heywood on 29/1/2020 at 02:09
I doubt there are enough undecided independents left to make any difference to anybody. I think it would be hard to find a registered & likely voter who hasn't made up their mind on Trump already. I certainly haven't met one, and I live in a swing state.
Most independents are partisan anyway. In states where registered independents can vote in either primary, there is an incentive not to affiliate. In states that won't allow independents to vote in the primaries, there are still good reasons not to register a party affiliation. One reason is that you're pissed off at both parties - you may habitually vote Democrat or Republican, but you do it on a lesser of two evils basis, and you're not comfortable declaring your party allegiance on a public record. Another reason is that you don't want to be bombarded with a constant barrage of fundraising spam, cold calls, and unwanted knocks on the door at dinner time every other year.
But so polarizing is the Trump administration that nobody is really neutral. The Republicans know this, and their election strategy is all about circling the wagons and rallying the base. A lot of Democrats haven't figured it out yet. They're still chasing these mythical independent unicorns at risk of alienating some of their own base. Just like in 2016.
Starker on 29/1/2020 at 02:35
I don't know... are all these people who voted for Obama and switched their vote now hardcore Lord Dampnut fans? Or how about these Bernie voters who switched to Lord Dampnut in numbers big enough to swing the vote in his favour? Are they beyond any reach now?
Pyrian on 29/1/2020 at 03:29
Quote Posted by heywood
But hearing one more person restate what we already know isn't going to affect any votes.
As far as I'm concerned, the truth needs to be restated and reiterated again and again until enough people get it that those who still don't can go hang out with the flat earthers. Republicans are simultaneously claiming that there's no direct witness testimony that Trump personally ordered the withholding
and that precisely that testimony wouldn't be telling anyone anything new.
Renzatic on 29/1/2020 at 03:58
Quote Posted by Starker
I don't know... are all these people who voted for Obama and switched their vote now hardcore Lord Dampnut fans? Or how about these Bernie voters who switched to Lord Dampnut in numbers big enough to swing the vote in his favour? Are they beyond any reach now?
I can almost understand why some of the previous Obama voters would have sided with Trump during the '16 election. I don't expect everyone to be as well versed in politics as your average pundit, and can see how from a casual observers perspective, that election did seem like it came down a devil you know vs. a devil you don't choice. Some people clung to the idea he'd become "more presidential" after the election until it became an obvious denial of reality.
But Bernie fans? Given their grievances, the very reasons why they're so hardcore about Bernie in the first place, it doesn't make a GODDAMN bit of sense for them to vote for Trump. Yeah, the DNC did give Bernie the short end of the stick, but voting Trump in protest only succeeded in cutting their own noses off to spite Hillary's face.
...though to consider the mitigating factors, I generally do consider most Bernie fans to be about as crazy as your average Trump fanatic. The only difference is they care about, you know, the Earth, equal wages and stuff, instead of conserving White Culture from the Open Border Loving Mexihorde Invaders.
And there is the fact that Trump did a bit to appeal to the more left leaning folk during the election. Everyone remembers him talking about the wall. No one seems to remember him also talking about regulating Wall Street, and higher taxes for the wealthy. Hell, I remember the Trump fans using those very talking points as proof that The Leftist don't like Trump for entirely irrational reasons, cuz HE'S ON YOUR SIDE TOO!
Anyway, what was my point? Oh, yeah. We're all fucking stupid.
Nicker on 29/1/2020 at 04:22
It is important for the testimony of witnesses to be read into the Senate records, especially if the GOP vote to exonerate Trump.
On a side note, who would you rather have for president?
Vlad?
Inline Image:
https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/85b643ec-0001-0004-0000-000001261053_w996_r1.77_fpx37.34_fpy50.jpgOr Vlod?
[video=youtube;i1qNg_s7W-k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1qNg_s7W-k&app=desktop[/video]
The Internal Committee On Correct Thinking will be by shortly, to collect your responses. That is all, Citizens.
Tocky on 29/1/2020 at 04:39
Do you even have to ask?
Starker on 29/1/2020 at 06:21
Quote Posted by Renzatic
But Bernie fans? Given their grievances, the very reasons why they're so hardcore about Bernie in the first place, it doesn't make a GODDAMN bit of sense for them to vote for Trump. Yeah, the DNC did give Bernie the short end of the stick, but voting Trump in protest only succeeded in cutting their own noses off to spite Hillary's face.
Good old economic anxiety, perhaps:
Quote:
(
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/24/16194086/bernie-trump-voters-study)
[...]
The thing that really stood out to me is that a lot of these people who voted for Sanders — and then Trump — don't look like modern day Democrats. So you saw a lot fewer of them actually identify as Democrats than your normal Sanders voter; and, even more striking, they seem to have views on racial issues that are far more conservative than your typical Democrat.
[...]
