Political Discussion

[folsom_lives]

Even if they did send out ballots to dead people or people who don’t live in the district any longer, the only way that matters is if they were returned and counted.

Do you think they will find instances of people who voted early/absentee/mail-in but then died of COVID before the vote was counted?

Just curious honestly. Kind of a question I never thought about. Will they have to cross-reference death certs all for one vote?

 

[nolalady]

Analysis: Why the Senate is so tough for Democrats

The expected twin Georgia runoff elections in January that will determine control of the Senate encapsulate the structural challenge facing Democrats as they battle to secure a majority in the chamber that could determine the shape of Joe Biden's presidency.

www.cnn.com

Basically, my takeaway is we are more divided than ever. While the democrats the popular vote republicans always win in the number of states that vote for them.

This means that the Republican party is now always primed to have the advantage to control the senate. Red states are almost ensured to vote GOP when it comes to the senate. Any state that went to Trump will go to the GOP in a senate race. The only flipped seats were the in states that Biden won.


This worries me. This could lean to the GOP being able to obstruct any policies and court nominations for the foreseeable future.

Yep, I've been reading similar articles that talk about how bad things are when we can only depose a guy like Trump by a narrow margin because people are that divided. And the divide is largely based on personal economics, which is why Trump got the black and latino votes he did. I really like this take on things:

Combining my own impressions with this county-wide voting data, here’s how I’d characterize Cambria County’s citizens:

The largest group among the white working class are non-voters, who either don’t care about politics at all or are disdainful of politicians of all stripes. They simply believe voting makes no difference. This group is itself complex, ranging from people who keep up with the news and have independent-minded opinions about issues to people who never watch or read much news at all and do not form opinions of their own about current issues. Among regular voters, there are strong Democrats and strong Republicans, somewhat skewed by race and class, but both groups include people with and without bachelor’s degrees.

But most importantly, Johnstown has swing voters, a group that has been growing larger as conditions in their communities and their lives continue to deteriorate. This group, along with the Democrats, voted for Obama in 2008, and a sizeable part of it voted for him again in 2012. But when Donald Trump came to Johnstown and promised to bring back coal mining and steel jobs, there was an enormous swing toward him in 2016. Given what President Obama had produced – a steady, substantial, but exceedingly slow economic recovery during which their already diminished lives either did not change or got worse – and what Hillary Clinton was half-heartedly promising, the Cambria County swing to Trump had a what-the-hell quality to it that was neither pathological nor irrational. As a former steelworker who voted for both Obama (twice) and Trump told Gary Younge, “I liked [Obama’s] message of hope, but he didn’t bring any jobs in.”

Trump tapped into a large well of hateful resentments that were simmering in Johnstown before he showed up, resentments that so far as I can tell are no more common in the white working class than in the white middle class. But if you focus on the swing voters, not the Trump zealots, you have to ask yourself what might swing these voters back to a more progressive politics. I suspect these alternative focuses are applicable across the Rust Belt states.

And this is part of the problem with the way reporters and other analysts focus on the Trump zealots as if they are the whole of the white working-class: they encourage Democrat politicians to aim to win over what they imagine as “traditional Republicans” in “affluent suburbs” – folks they hope will be increasingly disgusted by the character and behavior of our president. That approach may yield some votes. But this merely anti-Trump focus allows Dems to avoid hammering out a governing vision, message, and program that could really make a difference to voters like many in Johnstown – those who are desperately swinging back and forth in the vain hope that voting in the world’s oldest democracy might make a difference in the lives they get to live.”

WCP: Social Class and Trump Voters - Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor

More than a year after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, journalists are still making sense of the role of social class in the outcome. In this week’s Working-Class Perspective, Jack Metzgar focuses on a recent Politico article that made waves to show how reporters often misdefine “the white...

lwp.georgetown.edu

tl;dr--focusing on binaries like white/non-white and college educated/non-college educated is a common way we slice and dice the political landscape but we really should be focusing on swing voters and why they swing, not the base of each party. Trump's promise of jobs was more important to people than Clinton's more of the same in 2016. As communities dissolve due to corporations leaving their town, more people are apt to vote for a candidate that brings back jobs and promises better economic prospects for the future.

