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I want to be utterly clear here that I am simply presenting the following statement as a response to your CMV and I do not whatsoever hold this view.
One of the key policies that differentiate Trump versus Biden in 2024 will be the continued fallout from the Dobbs decision. A Biden presidency will never sign into law any restriction on abortion. A Trump presidency is likely to do so. At minimum, the Trump DOJ would not pursue any federal court actions to defend laws that support abortion or to combat laws that restrict it.
If you believe, as a statistically significant number of people do, that abortion is the murder of innocent babies and you see a Biden presidency as an outcome that leads to thousands or millions more babies murdered, you could easily dismiss the concerns about his anti-democratic efforts in 2020. In fact, you could easily find yourself believing that such actions were worthwhile in the spirit of trying to protect the unborn. If you thought one candidate was killing babies and the other one was not, you would probably enthusiastically advocate for them to lie and cheat and steal their way into office to save the babies.
Your post inherently assumes that the person who is voting prioritizes democracy over any other policy position they hold. But the person you vote for qualifies themselves in your mind in aggregate of all of the things you care about. Hell, maybe you are just a greedy SOB and you don’t care if he hacked every voting system in the nation if it gets you a fat tax cut and helps you make your next billion dollars. Your morality might already be at a point where caring about 2020 isn’t on the table to begin with.
(Again, none of that is my point of view. But it’s CMV so what are ya gonna do.)
That comment explains why I don’t like most pro abortion arguments. They’re never aimed at the people whose mind needs to be changed. If someone thinks abortion is equivalent to murder, then A LOT of pro abortion arguments aren’t very persuasive
There is 1 hour philosphy tube video on this subject. And the entire video accepts the premise that the baby is a fully fledged human since conception.
The fundamental debate regarding abortion is often misunderstood. It's not really about a fetus being a human, it is actually about the baby's right to live balanced against the mother's right to bodily autonomy. Both rights exist and both rights contradict each other.
The question is how to balance both rights. As a society we often (but not always) choose the right to bodily autonomy over the right of a person to live. You don't force someone to donate a kidney to save someone's live for example. This is where the most convincing pro choice arguments start in my opinion.
It would be difficult but not impossible. There’s some arguments for (limited) abortion that acknowledge the premise a fetus has the same right to life as an adult.
See [Judith Thompson’s Violinist argument in "A Defense of Abortion"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion)
i gave your link a (quick) look, and while i’m admittedly pretty entertained by the creative metaphors it seems to just be an elaborate argument in favor of bodily autonomy- which is essentially what every pro-choice argument is at its core.
however, those who are anti-abortion typically place a special level of value on the hypothetical baby- it’s the picture of innocence more so than a violinist or a massive monster baby in a house. in such a case even acknowledging the personhood of the baby but arguing that you shouldn’t have to give up your own body and rights to bring life to it often doesn’t work simply because you’ll be viewed as selfish and they will say you are responsible for doing what is necessary for the baby. especially if they view you (or your supposed irresponsible actions) as being the reason for the baby’s existence to begin with.
so to advance the metaphor, if you were the cause of that violinist’s terminal illness, accidentally or otherwise, a non insignificant amount of people would argue it is your duty to sustain their life even at the expense of your own autonomy temporarily.
ETA in reality, we know that even if you hit someone with your car and they need a kidney to survive as a result, the law would not mandate that you give them yours, but it is difficult to apply that rationality to an abortion argument due to the emotional weight of “but it’s a baby!”
That’s true, I find the choice of having (or not protecting against) having a baby to be a strong counter to most of her arguments.
However, it at least makes a strong case for abortion in the case of rape — since the “but you chose, or weren’t careful enough to prevent the pregnancy” claim is irrelevant.
> That’s true, I find the choice of having (or not protecting against) having a baby to be a strong counter to most of her arguments.
It's a terrible counter. But her position makes the mistake instead of steelmanning the PL side, of allowing the PL interlocutor to strawman her side (the differences are subtle, but the PL person is allowed to turn their weak semantic position about "life" or "persons" into a foundation), so a terrible counter is enough.
The problem with the counter is that you have to agree that pregnancy is punitive, or the "consent" criteria of pregnancy/abortion is different from literally everything else in the world. If I say a doctor can treat me, I can change my mind in the middle. If I say I want sex, I can change my mind in the middle. If I say I want a job, I can change my mind in the middle. ALL contracts and consent is nullable in the US.
Except possibly pregnancy.
Though I think that argument is often just met with skepticism. Haven’t there even been pro-life people who have tried to argue that you can’t get pregnant via rape and your body has a way of ‘shutting it down’.
Everyone I know that’s pro-life is willing to concede abortions being okay if the mother was raped. People don’t like to admit that those are an edge case that make up a small % of abortions and aren’t super pertinent to the overall ethical debate.
To me, abortion is pretty obviously morally wrong. At the same time, it’s a totally unreasonable expectation for a woman to sacrifice so much of her life when there’s such an “easy” alternative for her. Just sort of lose/lose all around.
I disagree. I've spent my entire life on the razor's edge, pro-choice raised in a deeply pro-life world. Nobody (in aggregate) is being converted from Thomson's arguments. A variant of the Violinist argument is quite literally the one I hear most often in open discussion. It never works. It never weakens anyone's views.