But given Democrats' interest in winning back the Rust Belt, it's worth digging into exactly who this population of voters is. Schaffner found some demographic characteristics that might align with what you'd expect — Bernie-Trump voters were older and whiter than the average Democratic primary voter, for instance.
Perhaps surprisingly, however, these defectors did not turn out to have views on trade policy that marked them as significantly more opposed to free trade than the average Democrat. That may fly against the expectation that Sanders' views on trade were unique to his appeal, but some political scientists were making that case as early as April 2016.
Also of note: the Bernie-Trump voter also proved much more likely to consider himself or herself “somewhat conservative” or “very conservative” than the average Democrat. Sanders, of course, ran on a policy platform well to Clinton's left — but was able to do so in a way that allowed him to win over voters that disdain the “liberal” label.
[...]
Quote Posted by Renzatic
...though to consider the mitigating factors, I generally do consider most Bernie fans to be about as crazy as your average Trump fanatic. The only difference is they care about, you know, the Earth, equal wages and stuff, instead of conserving White Culture from the Open Border Loving Mexihorde Invaders.
I don't know about most. The hardcore fans certainly. And Bernie has been able to widen his appeal a bit this time around, especially with hispanic voters.
For the sheer craziness, though, it would be interesting to see him and Lord Dampnut square off. You bet the Republican opposition research binders are full to the brim and they'll be scaremongering the hell out of voters with "Bernie coming take away your health care and replace it with socialised government health care and raising your taxes to do it".
nickie on 29/1/2020 at 09:17
Quote Posted by heywood
In states that won't allow independents to vote in the primaries, there are still good reasons not to register a party affiliation
I don't understand this at all. Are you saying that voters have to be registered Democrat or Republican to vote? That you have to declare who you're going to vote for?
Renzatic on 29/1/2020 at 09:36
Only for the primaries. In most states, independents can vote in either Democrat or Republican primaries, though there are a few who deal exclusively with closed primaries that only allow party registered voters to engage. During the general elections, you can vote for whoever you feel like, regardless of your affiliation.
demagogue on 29/1/2020 at 11:50
I think you understand it, but primaries means the vote within the party for who will be that party's nominee for president.
While that issue is up, it's worth putting it in context.
The new dynamic about it in our era is that ... well let's contrast it with recent history.
Historically the party leadership has a big say in who will be top picks.
Actually, did I tell my Dick Armey story before? When I worked for Dick Armey the summer of 1998, I very much remember he went to a leadership meeting (Armey was the Republican House Majority Leader at the time), and when he came back into the office he said effectively "The leadership has decided George W Bush is going to be the Rep candidate for the 2000 election." And in that period, they actually had that kind of power.
It's still always the primary voters picking the actual candidate, but even when the leadership doesn't have as much power as the Rep party leaders had in the mid-90s, the viable candidates are still established figures in the party and the party leadership vouches for them, going back pretty much to the civil war period. (The 1968 Chicago Democrat National Convention was one instance where there was a strong intra-party insurgency who almost went over the heads of the establishment, basically in favor of the anti Vietnam war candidates, but the establishment candidate Humphrey won in the end. But even then, even the anti-war candidates were still themselves establishment democrats.)
So the big development in 2016 was the ascendance of non-establishment candidates, which had been building up ever since the Tea Party insurgency. I mean not only completely outside the party, but for the two biggest figures (Trump & Sanders) actively hostile to the party they were running under (as in hostile to its established leadership, traditional platforms, and processes).
I think one has to recognize that the party system doesn't really work very well when the persons running under it are hostile to the party itself. It's remade the Republican Party from a traditional political party, where a leadership comes up with a policy agenda and then a long-term plan to win elections and pass legislation, into something more like a personality cult, where the dear leader basically comes up with policy like he comes up with gastrointestinal movements, tomorrow's agenda easily contradicting yesterday's agenda. It reminds me of the common trope about clinical narcissists that they can't get any perspective more than 3 inches above the ground. Trump's agenda is hour by hour, for the most part pure hourly survival instinct. So it doesn't lend itself to the kind of decades-long legislative and electoral planning the Reps were cooking up under Gingrich, ironically so amazingly successful at dominating at the state level, the groundwork for electoral success, to allow someone like Trump to sweep in and completely set fire to the whole apparatus.
As for the democrat side... Hillary was of course the establishment's establishment in 2016, and the Sanders insurgency I think is still bitter for feeling pushed out, and I don't know for sure, but I suspect they may have some motivation to purge the Democratic Party establishment if Sanders wins. But even if Sanders isn't what you'd call establishment, he's still a long-term senator and still thinks in terms of a long-term agenda. It's not like he has a literal personality disorder and attention deficit issues that make coherent policy thinking literally beyond his cognitive capacity like Trump.
But anyway, let's see who we're dealing with first. Biden and Sanders seem to be alternating as the clear frontrunners.