And just to highlight where the dems constantly get it wrong when talking about swing votes, the Onion is the best:

Wednesday night that the 2020 election represented a fundamental realignment in which voting demographics should be demonized. “Frankly, these results reveal nothing less than a massive sea change of who political parties blame for all of this nation’s problems,” said Stanford University polling expert Harry Mills, noting the Republican Party’s historic steps towards creating a diverse multiracial coalition would have repercussions for decades to come in how it alters the understanding of electoral scapegoats. “Of course, liberal politicians have been edging toward blaming Cubans and Jewish Americans for their problems for years. But no one ever expected they would be able to vilify them so quickly—and certainly not alongside such a broad assortment of minority strawmen like Black men and homosexuals. Where once it was common sense that Democrats only needed to say non-college-educated whites were bigots voting against their own self-interest, it now seems they’ll also need to pin electoral failures on Hispanics who refuse to use the term Latinx. It’s a stunning development.”

Nation Sees Fundamental Realignment In Which Voting Demographics Should Be Demonized

WASHINGTON—Describing the previous night’s results as a shocking transformation in their understanding of the electorate, political analysts told reporters Wednesday night that the 2020 election represented a fundamental realignment in which voting demographics should be demonized. “Frankly...

politics.theonion.com

If we keep vilifying large groups of people instead of listening to their, very real, economic issues, maybe we would get somewhere, huh?

 

[Tyr]

The downside is his lunatic followers who take everything he says seriously. How is Joe Biden even going to have a chance to unite the parties if a whole demographic thinks he's not even a legitimate President? (I realize many didn't feel like Trump was legitmste but he didn't even pretend like he wanted to unite the country)

This.

Additionally, The downside is that it further normalizes his particular brand of ‘alternate reality’ lunacy. The ‘I don’t care about any facts, figures, or evidence if it doesn’t support my opinion’ and ‘it’s this way because I say so’ line of thinking further promotes toxic behavior and anti-intellectualism. We’ve had far too much of that already and it has permeated the minds of a good number of seemingly intelligent and not so intelligent people.

You must fight injustice where it lives. Not some times, not most of the time, Every time.

 

[Dtknuckles]

Do you think they will find instances of people who voted early/absentee/mail-in but then died of COVID before the vote was counted?

Just curious honestly. Kind of a question I never thought about. Will they have to cross-reference death certs all for one vote?

maybe, but that can’t be significant in number. Pretty much everything is checked and cross checked And then the actual total of votes gets reported. It happens out here in CA. My local appear published an article early in the election about votes that required follow up. People in the comments were crying voter fraud and it was to early in the process. The article said they were going to be checked, but they don’t listen.

 

[folsom_lives]

maybe, but that can’t be significant in number. Pretty much everything is checked and cross checked And then the actual total of votes gets reported. It happens out here in CA. My local appear published an article early in the election about votes that required follow up. People in the comments were crying voter fraud and it was to early in the process. The article said they were going to be checked, but they don’t listen.

Oh I agree the numbers wouldn't be large, just a thought of what measures are in place to find instances of irregularities. Like when is a dead person no longer eligible to have their vote counted? Time of death or...?

 

[nolalady]

Do you think they will find instances of people who voted early/absentee/mail-in but then died of COVID before the vote was counted?

Just curious honestly. Kind of a question I never thought about. Will they have to cross-reference death certs all for one vote?

The probability for this is very high.
My guess is that they count the vote regardless because they got their ballot in before they cut off sending ballots in. Really, this isn't much different than someone who voted in the morning and then ended up expiring before the day was out. It happens, but it is a small number of people and likely not statistically significant enough to remove.

This.

Additionally, The downside is that it further normalizes his particular brand of ‘alternate reality’ lunacy. The ‘I don’t care about any facts, figures, or evidence if it doesn’t support my opinion’ and ‘it’s this way because I say so’ line of thinking further promotes toxic behavior and anti-intellectualism. We’ve had far too much of that already and it has permeated the minds of a good number of seemingly intelligent and not so intelligent people.