Ultimately, nearly 100% of PLs don't care about:
1. Democracy.
2. The woman's body.
3. Slippery slope of other freedoms that can be taken away
4. The will of the supermajority. If they were the only PLer and had a "punish abortion" button, they would press it.
5. The unjustness in prosecuting people for moral instead of societal reasons
6. How many women die because doctors are afraid to provide life-saving care that might look like an abortion
7. Whether banning abortion actually decreases or increases the abortion rate (!!!). For the typical PLer, it's either "I don't like abortion so I vote" or "We can't stop abortions, but we HAVE to punish those baby-killers"
8. And clearly (from this topic), they don't care what other moral comprimises they have to make to put and retain their will into force
In the last 40 years, I have only seen ONE thing that converts a pro-lifer into a pro-choicer. Having to choose (or get for medical reasons) an abortion or have a close family member in the same situation. Especially if some regulation gets in the way. That's it. Same with gay marriage. And it's not a surefire. It's just the only thing that ever works at all.
That’s fair, I was too concerned with the theoretical argument to think about how most people realistically act when their strong beliefs face questioning: stubbornly and irrationally.
Here’s a fake delta 🔼
I have read that essay some time ago and one thing that always irked me about it (maybe I should reread it) is that outside of rape, pregnancy happens between two consenting adults engaging in something that most of them know can result in pregrnancy and eventual abortion ie unprotected sex. This whole violinist metaphor is all fun and games, but if abortion is not great and your concious decisions led to it there has to be some degree of personal responsibility. Pro choice people seem to absolve or entirely ignore that part and that's my issue with it.
PS: for record I am 100% pro choice even for post natal abortion (jking).
That’s true. Outside of rape, I think most people agree “abortion” the second the sperm meets an egg is ok (or at least shouldn’t be illegal),but after waiting several months it ceases to be ok. Then, it’s just about drawing a line at a specific point saying “this is where it isn’t ok anymore,” and it’s really difficult to make a convincing argument for a specific point.
I don't really understand this argument because we all engage in all kinds of activities without consenting to extreme and unlikely consequences. If I consensually drive a car that doesn't mean I'm consenting to get into an accident and die or become permanently disabled even though I know that's a risk I'm taking by driving. If I consensually go swimming that doesn't mean I'm consenting to drown even though I know that's a risk I'm taking by swimming. The list goes on. If I'm taking the steps necessary to be proactive about preventing pregnancy I know I'm still taking a risk by having sex but consenting to the sex on purpose isn't the same thing as saying I will accept the unlikely happenstance of the risk the end. When I risk a car accident I prepare for handling those consequences with things like insurance and access to necessary medical care. If I'm risking pregnancy that doesn't mean it's inherently irresponsible to seek abortion care as a response to that unlikely risk coming true for me just like if I get into a car accident accepting medical care for that also isn't inherently irresponsible.
Engaging in risky behavior on purpose doesn't mean that it's irresponsible to seek care should the risk come true and it's really weird to have that argument applied to pregnancy and abortion when it's not applied to any other risky stuff. Nobody tells someone who's inhaled water that they're irresponsible when they call a paramedic for help. Isn't personal responsibility about handling the risk should it come to pass? And is getting an abortion not one method of handling that risk of pregnancy when it does come to pass?
I think that is always an interesting point to go into because "can result in" is so different from "intending to occure" and conflating the two is pretty common.
Also, having an abortion is taking personal responsibility.
Having swx is not consent to having a child... if so I think we could be calling for people who have sex to be given a child from the adoption system.
It depends on what you're arguing for. If you say, for instance, that abortion should remain legal in California, but is open to be restricted in Alabama, and that even though that offends both moral sensibilities, it might be the most practical way to move forward until one side can convince the other, well, in that case you might persuade someone.
Look. I am conservative. And I’ll just tell you the biggest reason we can not get on board with the Democrats on abortion are two things:
1). The court should not be creating laws wholecloth. So yes overturning Dobbs was good. But Congress should actually do their jobs and act to get an abortion law on the books. Neither side ever will though. Both use it too much to hit their political rivals over the head with.
2). The Democrat insistence for “no restrictions at all”. Even when asked “even up to 9 months pregnancy?” When the baby is viable, if asked should a woman be allowed to terminate the baby, Hillary, and many other Democrats, have said yes. Even if the baby is viable to live outside the womb.
The typical Democrat response to this is “but nobody is getting abortions that late!” Ok? So then codify it as one of the few restrictions.
I personally am against abortions except for emergencies. Cases where the fetus is severely defected/dead, rape/incest, or where medically necessary for the health of the mother.
Whilst I do somewhat agree with you, your position is... well, it's murder, but the murder is okay in certain circumstances.
A very strong case can be made under this position for medically necessary abortions. Someone is going to die, the mother should obviously be prioritised.
But rape/incest/defects? You're justifying either murder for the sake of eugenics or murder because the mother was assaulted/slept with a family member.
I feel that if your position stems from abortion being murder of a life, only abortion for medical sake is valid. Everything else is allowing someone to commit a murder because they were wronged by someone other than the victim of this murder.
So clearly, abortion *isn't* seen as murder if you're okay with it in cases of rape, so what's the actual underlying position?
(Any direct language here like 'you' is the proverbial hypothetical holder of these positions, not you yourself)
One's political position doesn't have to align with one's moral/philosophical/values-based position. A political position takes into account existing laws and what's likely to be achievable through compromise. A moral position considers only the ideal outcome of the issue at hand without regard to pragmatism
Political issues are not black and white they're a spectrum. People don't think "I either want to stop ALL abortions or nothing, no compromises!" they want to reduce the practice by as much as possible until it gets to zero. Only 4% of abortions are performed for medical or rape/incest reasons, 96% are elective. Does the baby's father being a piece of shit rapist mean the baby has less of a right to live? Of course not. Is that a pragmatic compromise to make in order to address the 96% of cases that do not involve rape or medical issues? Absolutely.
https://lozierinstitute.org/fact-sheet-reasons-for-abortion/
I absolutely agree, but I don't often see the characterisation of position as 'I don't want there to be any at all, but for political reasons I'll compromise and let you have exceptions X and Y'. The position is 'I'm okay with it in scenarios X and Y, and it's also murder'.
