Nameless Voice on 1/12/2020 at 23:33

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Technically it was closer to a third, and that was only of the eligible voters. I believe it was 70m people, which is about 21% of the total population.

Still very disturbing, but far from half of the humans.

demagogue on 2/12/2020 at 05:47

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Dan Rather with the killer joke for the day: "Why is the Trump White House suddenly a very polite place to work? Everyone’s going around saying 'pardon me.' "

lowenz on 2/12/2020 at 09:54

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Nice joke :cheeky:

heywood on 2/12/2020 at 20:36

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Just because Trump is currently being represented by crackpots doesn't mean all Trump supporters are crackpots. A lot of people voted for him because he's a Republican. They've always voted Republican and their vote always comes down to the same issues regardless of who is on the ballot. In my area, which is more socially liberal than a lot of the country, the #1 reason people vote Republican is taxes.

The problem is that Trump is a gateway drug, leading "normal" Republicans down the rabbit hole into a world of nuttery.

My wife's best friend is an example. She is a Republican, but I thought she might vote for Biden this time, because she's been really frustrated with the COVID-19 response and the crazy parade that is the Trump administration. I've never heard her say a good word about Trump. But she voted for him anyway. The reason: "But Biden is going to raise taxes on the middle class..." And something about Nancy Pelosi that I don't remember exactly. And then, suddenly last week she starts talking about election fraud, and now she wants to go buy a gun, because apparently it's no longer safe out there. She lives in an upper-middle class neighborhood of a middle class town with practically no crime. And she's the last person you'd ever expect to have a gun, because she's afraid of them and afraid of having them in the house with kids.

Cipheron on 3/12/2020 at 02:11

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They've done a good job convincing people of that. Note that Trump's tax cuts on the middle class come to $65/month according to the below article, while for the top-earners, that caps out at $50000 per year each, almost the same as 1000 middle-class tax cuts. That $65 a month was also passed with an expiry date around 2025, while the corporate tax cuts didn't have an expiration date put in. I'm not sure whether or not the expiration includes the $50,000 for high-income earners however, it doesn't say. So Trump passed the small middle-class tax cut to just last long enough while he's in power. You can have some crumbs, little guy, but don't get greedy now, only while Papa Trump is at the table. So if the next guy (post 2024 assuming Trump got a second term) renewed that then he wouldn't get any credit, and if he didn't renew it he'd be blamed for raising taxes.

(https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-covid-response-economy-jobs-taxes-inequality-1080345/)

The real point is that Biden isn't going to raise taxes on the middle class, because that's not where the bulk of cuts actually occurred. The focus will be on super-high-earners and restoring corporate taxes. Biden should renew and perhaps increase the tax cut for middle-class when it expires however, that would be a smart move. And the Dems can make a big deal about how Trump set them to expire when/if they pass the renewal, perhaps permanent, to make a point. That expiry clause will come back to hurt the Republicans at least a little bit.