McCain dead. Tramp still breathing. America fucked.
I’ll see your “I dunno” and raise you. Find me a single political ad from the Democratic Party or any Democratic P.A.C. that is a more devastating take-down than this, from arch-conservative Bill Kristol and Co.:
Go search youtube for videos on Trump or subordinates being “DESTROYED”. People have devastating takedowns of Trump all the time. There was plenty before Trump got elected in the first place. The takedowns always look devastating only to the people who already aren’t voting for Trump and they barely matter if they matter at all. I don’t have any reason to think this ad is effective, it appeals to you because it appeals to your sensibilities.
The Lincoln Project is made up of political consultants who credit themselves with the Republican victories of the past 20 years. But political consultants like to take credit for the wind blowing their way. Those victories never could have happened without gerrymandering and racist voter suppression. The Lincoln Project is making entertainment for people who don’t like Trump, they make Trump angry, I don’t have any reason to think they are more of a factor in the election than Randy Rainbow.
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I approve of both of these causes. The LP can spend their ad dollars and carpet bomb the Fox airwaves, and RR can do his savvy skewering, and I’ll watch and enjoy them both. November feels a long way away, and we’re up to our mask straps in screaming Costco Karens and Chads. Gimme a laugh, I need 'em. Let the air out of the orange blowhard.
I’ve been sharing both with my lefty family, and they share them with their friends. It may not make a difference, but it’s keeping us sane.
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This is good verbiage, thanks!
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Your opinion flies in the face of well-known and obvious political realities. American Presidential elections are won and lost by the centrist and independent vote, and given the particular idiosyncrasies of the electoral college, with an emphasis on middle America. As I am sure you are well aware, Randy Rainbow isn’t going to resonate much with that crew. The reality is that Republicans have always been more effective at targeting these voters. Hopefully the Dems are taking notes.
Correction: American Presidential elections are won by voter turnout. More voters = Dems win, less voters = GOP wins. It’s simple math.
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Of course that’s a major factor. But gerrymandering and voter suppression doesn’t explain why 40% of Americans don’t vote. And since campaigns can never predict voter turnout with any accuracy at all, the realities of the electoral college and the focus on swing voters remain the rub. In 2012 voter turnout was 58.6% for instance. In 2016 it was 60.1%
If the 50% of eligible voters who don’t vote were “centrists and independents” like you say, they would have voted for Democrats by now due to how far the Overton Window has shifted. Instead, they vote less for Dems who slide to the right. More and more research (which has been posted here before - look it up yourself) shows those voters are not in between the two main parties, but primarily to the left and/or consider themselves excluded from either party’s consideration.
Your statement that “Republicans have always been more effective at targeting these voters” is laughable, unless, when you say “targeting” you mean “suppressing.”
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It was a well known and obvious political reality that Trump couldn’t win. And it’s not like that’s the one terrible moment when everyone got it wrong. Among republicans it was well known and obvious they were going to beat Obama in his re-election big, that didn’t work out very well.
You say the republicans have “always been effective” at targeting the voters that matter. Reality doesn’t support that. The vote results are plain: if everyone got a vote and every vote was counted the Republicans would lose. As it is, with their advantages they win the presidency half the time while winning the popular vote once this millennium. They don’t have any remarkable abilities or secrets to convince people of anything.
The pundit class are hucksters, like the diet industry or the self-help industry. They succeed by failing, they don’t really know anything.
Well, yeah, they do explain part of that. Voter suppression is literally the act of stopping people from voting. To say it doesn’t contribute to people not voting is to say it is a myth, that it doesn’t happen at all.
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Voter suppression and gerrymandering (the latter practised by both political parties) are real and serious problems to be sure. No one knows the actual percentage of voters effected by voter suppression efforts; but you can be sure it’s nowhere near 40% of eligible voters! If that were the case, you would see a correlation between voter suppression efforts in red states and voter turnout there. Unless there is voter suppression that I am unaware of in blue California for instance, the voter turnout there in 2016 was a percentage point less than both Alabama and Georgia. The blame game is easy. But until left-leaning voters between the ages of 18 and 35 actually turn out to vote, nothing will change.
Murder is part of the cause of death but it doesn’t account for anywhere near the total number of people who die. People of all walks of life commit murder. I mean, people talk about Detroit having a high murder rate but that murder rate would only account for a couple of percentage points of increased death in Detroit compared to Portland.
Felon disenfranchisement alone accounts for more than 6 million Americans who are not allowed to vote. Like nearly 5%. That’s one form of voter disenfranchisement. And yes, many of them might not have voted anyway, but that doesn’t take away from the problem (might as well, as to link back to what I said above, say that some murder victims would have died soon anyway). The entire war on drugs was a political ploy to stop black people and hippies from voting. Nixon officials have admitted that was the intention, it’s come out in documents through Freedom of Information requests. Voter suppression isn’t some little thing, it’s a massive, society wide cancer that is destroying America. It can’t be minimized.
I’d also like to contrast two things:
Is it the young people who choose not to turn out that decide the election or the “centrists” who think that Trump and Biden are both viable options and feel forced to choose between them? Of course it’s both. It’s also a lot of other groups. And it’s, in very significant part, how many Black Americans have had their vote taken away from them. Because those 6 million Amercans who don’t get to vote are about half Black, Black votes skew Democrat at fantastic margins, and every state people pay attention to in the presidential election would be significantly affected by a 1% or 2% change in the balance.
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Dude, it’s 5 posts up. We can all see it.
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