The *ugh* 2024 US Election Thread

[Dr. Medulla]

I guess we have to do this, right? A whole lot of nose-holding going forward!

Anyway, here's a short interview with Allan "13 Keys" Lichtman, who is inclined toward Biden being re-elected right now: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... l-election

[Flex]

I guess we have to do this, right? A whole lot of nose-holding going forward!

Anyway, here's a short interview with Allan "13 Keys" Lichtman, who is inclined toward Biden being re-elected right now: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... l-election

I think he's right (and have been saying as much around here), although I think it's funny how trumpian he sounds about 2000 (and then contradicts himself about the Will of the People stuff in 2016 by taking credit for Trump even though Clinton won the popular vote by a pretty comfortable margin. It's a little silly when, as he says himself, 9/10 is still quite good).

I think the election is going to turn on Trump's ability to turn out low propensity voters who are supporting him by a pretty wide margin. Those aren't really the voters you want to rely on, so I think Biden pulls this one out.

I do wonder if in a post- trump environment if we'll settle into a near term pattern of 1 term presidents. There's a lot of broad dissatisfaction out there and negative polarization ensures every country has really low ceilings for approval at the best of times to begin with. I wouldn't be surprised if we string together a few one term presidents in a row once we get past the uniquely shitty trump era.

[Dr. Medulla]

I guess we have to do this, right? A whole lot of nose-holding going forward!

Anyway, here's a short interview with Allan "13 Keys" Lichtman, who is inclined toward Biden being re-elected right now: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... l-election

I think he's right (and have been saying as much around here), although I think it's funny how trumpian he sounds about 2000 (and then contradicts himself about the Will of the People stuff in 2016 by taking credit for Trump even though Clinton won the popular vote by a pretty comfortable margin. It's a little silly when, as he says himself, 9/10 is still quite good).

I give Lichtman and Michael Moore credit in their assertions that Trump would do better than the pundits thought. But it's silly to think a prediction that he won has merit. It was a fluke rooted in the mechanics of the EC. And it also took Clinton being a spectacularly bad candidate. If Obama had been able to run again, he would have trounced Trump.

I think the election is going to turn on Trump's ability to turn out low propensity voters who are supporting him by a pretty wide margin. Those aren't really the voters you want to rely on, so I think Biden pulls this one out.

Still so much shit to happen around Trump's various court cases and what happens in the Middle East, but the notable trend for me is that in the Republican primaries, Haley is still pulling 10%. If Trump can't win them back in November, it's hard to see how he can win, even if they just choose not to vote. But he seems hellbent on shrinking his base by his general conduct and demands for absolute loyalty.

I do wonder if in a post- trump environment if we'll settle into a near term pattern of 1 term presidents. There's a lot of broad dissatisfaction out there and negative polarization ensures every country has really low ceilings for approval at the best of times to begin with. I wouldn't be surprised if we string together a few one term presidents in a row once we get past the uniquely shitty trump era.

I lean in the opposite direction. Assuming Biden wins, the Republican Party is such a mess that it'll be difficult to consistently compete. I don't think it's crazy to think that the right goes thru a long fallow period nationally, with a fair chunk of the traditional base choosing not to vote at all. Unless the Democrats go thru their own crack-up, mind you, which isn't impossible to conceive, either. Otherwise, it'll be a period of increasingly corrupt and lazy Democratic administrations.

[Flex]

I need "electoral debate" in my life like I need a hole in my head

I don't really care how anyone votes (I mean, I guess I care if someone is MAGA but no one needs my permission or approval to vote for Biden, voting third party or abstain from voting altogether). I've played the Discourse About Voting game and come to the conclusion its idiotic and pointless. If I'm gonna try to go on an electoral persuasion campaign, I'll wait until someone pays me to do it. I've taken care not to advocate any particular action re: the 2024 election here, and outside of posts like this where someone seems to be genuinely asking for folks' thoughts, I will continue to not suggest anyone do any one thing in particular or not.

I've been thinking about these two quotes from my own "case for voting for biden/against trump" post from the trump thread that Kory prompted a week or so ago. I didn't like how they read then, but didn't have the time to expand on them then. Have a few free moments now though, so thought I should add add and clarify a little.

I don't need Electoralism Discourse or whatever on the internet, social media mostly, because it's just not useful - not because I think the stakes are marginal enough that it shouldn't matter what people do. I think the above give the impression that I don't really believe that Trump and MAGA represent a genuine threat to a free, pluralistic and open society. But quite the opposite. It's a threat I take very, very seriously and it's why I don't want to fall into the trap of substituting "arguing online"* for actual political action to try to stop a fascist threat. For everyone that has taken a position along the lines of "I'll vote for Biden [or, I'd vote for Biden if I lived in America] but I'm not gonna argue with anyone about it who'd rather not" I think that's a sound policy, but I'm writing this post to suggest that it's a sound policy because arguing with individuals about voting is really horrible GOTV and anyone who is doing it online is just doing it for their own entertainment, not because they're actually interested in collecting as many votes against Trump as possible.