You must fight injustice where it lives. Not some times, not most of the time, Every time.

When I look at this whole messed up picture, what I see more than anything is a bunch of people who's plight has been ignored for so long that they have decided to ignore the data/science/media from the people who don't listen to them. This is perfectly natural for humans to do, especially if they see themselves in an oppressive and antagonistic system--which a lot of these people feel is happening right now to them in this country. We've had fun laughing at them being ignorant, but now it's time to start listening, because most of these people are in favor of progressive policies like MFA and raising the minimum wage. The dems should take this as a sign that if they put up strong economic plans with protections for workers and our economy, they could win elections in landslides.

 

[debianlinux]

Analysis: Why the Senate is so tough for Democrats

The expected twin Georgia runoff elections in January that will determine control of the Senate encapsulate the structural challenge facing Democrats as they battle to secure a majority in the chamber that could determine the shape of Joe Biden's presidency.

www.cnn.com

Basically, my takeaway is we are more divided than ever. While the democrats the popular vote republicans always win in the number of states that vote for them.

This means that the Republican party is now always primed to have the advantage to control the senate. Red states are almost ensured to vote GOP when it comes to the senate. Any state that went to Trump will go to the GOP in a senate race. The only flipped seats were the in states that Biden won.


This worries me. This could lean to the GOP being able to obstruct any policies and court nominations for the foreseeable future.

one word: gerrymandering

 

[dbarila]

BTW, I engaged one of the find people on the local news Twitter who was asking why they weren't covering all the proven voter fraud. I provided him the one proven case in PA and he gave me a while bunch of links with not much to go on.



Heavy on speculation...light on evidence. This is all they got?

 

[Dtknuckles]

The dems should take this as a sign that if they put up strong economic plans with protections for workers and our economy, they could win elections in landslides.

I wonder if the tactic of making simple bills where they force Reps to vote down popular progressive ideas would work? I doesn’t look like Dem leadership has the foresight to launch a large organizing campaign. They think taking cooperate money is their path.

 

[folsom_lives]

Wisconsin voter who cast ballot before dying of cancer won't be counted under state election law

Wisconsin is one of many states to invalidate early votes if the voter dies before Election Day

abc7chicago.com

“Among the most crucial swing states, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania don't count early ballots cast by voters who die before Election Day, while Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Ohio do, according to the NCSL and state elections officials.”

Doesn’t really impact the Senate though, does it? Unless you’re lumping in reluctance to admit DC (and PR, although the people there appear to be just as ambivalent about the prospect) as a state under the broader umbrella of representational issues.

Well that answers my question... kind of bullshit that you gotta make it to election day for your vote to count. You'd think that with the Republican base skewing older that they would want to keep all those potential votes, but here we are...

 

[Joe Mac]

The probability for this is very high.
My guess is that they count the vote regardless because they got their ballot in before they cut off sending ballots in. Really, this isn't much different than someone who voted in the morning and then ended up expiring before the day was out. It happens, but it is a small number of people and likely not statistically significant enough to remove.

When I look at this whole messed up picture, what I see more than anything is a bunch of people who's plight has been ignored for so long that they have decided to ignore the data/science/media from the people who don't listen to them. This is perfectly natural for humans to do, especially if they see themselves in an oppressive and antagonistic system--which a lot of these people feel is happening right now to them in this country. We've had fun laughing at them being ignorant, but now it's time to start listening, because most of these people are in favor of progressive policies like MFA and raising the minimum wage. The dems should take this as a sign that if they put up strong economic plans with protections for workers and our economy, they could win elections in landslides.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

One of the things I’ve hated over the last number of years and seen regularly on here and in media/social media at home re: Brexit is mocking of desperate people who’ve been left behind by economic status quo over the last 40 years and, rightly, feel ignored. They are angry and are lashing out. These people are not the enemies of progressive politics, they are to be won over by improving their prospects and bringing them back into the fold. If we continue to mock and/or ignore them things are just going to get worse and worse.

