Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
A sobering statistic:
Trump won with the support of just 75 million votes in a country with 335 million citizens.
In other words, just 22 percent of the US citizens decided to drive the country off a cliff, and everyone else is now going down with them.
For reference, the population of voting age Americans is roughly 262 million. This would translate to 28.6% of voting age citizens driving the country off the cliff for all 335 million citizens.
And Trump lost 2020 with about the same number of voters.
And then he had his traitor terrorists seize voting machines all over the country in contested areas. The enemies of the United States had first hand access to the machines we already know are vulnerable to first hand attacks.
Anyone who didn't vote made the same decision.
This is completely normal. In almost every election far more people vote for "nobody" than for either candidate. So the percentage of people who support any president is always super low. The support for these politicians is very small but the hegemonic narrative completely obscures this.
This is not completely normal anywhere but in the US. The US has atrocious voter turnout, for a wide number of reasons, most of them intentional.
Trump won with the support of just 75 million votes in a country with 335 million citizens.
In other words, just 22 percent of the US citizens decided to drive the country off a cliff,
Wrong.
He won 75 million active votes plus 10-15 million people who opted to stay home, knowing it was a de-facto vote for Trump.
They are just as guilty as the Trump voters.
They are just as guilty as the Trump voters.
This is not untrue, but it's also not a meaningful path forward.
Is it really that 15 million uninspired people are "okay with racism"? Even if we take that at face value, okay? How do we inspire them, then? Losing is not an option for us.
They are uncaring about such issues.
I hate to break it to you, man, but most people barely care about politics at all. Politics is that annoying thing they have to deal with once every Thanksgiving when uncle Remus won't shut up about the border.
It would be really nice if they did care, but they don't. You either work around this problem, or you lose indefinitely.
Listen, i was vocal, i talked about voting a lot, about how i fucking hate the democrats, but they are the only way to avert a major disaster, and after i finished voting and told my friend group, i had one go “I’m not even registered to vote, lol” and “it’s not that big of a deal, we did a trump presidency last time, nothing changed” “both sides are blowing this out of proportion” and i lost my shit. I don’t know how you reach these people, maybe it’s time to start backing the leopard instead.
Part of the reason that people don't believe much happened under Trump is that the DNC is terrible about telling them.
What motivates the right? Non-stop, 24-7, talk news radio propaganda about how badly the woke democrats are fucking everything up, about how your son is gay because of flouride in your water.
What motivates the left?
I mean that, sincerely. It can't be our sense of righteous civic duty; as you just said, people don't care. We don't have a story. Biden passed the Stop Inflation Act? Okay. What even is that?
You should ask those same people, I'm not saying it'll be every single one of them, but ask them if they liked Bernie Sanders. It's not impossible to reach these people, most of them anyway, they just need something to latch on to.
The Democratic party has an unstable coalition at its very core because many people (in their coalition even) believe in white supremacy, have homophobic/transphobic tendencies, or believe in the subjugation of women. They have run consistently after Reagan with a center-right economic platform, but a more left-wing social/cultural platform. When people were marginalized enough by the capital class by their identities this worked as a voting block.
Now everyone has gotten comfortable enough -- because many of the systemic barriers that repressed them have been removed -- to believe the superficial lies that Trump isn't racist, or sexist, or <> and it doesn't motivate them enough to vote anymore.
The Democratic party has an unstable coalition at its very core
So do the Republicans, evangelical christians want a police state that subjugates people, while libertarians want barely any state at all. Project 2025 is a messy mishmash of conflicting policy ideas exactly because of this.
Trump was successful in distancing himself from endorsing any of the conflicting points in the Republican base, Harris went into pleasing the neoliberals hard while very visibly shunning progressives and socialists. The result can be seen by all.
The point is, Trump ran a better campaign in a political sense than Harris, inasmuch he didn't distance himself from part of his electorate as Harris did.
Trump was successful in distancing himself from endorsing any of the conflicting points in the Republican base, Harris went into pleasing the neoliberals hard while very visibly shunning progressives and socialists. The result can be seen by all.
I understand that's the narrative but the reality is that socialism is a nothing, nowhere movement in this country and progressivism is as well. There are not millions upon millions of people who will vote for a candidate that passes the purity tests that online leftists apply daily.
Ultimately, I think the only way out of this hole in this country is a giant labor movement again. That's what sorts the people into categories for policies. Do you work or do you own a company for a living? The owners and the "tolerant" billionaires need to be jettisoned from the coalition. But there's a problem there that has prevented them from doing that up until now and it's that giant piles of money have been necessary to win previous elections. The tolerant billionaires and millionaires were the ones providing that funding.
I personally think that Republican propaganda could be much less effective if people were aligned with unions that were actually making a difference in their lives. Nowadays, so few people belong to a union that they're largely irrelevant.
But it was a bloody battle last time, and I'm not sure it'll be any easier this time.
Nah. The missing votes compared to 2020 that everyone is harking on about wouldn't have changed the election results thanks to the electoral college. Harris would have won pop vote, but Trump still would have won the election. Nevermind the fact that you can't know all those missing votes would have been for Harris.
Stop looking for someone else to blame when the only culprits responsible for Trump winning are the ones that voted for him.
Trump got virtually the same number of votes that he did in 2020. Harris got 10+ million less votes than Biden did in 2020.
And the losses were across the board, hitting safe blue states along with battleground states. It was so bad that states like New Jersey and California almost looked competitive.
Republicans came out for Trump. Democrats stayed home for Harris. The math proves it.