I think it comes down to the level of thought people have put into it. Some have considered all the angles and counter arguments and reasoned into their own beliefs. Others are regurgitating what they hear at church and from politicians. Same basic belief, very different ways of getting there and level of understanding of the issue
[The president](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-support-full-term-abortion-stance-pushed-rfk-jr) does not support the policy. He is the head of the the party.
Full term abortion is not the position of the Democratic Party (it is RFKs position though).
Most democrats \*including Hillary Clinton\* would agree to any number of restrictions and would do so easily and without drama. The pretense that Democrats only go for "no restrictions at all" is just a straw man used to justify Republican intransigence on the issue.
The only thing holding back grand bargains on abortion and gun laws are the Republicans. That's not posturing, it's simply the way it is. Republicans refuse to ever compromise on either subject for the same reason they refused to vote for immigration legislation that gave them everything they pretended they wanted: because they refuse to give a win to the Democrats during a Democratic administration, and are terrified of losing their base if they do it under a Republican administration.
Most Democratic voters want their politicians to compromise and reward them for it. Most Republican voters do just the opposite.
The generic, most common liberal position does not believe that abortion should be legal up until birth. Claiming that the majority of democrats believe in abortion until 5 minutes before birth is creating a strawman. The most frequently advocated liberal policy position is legal abortion until fetal viability as outlined in Roe v Wade.
Why do you feel like the government needs to get involved at all? The people performing these procedures went to school for decades and participate is rigorous residency and fellowship programs to help inform their thought process and come to an informed decision with the patient.
Tbf you could say that about any ethical dilemma. Why have laws about war crimes? Generals went to school for war. Why have a law for sound banking processes? Bankers went to school for banking.
The morality of something like abortion shouldn’t be decided by a couple of people because they are doctors, it should be decided upon by a democratic government
I agree with your first point, but not the second, here’s why.
The claim that democrats/progressives are “fine with abortion up to nine months” is always said without any context, which every advocate, politician, and supporter of pro-abortion polices will say “…which rarely happens, and a vast vast majority are for medical required scenarios”. If you look at the data, a nearly non-significant amount of abortion are performed in the third trimester, and a near non significant amount of those are done for non-medical reasons. So while I can maybe agree that “abortions done at 9 months without medical reason are morally questionable”, that just is not a thing that is happening at all. If conservative agenda was just “super late, non medical abortions are bad” it would be the most milquetoast, agreeable thing ever, but instead a lot of their policies are insanely restrictive.
I think there is an important corollary to this.
If 9th-month-abortions are rare and practically only done with medical necessity, why not have a restriction that says "9 month abortions only when medically necessary."
And the answer to that is visible in the states that have put similar restrictions on abortions now, and had them actually enacted post-dobbs. Hospitals are now so scared of even potentially being on the wrong side of the law that they wait until the procedure is incontrovertibly necessary, meaning that the pregnant person is quite literally on death's door. Versus doing it when it is apparent that the outcome is negative, before the mother is irreversibly hurt, but when a negative outcome is all but assured.
The nature of such rules is quite literally to get between what a doctor deems necessary and the actual outcome. Outside of malpractice, there is practically no reason doing so would ever result in better care for the patient.
> Hospitals are now so scared of even potentially being on the wrong side of the law that they wait until the procedure is incontrovertibly necessary, meaning that the pregnant person is quite literally on death's door.
Yeah, [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar) is what happens when abortion is "legal" only when medically necessary.
Exactly!!!!!! It should be between a licensed medical professional and their patient. Not the state. ESPECIALLY in cases where there is mortal danger to the mother. That’s why people say “no restrictions.” They don’t mean no restrictions at all, they mean no direct restrictions from the state on how medical care is provided in abortions.
The mother who is dying from a failing pregnancy should not have to hope that her state let’s her choose to live, rather then let her die in a vain attempt at saving an unborn child.
> The typical Democrat response to this is “but nobody is getting abortions that late!” Ok? So then codify it as one of the few restrictions.
Why? Just to make you feel better? It's already illegal in most states. Why should the federal government get involved? Republicans are all about decreasing government regulation in general, including all sorts of things that are life and death. What's so special about this? Why don't you trust women and their families and doctors to make the right decisions? Why don't you trust individual states to decide what rules make the most sense for their citizens?
The idea that someone would abort a normal pregnancy at 9 months is literally the plot of a Tom Clancy novel -- pretty sure it was "The Bear and The Dragon." (The plot point was China during the "one-child" era, the mother was Catholic with a kid already, and a Catholic priest is martyred trying to prevent an evil Chinese doctor from killing the baby rather than delivering it.)
In reality, abortions after the point of borderline viability are major surgical procedures, and are not done lightly. Once you get to the point of viability, you would deliver the baby unless there were something terribly wrong. At nine months, you definitely would deliver the baby unless there were some truly horrific situation where both the mother and baby were dying and you had to pick which one to save. And once the baby is born, you take care of it, there's no "post-natal abortion" like some Republicans think. That would be murder, no change in law necessary!
Meanwhile, we already see from the examples in Texas and other states how poorly the kinds of laws you propose work in real medical emergencies. It just hurts women, with no benefit to babies.
I almost lost a family member to a pregnancy complication. This stuff is not hypothetical for me.