*This is a related subject, and I need to find the evidence again, but recently I came across a study (survey?) of social media users and the takeaway was that people have undertaken the habit of substituting "learning and discussing politics on social media" for "being politically active" so you have a decrease in political participating from some of the heaviest "political" social media users because they believe they are being politically active by Doing Posts. As somebody who already walked away from social media once in part because of what I viewed as the limited value of the discussion around "serious" issues, this finding resonated and made me more resolute not to fall in the trap of believing that being active on social media has any real relationship to being politically active. Again, will update and revise this paragraph when I find the study in question.

To that end, for those of you who agree that Trump represents a unique enough threat to principles of a (relatively) open and free society, I would highly, highly recommend - between now and November - mentally budgeting a couple of hours that you would otherwise use complaining on the internet, or getting upset at the news, or whatever else and funnel that time into some GOTV work. I certainly don't recommend that be all you do to be politically active and engaged in your life, and I don't think those couple of hours doing GOTV for Biden and Democrats could, should or must supplant any other sort of political activism on your part. Don't let doing a textbank stop you from marching for peace, or being active in your DSA chapter, or working with Food Not Bombs or doing mutual aid or whatever else you do. But over the next ~3,500ish hours until election day, maybe 2 of those can be used for gathering votes to stop imminent fascism.

Okay, some recommendations.

FOR NON-AMERICANS WHO WANT TO HELP

Tricky! The obvious resource is DemocratsAbroad and anyone who wants to drop a line to their country chapter is more than welcome, but I understand that most of these chapters won't allow non-u.s. citizens to do GOTV with them because of European privacy laws. My best recommendation is, frankly, if you know any U.S. citizens living abroad just be sure to point them to this website: https://www.votefromabroad.org/

In 2020 my understand is the Biden campaign did have a GOTV/voter registration program for international supporters, I'll keep en eye out and if/when such a thing fires up again I'll post it here for anyone abroad willing to send a text or two to stop fascism.

FOR AMERICANS

First off, money. If you have it and want to donate it, besides giving money to whatever local/state race moves you, I'd just straight up recommend donating to SwingLeft, which will allocate contributions to the most important swing elections around the country (including, obviously, the presidency). You don't end up on a million donor lists and it's probably the most strategic allocation of your dollar. This post isn't really supposed to be about donating money, but if that's one of the ways you do political activism, that's my recommendation.

(I believe SwingLeft has other volunteer opportunities, but at their core they're really a fundraising and distribution mechanism).

Okay, next up two quick and easy recommendations that don't involve having to talk to anyone on a phone, go to door, or even leave your house. Postcards and textbanking are two easy, surprisingly effective forms of GOTV. What we're talking about here is reaching out to voters who would vote Biden/Democrat as long as they remember to get and turn in their ballot. So, as opposed to arguing Online with randos (or even friends!), this is highly, highly effective stuff: getting people who vote reliably democratic but are inconsistent - and, vitally, are in geographically important area - to, like, remember to help stop Trump.

The classic postcard campaign folks are Vote Forward. They have a bunch of campaigns going now, more will pop up as we get closer to the election. It's easy to do if handwritten messages are your thing. This is my favorite GOTV activity. I just put the kid to bed, turn on the ballgame, and crank tons of these things out while I'm drinking a beer and watching the Sox (or Pats, as campaign season moves into the Fall).

Textbanking is all the rage now, and it's actually gotten more and more effective as phonebanking (still important!) has declined. The Kids Today, especially, don't seem to be bothered by a text reminding them to vote. It's a little early to to textbanking and whatnot but one of the primary platforms is Mobilize and you can follow the Biden/Harris campaign on it here. Lots of textbanking and phonebanking opportunities will start populating as we get into the summer and fall. With textbanking, particularly, sometimes there are "events" for doing it all at once (for, like, "fun" for sickos who are into that stuff) but you can usually just pull a list of numbers to text and the programs auto-populate the message and you just press send. It's pretty slick stuff. You can shoot a few off while you'd otherwise be checking in on socials while you're working/taking cares of kids/relaxing/whatever.

The below is a list of some orgs that are all pretty reputable and do good targeted GOTV work. If any of them seem like one's flavor, you can hook in with these guys:

Democratic Volunteer Center (phone bank, text bank, postcard/letter writing)
Activate America (phone bank, text bank, postcards, canvassing)
Field Team 6 (phone bank, text bank, postcards, voter drives)
Movement Labs (text banking)
Postcards to Swing States (postcards)
Spread the Vote (help voters get ID)

So, there you have it. I may add other resources or do new versions of this post as we get further into the campaign, but for all of you who genuinely are worried about Trump here are things to actually do instead of just despair or uselessly bicker online.

