Why Is This Election Even Close?
Why Is This Election Even Close?
www.commondreams.org
Why Is This Election Even Close? | Common Dreams
80 comments
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I've always said one of my strangest personalities "quirks" is that I'm a misanthrope that loves to help and to make people laugh.
...I still hate people though. Sooooooooo many people seriously fucking suck..
Not you folks of course, you're cool :P
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Humanity is like that racist analogy of a bowl of M&Ms but a few are poisoned.
Except that almost all of them are candy covered shit and there’s like one or two in the bowl that are chocolate.
Oh, and if you don’t try every one there’s something wrong with you.
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This is a health check and America is very sick.
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Same answer it's been for my whole lifetime: a small number of extremely wealthy individuals pumping a constant stream of money into conservative media with the express purpose of changing public opinion.
People who've been listening to this stuff their entire lives don't live in the real world. They legitimately don't believe in reality, and after a certain point I'm not sure it's possible to bring them back. Much like climate change, this kind of thing should've been stopped at the source decades ago, and it might just be too late now.
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Almost like conservatism is the problem
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lies, hatred, and illegal behavior have resulted in zero consequence because people are afraid of hurting GOP's sensitive fee fees, so now a rapist convicted felon con man might be dictator next week
where are all the "we need to respect their viewpoint!!" people now?
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They put on a different hat, but they are still here, shouting 'they are trying to supress us'. Come back next week for 'we will hunt you down'.
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Some of it is people who read none of the stuff we are. They are heads down, working, etc, just glancing at headlines.
They know one thing: prices were better under trump.
They don’t know one thing: what inflation is. They think if inflation goes down then prices go down.
In short: they think if they vote for trump, prices will go back to 2016-2020.
That’s it. That is why. Prices never go back, and trumps plans for working class will make life even worse, but they still think he’ll bring 2016-2020 prices back with him.
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I agree. How anyone thinks that would be a simple policy decision is weird though.
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Spot on, this is my otherwise nice neighbors line of thinking.
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Because people are dumb. And I don't mean that in some flippant, off-hand, snarky way. I mean that in all dead seriousness. People are dumb.
The truest line ever written was from Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black.
"A person is smart. But people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." The novelization of the film actually takes it a bit further and adds "A mob is only as smart as it's dumbest member."
Long story short, group-think skews towards the simplistic and instinctual. This election is close for the same reason that one scared cow will turn into a stampede even though the rest of them have no idea what they're running from...because we're wired to see that if other people are running, maybe we should be too...it's a matter of survival.
A smart person can see past that and resist when they're alone. But get them into a crowd of like minded individuals and we aren't smart anymore. And people like Trump take advantage of that.
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You had me up until the point that you assigned a "side".
The reason so many find it terrifying that this is a close race is also because the internet has fed the crap starved minds of people who live to see themselves as oppressed. And when one in a mob yells "Nazi", the rest of the mob yells "Nazi".
Fear is a fantastic motivator. And if you can scare your base into believing the worst will come if you don't vote a certain way, well, you get each side terrified and voting.
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Because there are far more idiot bigots in this country than anyone wanted to admit.
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Fox News primarily.
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Conservatism is fascism. When someone is only mildly conservative, the fascism is not apparent. The more conservative someone is, the more apparent the fascism becomes.
This can be seen in Italy, Germany, Russia and anywhere else a fascist government has come to power through the support of a conservative population.
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reminds me of a time years ago that I got downvoted to oblivion on reddit for saying we have to stop acting like conservatism is an acceptable political stance worthy of any respect. it's not ok to be conservative.
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I can see why someone would identify as "fiscally conservative", but not if they actually paid attention to what conservative fiscal policy really does.
The most "reasonable" version I can imagine is the kind where someone goes "things are fine for me, so let's just go with the status quo, maybe fewer taxes, that's conservative, right?"
But man... once you know anything about the history of conservatism or what it stands for in the US now... what can I say but yikes.
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Still butthurt? Jesus Christ.
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What really gets me is I've had people on the Right tell me about the illegal immigrant problem and about how they do all these crimes. Then when I trap them with the obvious, "Trump is felon though" argument I always get, "Oh he's different." alongside the usual conspiracy theories. These are just the bad actors.
So thinking about it, what's even worse are the people who are supporting Trump as reactionary supporters. All they know is they're angry and the Democrats are the ones who always talk about change. So time to vote for not them for reasons they can never explain.
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"That's different because it's lawfare"
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Trump supporters live in a different reality. Because they're in a fascist cult.
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Maybe the fact that every time Kamala says she wants to appoint Republicans to her cabinet and sign Republican immigration policies into law she slides in the polls a bit should tell us something
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Biden tried the working with Republican thing. They hated him and demonised him.
Why even try?
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Either the election isn't close at all which would make sense with how desperate and frankly weird Republican party antics have been lately. They're nothing but off putting and seem to focus on efforts that are most likely to make them look like overly online idiots. Or the polling is accurate and people are just the dumbest they have ever been and thus democracy is a failure in the modern era. Which means the first party to take over and nullify an election will likely hold power for quite some time. Rather distressing. I am hopeful that the polling is just wrong in this case.
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Or the polling is accurate and people are just the dumbest they have ever been and thus democracy is a failure in the modern era.