 

[Joe Mac]

We have to figure out how this works. The right panders with promises of a return to dead industries or to enshrining a demographic majority, and it sounds good if you’re desperate, but none of that is real.

The people who need to be reached, also need to be receptive to some difficult truths about what will be asked of them as well.

To a point. We have to accept that they have been amongst the biggest victims of of the status quo and have been largely ignored by the system. There is a lot of distrust and not all of it is unfounded. Of course we can’t resurrect dead industries but we can’t also just abandon communities that grew up around those industries once they’ve exited stage left. The first move is for the governing to to make. After that I agree and we will see.

 

[dhodo]

We have to figure out how this works. The right panders with promises of a return to dead industries or to enshrining a demographic majority, and it sounds good if you’re desperate, but none of that is real.

The people who need to be reached, also need to be receptive to some difficult truths about what will be asked of them as well.

Yeah this seems a LOT easier said than done IMO. The success of the Republican party with white working class voters over the last several decades is due in large part to their ability to convince them to loathe taxes, welfare, and experts and believe in trickle down and policy favoring corporations over themselves.

The examples of some of them despising Obamacare but liking the Affordable Care Act is an excellent illustration. Even when given something they benefit from, they will hate it and vote against their interests if the Republicans tell them to. How do we overcome this barrier? It seems insurmountable to me at the moment with talk radio and Sinclair, etc. able to not only convince them of whatever they want, but whip them up into a fury over it as well.

 

[Mather]

Yeah this seems a LOT easier said than done IMO. The success of the Republican party with white working class voters over the last several decades is due in large part to their ability to convince them to loathe taxes, welfare, and experts and believe in trickle down and policy favoring corporations over themselves. The examples of them despising Obamacare but liking the Affordable Care Act is an excellent example. Even when given something they benefit from, they will hate it and vote against their interests if the Republicans tell them to. How do we overcome this barrier? It seems insurmountable to me at the moment.

Education. No offense but per capita you have one of the stupidist populations on the planet. It's all down to education.

 

[dhodo]

Education. No offense but per capita you have one of the stupidist populations on the planet. It's all down to education.

Sure, but how the hell do you fix that when the Republicans have an iron clad grip on the state legislature and have no interest in making significant changes to improve it?

 

[Mather]

Sure, but how the hell do you fix that when the Republicans have an iron clad grip on the state legislature and have no interest in making significant changes to improve it?

I do not have that answer. I'm just a simple Canadian. Your country frightens and confuses me! Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW.. and run off into the hills, or wherever.. Sometimes when I get a message on my fax machine, I wonder: “Did little demons get inside and type it?” I don’t know! My primitive mind can’t grasp these concepts. But there is one thing I do know. It's that education is the answer to most of your problems.

Thank you and good day.

 

[Mather]

I'm going to be very disappointed in all of you if no one gets the above reference...

 

[dhodo]

I'm going to be very disappointed in all of you if no one gets the above reference...

RIP Phil Hartman

 

[wokeupnew]

How do we overcome this barrier?

Maybe enacting policies that greatly benefit the vast majority of americans. Like expanding health care, reducing student debt, providing good jobs as part of a massive infrastructure/green new deal type initiative, more than one additional Covid stimulus check. If Dems don't win the Senate seats in GA it might have to be several Executive Orders which has already been discussed.

Help people and hope that they notice that the federal government is the reason that they're receiving help. That's really all we can do.

 

[dhodo]

Maybe enacting policies that greatly benefit the vast majority of americans. Like expanding health care, reducing student debt, providing good jobs as part of a massive infrastructure/green new deal type initiative, more than one additional Covid stimulus check. If Dems don't win the Senate seats in GA it might have to be several Executive Orders which has already been discussed.

Help people and hope that they notice that the federal government is the reason that they're receiving help. That's really all we can do.

Hope so! Hard to be optimistic lately but I sure hope Biden manages some of that.