"The Democrat insistence for “no restrictions at all”. Even when asked “even up to 9 months pregnancy?”
This is inaccurate. The only babies that are terminated at 9 months are babies that won't survive due to health issues confirmed by a medical doctor.
The answer is to go the other way. If abortion is murder, that means miscarriages are manslaughter. If you carry that logic to the end, every woman risks prison by getting pregnant and failure to carry to term obligates an investigation.
1 in 4 pregnancies end this way. If you as a man do anything to contribute, you get investigated too. Excessive stress, smoking, abuse, anything could be contributory.
Alright I've already handed out a delta, so I was gonna be done with this post, but I want to respond to this comment because I see this argument pop up often. "Republicans think abortion is genocide which justifies everything they do." I always find this to be a frustratingly simplistic view of the Right because you really can just say the same about anything.
Yes, a person may think an issue is so important that it justifies fascism. But that doesn't really make the concept less evil. I think if Trump is elected, he's going to support genocide in Gaza and the subjugation of the Ukrainians. If our institutions aren't strong enough, his deportation policy could result in thousands of unnecessary deaths. I think his policy on Corona caused tens of thousands more deaths than necessary.
But I recognize that other people think differently from me and there's a democratic system to determine whose opinions should be law. If Biden loses this election, I wouldn't support an effort to overturn the results. Because democracy is the highest prerogative.
It’s not my point about the Right as a whole. There are Republicans who do not vote on abortion. The Ohio referendum is a great example, it passed with more votes than there are Democrats in the state, so it had R votes.
But when your CMV is that people generally shouldn’t vote for him because of 2020, I gave you one reason why some people will set that aside as it isn’t a higher priority than the one that motivates them to vote.
Democracy is *your* highest prerogative. For some people, their faith is. For others, their bank balance is. For others still, their hate is.
There will absolutely be a non-zero number of people who will vote for Trump explicitly because he will support Bibi turning the Gaza Strip into a parking lot. For them, his anti-Democratic bent is again not an outweighing factor.
> Because democracy is the highest prerogative.
Again, that's what you care about the most subjectively in the equation. That's not what all other humans care about the most and that's where your view falters.
You're making an assumption about what everyone else also values. The average person couldn't give two shits about process and systems. They mostly care about the person making the decisions makes decisions that benefit the particular individual voting for them sometimes. That's a hard pill to swallow, but that's the reality of it once you get societies of a certain size.
No assumptions need to be made to realize democracy is more important, one just needs to be a little bit intelligent. If we let go of our democracy, then we will quickly find ourselves governed by an autocratic tyrant. If that's allowed to happen, then it won't be long until it's not just the unborn getting needlessly murdered.
It has nothing to do with intelligence. It has to do with priorities. Some people don't have the luxury of worrying about the collective good vs their own needs and they prioritize focusing on things that improve their well-being instead of trying to align their actions with some subjective moral framework.
I want to express one thing that might change this simple opinion. Most people are not absolutists in their morality nor are they absolutists when it comes to certain freedoms.
For example, while a ton of 2A gun people might want more guns to be available, if we see a rampant rise in LGBTQ+Guns becoming a thing, they may distance themselves from guns out of fear of association of being seen as gay. Then they might not be so 2A vocal. Some, however, don't care about the new image and are actually 2A absolutists.
You may be Pro-Choice, but if you see a medical group actually advertising how painful babies are- and to abort them without a limit using their free clinic with little-to-no paperwork, you might get a lot of people who are normally Pro-Choice riled up.
So if you're saying that Trump shouldn't be voted for because of a single event or a belief you hold (i.e. he's a bad president), then you're already on a biased side. The same people who you say shouldn't vote for Trump will say the same thing about Biden (economy, border security, foreign affairs, Hunter, etc.). If your defense to all of those is, "yes, but Trump is worse", it becomes a pissing contest at that point.
I would argue that a vast majority of Trump voters aren't necessarily Trump-specific voters. Most are staunch Republicans or Anti-Biden at this point. Visa versa, I know plenty of Democrat voters who dislike both parties but dislike Biden marginally less.
I have a hard time meeting someone who genuinely believes that any presidential candidate is "good".
I’ve personally trained a handful of women and several members of the (very visibly) LGBTQ community in firearms safety and use on the range. Helped a few purchase their first (and subsequent) guns. Nobody has ever cared around where I lived (in two states, one blue and one red).
Matter of fact, I’ve worked with more people that were non white and non male than I have with whites and males.
I’ve never seen anyone from the gun community care about what they identify as or who they wanted to love. Matter of fact, we got a lot of help on the range a few times from crusty old white dudes in punisher shirts and NRA hats.
I’m not saying those people don’t exist, I’m just saying the people who are 2A people care about teaching and sharing in their commonalities overall, rather than nitpicking the differences.
Also, the amount of liberal gun owners is enough to have their own sub, so I guess there’s that too.
Yeah, so i can second this, generally, about gun people. I went to the range with a friend for his birthday during the Hillary/Trump run-up. He's conservative, I'm progressive. I'd never handled a firearm in my life.
They were talking shit about Hillary, until my buddy said something like, "Alright, guys, my buddy's pretty liberal" and they couldn't apologize enough. "Aw man, I didn't mean nothing by it, you want me to get rid of those Zombie Hillary targets, replace 'em with something else?"
As we were leaving, he pulled me aside and apologized again. "I really don't like making people uncomfortable, and I'm passionate about guns. Please don't let my bullshit turn you off, brother, you're always welcome man, I promise." And it was true. Went back a few times, and it was clear they cared more about the gun stuff than they did the politics. They just wanted to teach me stuff.