I'm not refuting that Harris got fewer votes overall across the country, but the turnout in the key swing states was actually overall better for Harris in 2024 than it was for Biden in 2020. You wanna talk about "the math proves it" then you need to look at the swing states.
There was nobody for them to vote for. That's absolutely the fault of the dems.
I'm sorry, I must have been hallucinating when I saw the black woman that spent the last 3 months campaigning.
In fairness, though, not all of those citizens are eligible to vote. I found a link that says there are 244 million eligible voters. That's now 30%.
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/10-things-to-know-2024-presidential-election/
And not all eligible citizens are registered. Yes, I am aware that Republicans fuck with the voter rolls. I found a link that says there are 162m registered voters in the US, which seems low. But assuming it is accurate, we're now at 46%.
https://www.statista.com/topics/11901/2024-us-presidential-election/#topicOverview
There is no getting around the fact that we brought this on ourselves.
You can't just ignore the worst parts of the system. Many many people are disenfranchised and the dems haven't done anything to change that. Many people live in "red" or "blue" states where their vote doesn't matter at all and the dems haven't done anything to change that. Many people see no reason to register and again the dems are to blame for not offering a viable alternative. When less than 28% of USAians are willing to support your candidate, maybe the other 72% of the country isn't the problem.
If ur too stupid or lazy to exercise your right to have a say in ur own future u deserve zero sympathy and have zero right to complain. Here in australia we have mandatory voting to ensure u have a say or at the very least ensure no shenanigans around preventing particular groups from voting. And before u say u cant force someone to have an opinion thats absolutely right u also have the right to spoil ur ballot.
Tbh we cannot say for sure what the other 78% would have voted.
Nonetheless non voters almost make me more angry that Republican voters
Maybe it will make you feel a little better that there were only 244M eligible voters this election?
The University of Florida’s Election Lab reported (as of November 9) that turnout was around 62% of the voting-eligible population.
Why were the other citizens not eligible to vote? Smells of disenfranchisement unless there are way more minors than I thought.
Prisoners and ex-felons.
The Presidential race ain't changing, but I can see recounts possible in some close House races. There are still several House races within 1 point either way with lots of vote to count. It is extremely unlikely that Democrats win all those, but if even if just one seat is picked away in a recount it will decrease the Republican majority and make it harder for them to pass their agenda.
Get that rich donor class to pay for it. They make all the demands anyway.
I want to reply to all the fundraising texts with “go ask your billionaire friends for money” but that doesn’t stop them so I just say “stop”
I just sent this to Biden & Harris via the White House contact page https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/. I share in case you would like to add your voice and may find it helpful to have a pre-existing template to use or edit. Please feel free to share with others as you see fit. Peace, Atelopus-zeteki
Template: I would like to add my voice in the call for a recount of the 2024 presidential election. I would also like to ask that you conduct a full investigation into tampering, interference, and fraud for this election.
· 32 bomb threats were called into democratic leaning polling places in swing states, causing them to be closed for extended periods of time on Election Day.
· At least one bomb threat was called into a vote counting center.
· Polling locations were closed while voters were still in line to vote.
· Multiple Ballot drop boxes were set on fire, in democratic leaning areas, losing thousands of ballots.
· Many voters reported not receiving mail in ballots, while districts apparently had not sent thousands of them.
· Hundreds of people in swing states are reporting that their votes have not been counted or even have never been received, though they were dropped off/mailed on time
· Some voters also reported instances of their outgoing mail not being picked up after placing their ballot in their mailbox.
· Voters also reported having their ballots invalidated for reasons such as invalid signatures, and given no chance to fix it.
We cannot allow election interference. Please order a recount as soon as possible.
The American people do not trust the results of this election. The people are concerned that there is outside interference – from foreign governments and from private corporations at least – in our election. We are concerned that this was not a free and fair election. We are concerned that we are being lied to and a dictator is trying to take over our government. I am begging you to do everything in your power to stop this from taking place. Thank you very much for your time and attention to this matter.
Also, contact your rep and senators about the 14th amendment.
Agreed!
Took me less than five minutes. I highly encourage everyone to do it.
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
https://www.senate.gov/senators/
The message doesn't need to be long. Just mention the 14th amendment, section 3 and that they need to do their duty as Congress and not allow an insurrectionist (January 6th 2021) to hold office.
Do you have any actual source for this? Some of it is just farcical on its face. Like the thousands of ballots in drop boxes. I saw articles for 3 drop boxes, amounting to around a hundred at most, spread over two states.
You're also accusing staunchly Democratic election systems of sand bagging Harris over multiple states. The breadth of conspiracy that would take is mind boggling. It is literally unbelievable.
That should all definitely be investigated but I don't think "recount" is the right word for a lot of it. Anything that was counted should be, but a lot just seems like outright interference where there's nothing to recount because people weren't able to vote. Was it enough to matter? No one can really know for sure.
Bomb threats are bad enough on there own. Even worse when it interferes with an election. The culprits need to be severely punished, though that may not stop people from doing it again if they feel it worked.
I don't know what the solution is if there are quite a few people willing to do anything they can to interfere in an election. You can't watch every postman, polling worker, polling station, etc. There's just too many and not enough people. But then you get into a "who watches the watchmen" situation even if there were.
Feels like the problem is having a two party system and also only needing a majority to get things passed. If we had proper representation by multiple parties then cheating from any one party would hopefully be far less effective.
I'm not sure what there is to recount in this election. There might be one or two house seats but it's not going to swing control of anything. Honestly they should bank it and use it to buy some political capital with the people.
I know it's dumb to wish, but I would love a complete revote!
Stop the steal! \s
Here's how Biden can still win: