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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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I thought those words all came under the same umbrella of argument?
I thought people here had a problem with the concept of "conceding that Biden is flawed while trying to get people to vote for him" in general. Not with the specific phrase "lesser evil"
Edited by GNinja on Nov 16th 2020 at 7:43:29 PM
Kaze ni Nare!Yes, I suppose so. I mean, there is an argument that the enthusiasm gap between Biden and Trump contributed to the former's weaker-than-expected performance, and that this could be attributed partly to Biden not being seen by his voters as a candidate with positive merits. But then, I do not know if that is a bad thing. It means Biden's voters tend to be the discriminating ones, and Trump's voters have more frothing cultists. In other words, Biden's voters tend to recognize nuance in their support or agreement with their candidate more than Trump's voters, who come up with explanations for why any areas of disagreement are just fake news lies.
Edited by Jman543 on Nov 16th 2020 at 11:52:32 AM
I thought people here had a problem with the concept of "conceding that Biden is flawed while trying to get people to vote for him" in general. Not with the specific phrase "lesser evil"
No, it's specifically the phrase "lesser evil," because framing your own candidate as any kind of "evil" is absolutely terrible marketing. At best, it's still setting your own guy up as the enemy of the person you're trying to convince. "Flawed" or "imperfect" doesn't carry that connotation to anyone but the most delusional of unicorn-chasers.
Yes, but like I said, for some people it would be simple honesty. I personally believe that Biden is likely to do more good than harm (so that evil is a bad description), but I could see how people with certain experiences or worldviews might see it very differently.
Edited by Jman543 on Nov 17th 2020 at 12:01:08 PM
I don't think my argument is absurd.
Anyway, that likely primarily reflects the popularity of Biden versus Trump—not the enthusiasm of each candidates voters for the candidate themself. Trump voters consistently have expressed far more enthusiasm in surveys than Biden voters. For instance, a Harvard Kennedy school poll found that 56% of likely Trump voters (in September) were enthusiastic about voting for him, compared to 35% of likely Biden voters.
Edited by Jman543 on Nov 17th 2020 at 12:00:51 PM
Anyway, enthusiasm is an subjective emotional quality. It is certainly correlated with turnout, but they are not the same thing. Biden was able to win despite lower enthusiasm, because you do not need to like a candidate to strongly prefer them (and, you know, the US is more liberal than conservative).
I remember an article/poll that suggested Democrats were more enthusiastic about voting, which would suggest that an enthusiasm gap isn't the reason the margin was smaller than polls were predicting. Is there any evidence, anyway, that enthusiasm for a candidate correlates to vote share?
Edited by nova92 on Nov 17th 2020 at 12:07:34 PM
How questions are asked is important. My guess is that they were enthusiastic about voting against Trump, which is still consistent with being less enthusiastic about Biden than the equivalent average Trump voter with respect to their candidate. If you are talking about the Gallup poll, that asked about enthusiasm about voting in general, which could easily explain the discrepancy.
Also, there are a decent number of studies suggesting that enthusiasm correlates with vote share, but we should beware of confusing correlation with causation, and also with varying definitions across studies.
Edited by Jman543 on Nov 17th 2020 at 12:07:49 PM
I do agree that we need to stop couching our candidates with the "yeah, he sucks and he's awful and he's basically racoon roadkill left in the dumpster, but he's better than Trump" sort of thing, yes. If it's intended as an inroads or concession to people on the far left who see their options as Jo Jorgensen or staying home, it's not going to help. It's like they say: debating isn't to change your opponent's mind, it's to change your audience's, and being overly negative about what's shaping up to be a historically progressive presidential platform isn't going to help.
Let's get excited. Let's get positive about something for once. Let's stop comparing candidates to a fictional perfect candidate and introducing them as "this one disappoints me the least", and let's start looking at what kind of progress they can make with proper support, and proper feedback and reasonable criticism from the left.
I'm not saying we need to kiss Biden's feet for everything he does. But we should stop couching everything as "ugh, we still have a thousand steps to go and Biden's only taking a hundred", and more as "we have a long way to go, but Biden's going to get us closer than we were". It's a journey and it's going to take time.
It's been fun.The argument that a lack of enthusiasm amongst Biden voters is somehow responsible for Biden having a lower than expected vote share is absurd, because he didn't have a lower than expected vote. Again, record vote even when the other candidate also had a record vote! It's trying to find an explanation for something that doesn't exist.
If you want to explain results "lower than expected votes" isn't the right place to be looking. Split ticket voting for the Senate and continuing demographic shifts, as well as underlying demographic splits, are more informative. And it's still going to take some time to work out why polls were particularly off in Wisconsin but essentially spot-on in Pennsylvania etc.
Edited by RainehDaze on Nov 17th 2020 at 8:07:33 PM
Poll that suggests higher enthusiasm among Democrats:
Poll that suggests more enthusiasm for Trump than for Biden:
Two studies that investigate the relationship between enthusiasm and vote share:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261379414000766
I really wish you would stop calling my arguments absurd.
Anyway, Biden looks on track to win by about 4%, but his position in polling averages directly before the election was around 8%, if not higher, which suggests that he probably underperformed expectations. Since you are calling my argument absurd, I will permit myself the luxury of a mild insult and suggest that you are conflating several different things. Biden having a record vote does not have a direct bearing on whether he performed better than expected or worse.
By the way, I think you probably are also implicitly assuming that high turnout (for Trump, Biden, or both) was a function of high enthusiasm. But don't forget how this year was different in one other respect: barriers to voting, especially voting by mail, were lower despite the active opposition of Republicans. Both enthusiasm and ease likely play a role.
Edited by Jman543 on Nov 17th 2020 at 12:21:02 PM
Septimus Heap That is why the way questions are phrased is so important. The first poll explicitly rules it out, whereas respondents are free to interpret the second in exactly that sense.

I always thought the "lesser evil" approach was used to appeal to left wing people who already disliked the democratic candidate, and didn't want to be patronized by people going on about how great that candidate actually is.
Even in that case you could say the candidate is "flawed" or "imperfect" rather than "a lesser evil."
As in, Biden is imperfect, but Trump is outright evil.
Or, the Democrats are a flawed party, but the Republicans are straight up malicious.
Edited by Wryte on Nov 16th 2020 at 11:40:42 AM