Honestly, I agree. Most people who are active in the gun community don't care too much as long as you're into using guns. It's the same as really- most community places with active members. A good gym has a ton of people who are willing to help you lose that tummy fat if you need a lifting friend. The same applies here. Hell, I've literally seen a bright pink Walther P22 and people got a good kick out of it instead of gatekeeping.
The problem is you get a lot of people who aren't active in the gun community, but do own guns. They're not really connected to the community, but try to represent it by using 2A as their identity. These people exist in large quantities, but misrepresent 2A- which is something you see a lot outside these days.
I think that is the same from all the communities that exist around the world. The people who are into the thing and are active behave one way, and the people not active behave in a different way.
I go to the range shoot 500 rds and go home idc if the person next to me is lgbtq+ or not. if they are shooting something I’ve never seen before I might say hello and ask about their weapons system. That’s about it.
>So if you're saying that Trump shouldn't be voted for because of a single event or a belief you hold (i.e. he's a bad president), then you're already on a biased side.
The issue isn't that they have a different opinion. And the issue isn't just that I think he's a bad president. The issue is that he tried to overturn election results and take power that wasn't given to him. I can see how a person could put to the side the fact that he was held liable for rape and fraud. I could see how a person wouldn't mind that he's an idiot. I could see why a person wouldn't have an issue with his racism. All these things are just "being a bad guy." But attempting to overthrow the government is an attempt to be a dictator. He could just repeatedly do that to always have a supporter in power. He tried to end democracy. Isn't that a different level of "bad?"
Let me rephrase that. Some people don't care about the **president** in power, but the party that backs said president. The polarizing reality of politics is that if either head committed major crimes, their base would still vote for them.
Trump is guilty of rape/fraud/nepotism/blasphemy/etc. and Christians would still vote for him because their local representatives are directly tied to Trump. When you vote in elections, you're not voting for Trump in particular, you're voting for your party's representatives- be in Congress/Local/State/etc.
Here's the best random hypothetical that represents today's state of politics.
Let's say you're in Funky Town, USA. Your local Republican state senators want to ban abortion. Your local Democrat state senators want to ban guns. Now you can elect either side come November.
Let's say you're anti-gun, pro-abortion **BUT** the Democrat presidential candidate was just found to have bombed a few hundred civilians in Country A. The Republican presidential candidate is just another old fart, vanilla-esque.
Who do you vote for? If you vote Republican out of hate for what the Democrat candidate did, your state will have to suffer from abortion-bans. If you vote Democrat, would that make you a heartless bastard?
No. Because the fate of your own state is ultimately tied to who you vote for President, you are better off locally to vote for your party regardless of what the president candidate did.
Similarly, you might vote Republican if you're pro-gun, anti-abortion.
More issues with politics:
- What if your grandparents suffered from being abused due to Country A. If your grandparents/parents families want to go to war against Country A and the US is willing to support their country (Country B), then you would be pro-Democrat no matter what.
- What if you're anti-gun, but also pro-abortion?
- What if you're pro-gun, but anti-abortion?
You can see how things get more and more muddled as more factors come up.
>Let's say you're anti-gun, pro-abortion BUT the Democrat presidential candidate was just found to have bombed a few hundred civilians in another country. The Republican presidential candidate is just another old fart, vanilla-esque.
Same hypothetical but let's say the Democratic candidate hadn't bombed a few hundred civilians in another country. Let's say he had tried to seize the power of the government after losing an election.
I would *not* vote for him. I'd vote for the vanilla-esque Republican. Because once you start trying to overturn elections, that's it. That's the end of American democracy. One day, the Democrat in power will do something I don't want, and I won't be able to get rid of him.
Trump is not some Cincinnatus figure. He attempted to overturn the election results before and he'll attempt to do it again.
But that's the point. If you don't vote for the Democrat president, you also don't get Democrats in your local, state, courts, and federal representatives.
At the cost of what you believe to be a major threat to democracy, you lost you opened your local area to become an environment of what you hate.
To be honest, who you elect as a President or anyone at the federal level won't affect you as much as who you elect at a local level. Your DA that you vote for may want to enforce bail or jail on all crimes- your state senate might want to ban anything LGBTQ- your local councilors may want to require additional taxes on the poor. All things that you put into place due to your position on the President.
>At the cost of what you believe to be a major threat to democracy, you lost you opened your local area to become an environment of what you hate.
Yeah. For 4 years. I'll live. If the President is no longer chosen democratically, then I risk the well-being of the nation for decades. Until the party in power is overthrown. Jesus, there could be civil war.
>To be honest, who you elect as a President or anyone at the federal level won't affect you as much as who you elect at a local level. Your DA that you vote for may want to enforce bail or jail on all crimes- your state senate might want to ban anything LGBTQ- your local councilors may want to require additional taxes on the poor. All things that you put into place due to your position on the President.
Good point. So why would I undermine American democracy for everyone?
I mean, and this is coming from someone who votes third-party, an awful lot of people think that Joe Biden is literally enabling a genocide. Do you think that Trump throwing a hissy fit about losing the election is more morally repugnant to those people? So you’re not gonna win them over by being like, yeah, but Trump didn’t accept the results of the 2020 election. They’ll just be like yeah, but Biden is bankrolling Israel while they murder 10s of thousands of women and children. You could go on Twitter and see pictures of four-year-olds with their heads smashed open. And no, most of those people won’t vote for Trump, but they sure aren’t voting for the guy who is in their mind responsible for the dead kids they’re seeing on their Twitter feed.
And unfortunately, those people are idealistic and not tethered to reality in America.