Addendum: And sorry, some of the "complaining on the internet" stuff comes off as a touch condescending, I realize. I'm just trying to emphasize how really, really not that hard this stuff is to do for most people in most circumstances. I've seen most of our online presences, a good deal of us - me included - have some slack time here and there where we could be pressing the "send" button on a GOTV text instead of a tweet/skeet/skiddly fuckiddy doodle. I think, especially those of us who like to really think deeply and with our whole souls about What Voting Means, there's a tendency to believe there's a much bigger barrier to entry or time and resource commitment to some of these activities, but every election cycle it's easier and easier to do this stuff. So sorry again if I sound like a condescending jackass, but I sometimes need the reminder too.

[revbob]

Republicans aren't ready to walk away from Trump but instead are embracing him and moving towards trying to lower voter turnouts and try and delegitimize elections at state and local levels

If you cant win outright then cheat is the new republican philosophy.

[Flex]

Republicans aren't ready to walk away from Trump but instead are embracing him and moving towards trying to lower voter turnouts and try and delegitimize elections at state and local levels

If you cant win outright then cheat is the new republican philosophy.

I don't really disagree with this, but they're playing with fire this election because all indications are that Trump support is strongest with low propensity voters so (hopefully) their efforts at disenfranchisement will backfire on them this year.

[revbob]

Republicans aren't ready to walk away from Trump but instead are embracing him and moving towards trying to lower voter turnouts and try and delegitimize elections at state and local levels

If you cant win outright then cheat is the new republican philosophy.

I don't really disagree with this, but they're playing with fire this election because all indications are that Trump support is strongest with low propensity voters so (hopefully) their efforts at disenfranchisement will backfire on them this year.

CV has always been the Rs do better when overall turnout is low. They dont really need to encourage their people as much as discourage those who would vote against them. But you have a more inside view of these things than I

[Flex]

Republicans aren't ready to walk away from Trump but instead are embracing him and moving towards trying to lower voter turnouts and try and delegitimize elections at state and local levels

If you cant win outright then cheat is the new republican philosophy.

I don't really disagree with this, but they're playing with fire this election because all indications are that Trump support is strongest with low propensity voters so (hopefully) their efforts at disenfranchisement will backfire on them this year.

CV has always been the Rs do better when overall turnout is low. They dont really need to encourage their people as much as discourage those who would vote against them. But you have a more inside view of these things than I

Yeah, I'd say the conventional wisdom has flipped for the last two years. Dems have been consistently outperforming special elections recently and polls are showing trump doing better with low engagement, sporadic and non-voters, while Biden is doing better with higher information, consistent voters. It's a flip from what we're used to, remains to be seen whether it's a new normal or a blip.

[Kory]

Thanks for writing this up, Flex. It's good to have some calls to action (and a reminder to just ignore trolls).

[Flex]

I went to my meditation instead of watching most of the debate but what I heard was, ah, not great.

if you're the Biden campaign you're praying this super early debate is long forgotten by November.

Addendum: I still can't believe Biden could be replaced at the convention, but hey, were in insanity land so never say never I guess.

[WestwayKid]

I went to my meditation instead of watching most of the debate but what I heard was, ah, not great.

if you're the Biden campaign you're praying this super early debate is long forgotten by November.

Addendum: I still can't believe Biden could be replaced at the convention, but hey, were in insanity land so never say never I guess.

I would not 100% be against Biden being replaced, but then again I tend to be panicky in these situations.

[Low Down Low]

Maybe they should just have left well alone with the format? Just let Trump act the dick all through and use it as a semi-plausible excuse for ineptitude. I see the betting markets have shifted fairly dramatically away from Biden in reaction but then, they also thought Hillary was practically on home base in 2016.

[WestwayKid]

Maybe they should just have left well alone with the format? Just let Trump act the dick all through and use it as a semi-plausible excuse for ineptitude. I see the betting markets have shifted fairly dramatically away from Biden in reaction but then, they also thought Hillary was practically on home base in 2016.

You could be right about that. Don't mute the mics, etc. Let Trump blather on like the psycho he is.

[Sparky]

I was disappointed in the performance Biden gave last night, he's got a known speech impediment, I heard afterwards he's been fighting a cold, but for those who don't take these two things in to the equation, it was a real let down. I was really hoping to see and hear the Biden that we saw at State Of The Union address a few months back.

Trump on the other hand didn't answer the questions that were put to him, instead he circled back on earlier responses to air his BS "alternate facts" and conspiracy theories. His refusal to give a straight answer regarding whether or not he'd accept the outcome of the election really says it all.

[Dr. Medulla]

The best spin on it all is that the election was always going to rest on the question of whether people want Trump back. Voting for Biden was going to involve some nose holding. But this certainly aids the narrative that Republicans want to dominate the election. What a wretched predicament.