It's this one. The voter suppression and disinformation is what keeps it closer to 50/50, but without those it would still be like 55/45.
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Because the democrats and their supporters refuse to face the reality that the last four years didn't bring much of any material improvements for the vast majority of people. Everything costs more and no one is making anywhere near close to what they need to keep up, let alone thrive.
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You know, I'm extremely tired of hearing people piss and moan about the Democrats not accomplishing legislative miracles with the barest of majorities. The GOP is almost gleeful in being a bulwark against anything and everything that might possibly be seen as a Democratic win. We can't have nice things because 49% of Congress just wants to watch the other party suffer and cling to power by calling them ineffective.
What the fuck have the Republicans done that have helped the average working class American in the last twenty goddamn years?
They're nothing but rhetoric and religious fundamentalism. They had full control of both houses and the presidency and assured us we would have some great replacement to the ACA and literally nothing ever came of that. The Republicans don't want to help Americans, they just want to be in power. Why isn't that relevant? The Democrats can't pass sweeping legislation because of obstruction and that's the end of the world, but the Republicans have literally no ideas beyond removing rights from whatever flavor of "other" they're targeting this season and they get a pass.
Our country is fundamentally broken. One party's politicians say they want to represent all Americans and the other wants to use the military against their political rivals. And somehow the election is still close? Yeah. This whole country is fucked.
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BUT, BUT, BUT, WHAT ABOUT THE STOCK MARKET!?!?!?! 🙄🙄🙄
I'm fucking ashamed to be a veteran of this shithole of a country.
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Which Democrat policies are saying that?
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Then don't vote in a perfectly split Senate. Yes its hard to govern when half the government doesn't believe in government
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Because the two candidtaes are competing for shittiest candidate (to their constituency, not in absolute terms) and canceling each other's shittiness.
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Does anyone know if "already voted" people are included in prospective voter polls? If they are excluded, we might be seeing a shift in polling towards Trump because his supporters vote day-of more than Harris voters.
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Now you are trying to make people cry.
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because fascism already has a tight grip, regardless of election outcomes
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Well it's like a friend once said to me when I was about six. If assholes could fly this place would be an airport.
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It may not be. Polling has been off lately, especially "polling without a specific name attached".
OTOH, lots of people vote for party not the person.
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It's close because Trump is not a disciplined candidate and he keeps doubling down on young men instead of trying to build his appeal to new areas.
Most of the time if inflation hits 9% and wages lag behind inflation (as they always do) the incumbent party loses. Nikki Haley would be winning 60/40 right now.
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Inflation peaked at 7% in 2021, declined every year since. Your comment is a great example of how easily mislead the masses are with simple misinformation.
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CPI year-over-year, the common meaning of "inflation," was 9.1% in June of 2022.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category-line-chart.htm
I assume you're using some other metric but what a bad look jumping to misinformation.
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Who?
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Has any incumbent government coming out of covid/inflation survived? It's not an excuse but people tend to focus on that which affects them personally, otherwise sweatshop clothes wouldn't exist.
And the Left wing media ecosystem has spent the last decade decrying sp much as sexist, racist or fascist that independents etc have largely tuned it out.
Breaks my heart but that's where we are.
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And the Left wing media ecosystem has spent the last decade decrying sp much as sexist, racist or fascist
I dunno about that. What I've found, being online, is a lot of people being sexist, racist or fascist.
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*Easy answers *Lack of self-reflection ("are we the badies?") *reflexive reactionary impulse ("I say throw the bums out!") when external pressures make life tough
I've got many people in my life who would fit one or more of these generalizations. I'm sure it's a vast tapestry.
My mom got hissing mad when one of her friends told her that WalMart wasn't a good place to be shopping. That was 20 years ago.
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80 comments
Because the conditions required for fascism to take root have been incubating for decades.
Massive wealth inequality, insecure employment, non-existent labor laws and worker's rights, hollowed-out education, healthcare and social services, large corporations getting to write their own laws verbatim, political parties sucking dick for their donors, endless war ensuring unlimited money for the military-industrial complex, demonization of brown-people-of-the-week, fetishization of 'the troops' and ongoing acceptance of brutality.
People are poor, desperate, ignorant, exploited and forgotten, they're shown every day that killing the shit out of outsiders is the solution to all the country's problems, anyone pushing actual progressive ideals is shut down and demonized as a threat to the profits of the 0.1%, giving people a choice between rightwing bastardry and neoliberal bastardry as their only lens through which to see the world.
Give that the opportunity to flare up and of course it's fucking going to. The republicans want it, the dems do nothing to prevent it.
It's like watching a party get the wrong kind of rowdy all night, you keep supplying drinks regardless, then you wonder why it turns into a fight, oh no how could this ever happen?
This is the correct answer.
I'm starting to feel like fascism is almost just like the default end-state of humanity, and we are evolutionarily bound to end up there.
it's an effective meta for rich people.
It's an extension of Capitalism, both serve capital interests, but neither capitalism nor fascism are inherent to people
Once a group gets big enough you're not able to get everybody to agree. So you do things some people want and use force against the opposition. Combine this with larger groups fighting over limited resources and you've got a recipe for authoritarianism.
Agriculture was a trap.