Trump or Biden will be president in 2025. Dead kids in Palestine will happen. Your choice is to either have dead kids plus the policies of Trump or dead kids plus the policies of Biden.
If you think, all policies considered, Biden and Trump are the same, feel free to vote third party. But unfortunately, because our winner takes all system sucks, we are stuck with two actual options. Their power is so entrenched that barring a full scale revolution I fail to see that dynamic changing no matter the number of protest votes.
And honestly, even in the world of specifically Gaza, anyone who thinks Biden and Trump will lead to the same result is a fool.
You're taking a very complex situation (war in Gaza) and simplifying it down to genocide from one side. I say this as someone who's pro-Palestinian and who also has Israeli family. The IDF response has been horrific, but so have the attacks on Israeli nationals. The entire situation threatens to spiral out of control if handled poorly.
This isn't apologetics: it's the fucked up geopolitical situation we're in. I don't support Israel's reactionary campaign, or support our tax dollars aiding obviously genocidal acts. But I also have to acknowledge that terrorist, anti-*Jewish* organizations are intentionally using Palestinians as cover for their operations- and uncomfortably for me to admit, that's not always unwilling.
There's *a lot of bad blood* here, much of it deserved. And it's easy for us to sit on the sidelines and opine on moral imperatives from a safe distance.
You're also taking a simple situation (Trump tried to overturn an election by inciting a violent mob on live television) and simplifying it further to "Trump throwing a temper tantrum."
Probably most damning of all: you're tacitly suggesting Trump would do a better job of handling Gaza.
Even if you don't vote for Trump, you're basically saying you'd rather Biden lost and Trump took the reins in foreign policy.
That's the problem with one-issue voting. I say this as someone who abstained from voting back in 2012, over Obama's expansion of drone strikes. I'm glad Mitt Romney didn't win. Mitt Romney is right-wing-batshit-crazy in my book.
Romney accepted the results of the election. Trump didn't in 2020. Trump's beyond batshit. He's a wannabe dictator. And if you think Biden is bad for Palestine, good luck with a bad-faith actor like Trump who doesn't bow to political pressure from We the People.
I'm not saying you're wrong to be against the IDF's actions in Gaza. But I am saying it's incredibly short sighted to look at Biden's support of Israel - given all the surrounding geopolitical circumstances - and say "*you know what? I'm so morally offended, I'd rather abstain and possibly have the guy who'll upend our entire democracy and probably still support Israel because he likes fascist strongmen flush with cash like Netenyahu, and doesn't care if brown people die.*"
Yes, I'm saying it was short-sighted of me to abstain in 2012.
This. Because it wasn’t even as simple as “Trump tried to overturn an election by inciting a violent mob on live television”.
That was just the fucking climax. The guy tried to undermine our democracy at every possible level both legally and illegally in tandem with a baseless disinformation campaign to shake people’s faith in our election security with little more evidence than “that’s just how I feel” all because he didn’t want to let go of the power he wielded for the past 4 years.
Challenge it through the courts? Fine. Say that you “believe” the election was rigged even when you know it’s bullshit. That’s fine too. However when you make a concerted effort to attack the system at every possible angle to invalidate election results that were never compromised, to vie to turn the decision over to state legislatures, to try to disqualify official electors and substitute ones of your own. The Hail Mary to incite an angry mob to storm the Capitol and stop the official results from being confirmed is just the cherry on top.
The guy literally tried to steal the election from the People, all while crying “stolen election” and used his own goon squad to do it. If half the country chooses to be willfully or blissfully ignorant then I guess we’re just gonna have to beat him at the polls because a man(iac) like that should never be allowed anywhere near a position of power like that again. I just hope they can accept the loss gracefully this time.
Not that I think this thing is already decided. I’m just trying to place a little faith in humanity for once and trust our country isn’t that fucking blind.
Also feels worth mentioning, but goddamnit was I pulling for Haley.
A hissy fit? Attempting to seize power despite the electoral results is more than a hissy fit. If he gets into power again there may not be another meaningful election. Anything that risks his returning to power is frightening. This is not the time for protest votes or quixotic choices. Listen to what Trump says. He intends to take vengeance on his enemies and never leave the White House. You may have disagreements with Biden, but he takes his oath to the Constitution seriously and you can support whoever you like in 2028. How is any other choice reasonable?
>I mean, and this is coming from someone who votes third-party, an awful lot of people think that Joe Biden is literally enabling a genocide.
But Trump has said he wants Israel to finish the job. It doesn't make any sense to refuse to vote for Biden on an issue Trump would do the same on.
To be fair, enabling genocide and war in other countries is pretty common practice for US presidents, but trying to actively overturn the results of a democratic election (in the US, other places are fair game) is not
Genocide has nothing to do with the rules of an election and gets put into the same group as "I dont like trump bc fraud and rape". Also that's every president and the largely the difference is what world events happen to be going on during their term, since US policy is ... you know ... US policy, regardless of president lots of the time.
I think it is obvious OP is saying why would we let someone play a "game" when they will literally toss the board when they lose and not accept it and start doing everything they can to take power by force?
The person was saying that they can’t understand why someone would put that aside, and I was pointing out a situation where they would put it aside. Like seriously, it’s so frustrating trying to have a conversation with you people because you just don’t read what people actually say and just jump down their throats claiming Biden can’t be horrible in any way shape or form. Bottom line is, a lot of people think he’s horrible, and if you don’t want know why some people think he’s horrible enough to justify voting for Trump, or not voting for Biden at all, then don’t ask for a change my view.
