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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Not even voter apathy per se, it's that there is a sizable amount of Democrats who want to be courted and inspired to go out to vote, which we've seen several election cycles.
Meanwhile, you could put up Satan himself, and GOP always ALWAYS come home and fall in line.
New Survey coming this weekend!It's a demographic thing. There's an old saying: if you're not a liberal by the time you're 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
YMMV on the validity of it but it does describe the demographics pretty well, and that's an issue when it comes to voter turnout. Democrats tend to be twenty-something idealists with big dreams and a poor understanding of the logistics thereof. Republicans tend to be older, more cynical folks who've learned from the mistakes of their youth and understand the concept of an incremental solution to an otherwise impossible problem - even if they don't necessarily choose the right solutions.
The main reason a Democrat won't vote is because the candidate fails to live up to the unicorn wishes he was hoping for. The main reason a Republican won't vote is because he's become disillusioned that anything could ever fix the system, based entirely on trying only the one thing and repeatedly failing at it.
Trump won this one ultimately because he did a better job of reillusioning his jaded voterbase than Hillary did of making unicorn promises to hers.
edited 14th Nov '16 8:56:46 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
This election would suggest that the culture wars are still ongoing.
It describes the demographics of today. Back in the 80s, it was the other way around; the old WWII veterans who lived through the great depression under the furthest left administration in American history were reliable democrats, and the younger voters were coming out in droves for the likes of Reagan.
edited 14th Nov '16 9:01:46 PM by CaptainCapsase
Compulsory voting probably wouldn't get much traction and wouldn't produce that much different a result than what supposedly happened in Michigan; lots of people voting for everything BUT the top of the ticket.
And I think Cthulu might edge out the Joker in the write in votes, actually.
Preferential voting doesn't get talked about much because we don't generally talk about voting in anything other than voter disenfranchisement. Now, we could make it part of the conversation, but you'd probably get told by a lot of people with Tobias's opinion that it could never, ever work and to never speak of it again. It's possible, but again it's going to be one of those things where proponents have to be very stubborn and persistent.
Frankly, our government classes are kind of shit at explaining how government works, and from what I can remember they don't exactly involve a compare and contrast section with other country's governments.
And can we stop bringing up that old saw of a phrase? It's a phrase useful for shutting down thought and conversation and is not actually true on any level. It's just using ugly stereotypes.
edited 14th Nov '16 9:03:45 PM by AceofSpades
Snowden warns of increase in U.S. domestic spying after Trump victory
Well, I guess unlike Assange, this dipshit at least has some dignity left.
Inter arma enim silent legesAnd your cynicism is tiring and potentially unwarranted. We were in the middle of the war and Bush, for all his supposed ineptness, had actually managed not to fuck up too much. And not make any portion of the public quite this angry. People didn't take to the streets in several cities the first time he got elected, as I recall. You're also basically calling yourself an idiot, because you don't get to separate yourself from the American people if you're gonna drum up cliche phrases like that. Isn't this the kind of attitude that people in this thread have been calling out as divisive?
Also, it's not quite the same public that voted in Bush, considering the demographic shift. New voters are entering the system all the time.
And holy shit, it feels weird to say it, but it's a vastly different world now from then regarding how information and the like was distributed. (Fuck I feel old now.) *shrug* We'll have to see what happens.
edited 14th Nov '16 10:07:11 PM by AceofSpades
The media has been calling Bannon a white nationalist... The problem is that the people who need to hear it... are reading Breitbart and trust it over the 'liberal media.'
edited 14th Nov '16 10:21:13 PM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food Badly@Le Garcon: What I am saying is that people in the conservative news bubble are likely not going to hear that Bannon is a white nationalist. The only exceptions are the few conservative outlets who have some actual morals. For example, the fact that Glenn Beck is within that bubble but is very Anti-Trump makes him a much-needed ally to explain how bad Trump is to conservatives within that bubble.
Wizard Needs Food Badly@Bat: What the others said. That's at least part of why we have a VP in the line of succession. A pretty important part, too, considering being suddenly left leaderless wouldn't be good in any event.
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That depends on whether any tropers live in Louisiana or knows anyone there. I'm not really sure I can do anything at this point, seeing as I'm not in the state, it's a little late to be donating money, and I know no one that lives there.
Look, if Trump can win by hammering "Little Marco" and "Crooked Hillary" then surely we can use those tactics too, however annoying. Keep saying it, and never let up. Point out his very real bigotry to the public.
edited 14th Nov '16 11:01:38 PM by AceofSpades
Concerning people blaming Obama for any of Trump's screw-ups...well, that's sort of already happening now with the riots. Trump supporters are claiming that the riots and increased racism are all false flag operations masterminded by George Soros.
As for the voters re-electing Bush because we were in the middle of a war...do you really think Trump isn't going to drag us into another war before his term is up? It will almost certainly happen if only because he'll need to do something to distract the public from screw-ups so blatant that even blaming the previous Obama administration won't cut it.
I would be extremely happy if I am proven wrong about all of this. And yeah, I admit, I'm being really cynical. I was a lot more optimistic before Trump got elected.
That said, I'm not so cynical that I seriously think he'll trigger a nuclear war.
If we want him to be a one-term President — and we do — the Democratic Party needs to up its game. That means taking back state legislatures, governor seats, Congress, etc.
edited 14th Nov '16 11:24:22 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised

And that's 20% of the vote for the Democrat candidate, 22% for the Republican, and 58% for "The Joker but like not the new one. The scary one."
Then we have to have a runoff vote to clarify which Joker has just been elected President.
edited 14th Nov '16 8:47:02 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.