicals against denying their belief in Jesus or someone who claims to be the Messiah, as Trump does. Because last time people didn't believe the Messiah it didn't turn out so well for him. Are they afraid of being damned for lacking "faith."

Looking at the chuckleheads DJT is surrounding himself by, I am hopeful Trump 2.0 will fall apart for the same reasons Trump 1.0 did: incompetence, infighting, and disorganization.

Waiting to see how many of his appointees fall off the train before the inauguration.

[ciao_yall]

Turn away from what?

As to why the members of my church cling to him (which I think is a fairly representative white evangelical congregation), various factors include:

1) tribal identity politics
2) extreme social pressure-- I took an enormous amount of heat just for putting my 'evangelicals for Harris' sticker on my car, and I know the pastor received complaints about me (he told me I disrespected my fellow members to put it on, and I got at least one email from a disgruntled member). 
3) heavy closed-loop fact-free information bubble/ epistemic closure
4) this is hard-- ignorance and anti-intellectualism, rejection of education, book-larnin', etc.

and, well....


5) abortion.  I fought it myself,because whilst I never have and never would have voted for Trump, let's jus say it was very difficult to overlook abortion (and that's why I remain only an Independent.)  But for some of my fellow members, and I suspect many evangelicals as well, it is just a bridge too far.  Yesterday as I was getting into my car, one man came over to chat-- a 72 yo retired mailman who is likely the most mature Christian in the church.  Should be an elder.  He acknowledged my absolutely right to have voted for Harris, to put the sticker on the car, to not keep my mouth shut, etc., and then told me he understood that I have various things/ issues that made me vote for her (and all-but said he agreed with me on several of these), but then honestly acknowledged that, for him, abortion is 98% of the reason for his vote.

This is something I've thought a good bit about as well.  I live in a region where it's safe to say that people voted for Trump by a wide margin.  That includes most people I know.  Generally decent people, some even truly admirable, loving and generous toward their fellow human beings.  Far more kind and decent in their interactions with others, far more willing to give of themselves on behalf of others in general, than any number of Trump critics I'm aware of.

Trump "cultists"--truly enthusiastic supporters--don't appear to be all that common.  There's far more of a sense that he's the least-bad option.  As for how people can persuade themselves that somebody like Trump is a viable option for President, I believe it comes down to a desperate desire to believe that there still is a reasonable option, if only you make enough allowances and hope hard enough that somewhere in that candidate still lurks a mind that's at least a crack open to reasonable direction. 

It's a forlorn, desperate hope that I've been unable to manage myself.  Which is why I refused to vote for either candidate.  To most people I know, though, it just seems unthinkable not to vote for somebody.

Where did they get their news? If it's all the Foxwashing then they probably have no idea how unhinged and gritty he actually is.

[Parasaurolophus]

If Democrats stole 2020, then they sure as fuck forgot to steal this one.

[Kron3007]

Growing up, everyone always wonders how the Nazis came to power and how ordinary Germans let it happen.  Now we have a pretty clear picture.

I'm not saying Trump is Hitler, but he clearly shows authoritarian signs and has used many of the same tricks.  It's amazing (and tragic) to see this play out in real time and I really fear for America and the world. 

I just hope I am wrong.