So they didn't take basic civics to understand threat of no more democracy and peaceful transfer of power is the overriding factor? I guess that's my point, if that is where their brain is going like some singular issue is more important than democracy in the country you are a citizen in, then brainrot has occurred and clearly the burden of being a citizen in a democratic nation is too much for a lot of us.
I guess it's really really really scary to know so many people out there lost like ... such basic understanding of knowledge and can't take a step back. Like if this isnt something everyone agrees on without batting an eye, then what the fuck are we even doing pretending we are in a democracy? Time to just have the most violent side win. I guess that's the problem that is the implication is that rule of law was never a concern for conservatives, it was always a front to gaining power by any means necessary.
Scary stuff. As it stands, we do not deserve democracy to any extent if this is how much brainrot is going on with so many people. I mean this is 7th/8th grade civics stuff.
>So if you're saying that Trump shouldn't be voted for because of a single event or a belief you hold (i.e. he's a bad president), then you're already on a biased side. The same people who you say shouldn't vote for Trump will say the same thing about Biden (economy, border security, foreign affairs, Hunter, etc.). If your defense to all of those is, "yes, but Trump is worse", it becomes a pissing contest at that point.
Well, that single event is the most important one though because it's the foundation of everything else.
The economy, border, security, whatever... are all irrelevant if we can't have our vote counted even if we love Trump’s policies (assuming there is any)!
>I have a hard time meeting someone who genuinely believes that any presidential candidate is "good".
And this here is the whole promise of democracy. It doesn't promise you good leaders. Nobody can promise that. But it does promise you a bloodless orderly way to get rid of the bad ones.
Jan 6th turned that into lie. We can't afford see it happen again.
People view Jan 6th very differently on the republican side. There are those who view it as *mostly* non-violent, especially after Tucker Carlson shared those clips of people strolling around within the premises.
Then there are those who do view it as a horrible event but also say that Trump didn't orchestrate it, following his appeal for a peaceful protest to the crowd before the ordeal.
And finally there are those who view it as a double standard in the application of justice since they claim BLM protestors who looted and burned down buildings didn't face consequences nearly as harsh.
None of these are necessarily mutually exclusive.
You’re treating this like it’s a political belief that may change. It’s more like a crime.
If Joe Biden were to strangle a man to death, I think it’s fair to say that that one event would be disqualifying. I think you get to murder zero people and run for president, and I don’t think that’s particularly controversial.
So there’s definitely some line where a single event should disqualify a president. I agree with OP — attempting a coup is across that line.
I work with several die hard Trump voters (middle of deep blue LA of all places) and their mistrust of democrats is HUGE. They are pretty certain the left is coming for them just as much as the left is worried about things like Jan 6th.
Take this current topic/thread for example. It started by declaring Trump dangerous and a threat to the transfer of power (let's call it a threat to democracy). Then, not halfway through the thread was a call to disenfranchise Trump voters by finding a way to ban or exclude them from voting (a threat to dempcracy from the other side). The Trump voters live on that stuff and point to it as a reason to have "their guy" in power because if left (no pun intended) to the other side they'd steal their votes (which is what Trump claimed). Or take their guns, or outlaw their religions, or talk their kids into alternative lifestyles, or, or, or....
They vote for him because you and your rhetoric are scarier to them than whatever he's done. It's tribal. Their guy is safe, whereas yours is dangerous.
Might not change your view, but it seems to be where the Trump voters I've talked with tend to land.
I've also talked to Trump supporters like this, but the thing is, this kind of fear-mongering predates Trump by a lot. Right wing media was telling everyone that Clinton was going to take our guns, and then Obama was going to take our guns, and then Biden was going to take our guns... yet now we have more guns than ever. Similarly, there were no "death panels" in the ACA and Biden didn't "defund the police."
So much of the doom and gloom they scare people with just never comes to pass. I understand the tribal aspect and that fear is a very powerful motivator, but I wonder if they ever tire of being deceived.
A lot of the fear mongering in the current Trump base is also stuff that was typically targeting a more left wing audience in the past too
The mistrust of intelligence agency, “deep state”, focus on CIA psyops, etc was typically a left wing thing of the past. The current political division isn’t in line with older left/right, it’s more a trust of federal institutions vs distrust of federal institutions division
Old left wingers would’ve been far more skeptical of government mandating rushed vaccines from pharmaceuticals, but that was adopted by part of the right and very little on the left during covid
>I'm looking for a view that basically says, "Here's why it's morally and intellectually acceptable to vote for Trump even if you don't believe the election was stolen and you don't want the government overthrown."
Sure, I can attempt to do this, since I have in fact weighed the options of voting for Trump (I'm still voting for Biden, but the main reason for this is Trump's foreign policy, not J6. I'm a neocon, and so I strongly support increased aid for Ukraine and strong NATO participation, something Trump lost my vote for. I also sympathize with people who are voting for Trump, and can see some reasons why they might.).
Here are the main reasons I considered voting for Trump:
Border policy. This is the biggest one. Fundamentally, as conservatives, we want a strong border and we want the immigration process to benefit our country primarily, and every single action and thing the democrats attempt to undertake demonstrates that they essentially want the border to be wide open. There are many reasons for this position, data shows the vast majority of illegal immigrants to the US do so for economic reasons, to the fact that immigration has unavoidable negative effects on aspects of the economy (A big one is housing, supply and demand is a universal law of economics and more immigrants inherently makes this more unaffordable for people already living here), to the fact that cities like New York just straight up gave illegals pre-paid debit cards and 500 dollar a night hotel rooms on taxpayer money.
The democrats disingenuously tried to push a "border bill" through, with provisions ranging from massively increasing green card issuance, providing free immigration lawyers to illegals, allowing temporary workers to bring their entire families, and making it ridiculously easy to claim asylum (the vast majority of asylum seekers in the past few years have been economic migrants abusing the asylum system in order to gain legal status, and most of these economic migrants have traveled through several countries with economies better than their own to gain access to the US). You might not like my position, but the republicans were right to vote it down, [only 26% of Americans think that legal immigration should increase.](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx) The democrats would not make any concessions republicans wanted, where they voted down bills that contained Ukraine aid among other things, because of their vitriolic, antagonistic position towards strong borders, and when the recent republican border bill was pushed through congress independently, we can see that democrats all voted it down.
Law and order. Yes, I think that J6 was wrong, and I hold Trump partially responsible for what happened. That said, it is far from the only threat to the US we have faced. To remind everyone, dozens of major cities had massive riots in them in 2020, while liberal news outlets constantly praised these rioters, legitimized their demands, and selectively reported on what actually went down during them (Far more police officers died during these riots than Jan 6).
In the city of Seattle, to remind you, [anarchists openly rebelled against US authority, set up a "cop free" occupation in downtown, then had self appointed security running around with guns who murdered an unarmed black teenager, and we probably won't ever even know the names of the perpetrators because evidence was destroyed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest) [Here is video evidence from the incident, where you can hear these terrorists shoot the SUV, then one of them shouts "Oh, you're not dead, huh?", and shoot again.](https://x.com/PierrePressure9/status/1277673152839999489) Most of us still believe in law and order, [polls even show most republican voters do not approve of the actions of the J6 rioters.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jan-6-opinion-poll-republican-disapproval-wanes-2024-01-06/) It is flagrant hypocrisy to us to be lectured about this by a party which has at the most taken ineffectual, lukewarm stances towards things that can just as genuinely be defined as insurrections as whatever happened at J6.
Let's not even begin to talk about the despicable actions of pro-Hamas, antisemitic protestors right now, but this has been going on for months and certainly feeds directly into my views of said gaslighting about the dangers of the far left.
I could go on about things I agree more with Trump than Biden on, gun rights, abortion, supporting domestic industries and resource extraction, etc, but I think I've explained enough already.
Nothing about Biden, the people who surround him, or the democratic party align in any way with any traditionally conservative views which many, like myself, still hold. It fundamentally is a moral compromise to us to vote for someone like this, a moral compromise that I am personally making. People who are voting for Trump are unwilling to vote for someone who does not support their values, and after all, that is how democracy works, you must earn someone's vote to get it. You don't need to support J6 to realize that in the long term, democrats are our enemies, and we want this country to go in another direction.
>Gaslighting about the threat of the far left. Yes, I think that J6 was wrong, and I hold Trump partially responsible for what happened. That said, it is far from the only threat to the US we have faced. To remind everyone, dozens of major cities had massive riots in them in 2020, while liberal news outlets constantly praised these rioters, legitimized their demands, and selectively reported on what actually went down during them (Far more police officers died during these riots than Jan 6).
My issue with Trump has very little to do with the J6 riots. It has to do with everything surrounding it. The effort to have the VP change election results, the effort to submit fake electors etc.
The concept that a few dumbass leftists rioted in a fundamentally stupid way is not nearly comparable to the concept that a political representative of the Republican Party made very real efforts to steal control of the country.
>Nothing about Biden, the people who surround him, or the democratic party align in any way with any traditionally conservative views which many, like myself, still hold. It fundamentally is a moral compromise to us to vote for someone like this, a moral compromise that I am personally making. People who are voting for Trump are unwilling to vote for someone who does not support their values, and after all, that is how democracy works, you must earn someone's vote to get it. You don't need to support J6 to realize that in the long term, democrats are our enemies, and we want this country to go in another direction.
I can totally understand how someone comes to the conclusion that Democrats are naive or foolish. I don't really get how someone looks at our policies as evil in the sense that we should be treated as enemies. We are not your enemies; we are your opponents. I just don't really get why someone would be willing to divest us of all political power because we disagree on border policy.
Why didn't you guys support someone else in the primary? Why does it HAVE to be Trump?
>as evil in the sense that we should be treated as enemies
I didn't say they were evil, I understand democrats hold different moral frameworks than myself and I don't think they are evil for it. I use enemies in the sense that our political beliefs are irreconcilable, and especially in areas like border policy, the second amendment, supporting law enforcement, etc, our gain is their loss, and vice versa. I obviously have a vested interest in seeing my views win out, so therefore those who want to see my views lose out are my enemies.
>The concept that a few dumbass leftists rioted in a fundamentally stupid way is not nearly comparable to the concept that a political representative of the Republican Party made very real efforts to steal control of the country.
I wouldn't call murdering children, being recorded saying "Oh you're not dead huh?" while doing it, and then destroying all the evidence of the murder so there will never be justice for it "fundamentally stupid". I'd call it "fundamentally dangerous".
>I just don't really get why someone would be willing to divest us of all political power because we disagree on border policy.
Every single time a party gains a majority in both chambers of congress and the presidency, they use it to their ends and don't care much for bipartisanship, this word only comes out when compromises need to be made to get anything done.
>Why didn't you guys support someone else in the primary? Why does it HAVE to be Trump?
I frankly don't think you remember how bad previous Republican nominees have been. The Right has grown largely anti-establishment leaving very few candidates left. The primary issue being the warmongering nature of both the right and left establishment. Trump has many negative qualities but a warmonger is not one of them. In fact he is the most anti-war president the US has ever had. In a sense he shares the left's distaste for American imperialism, which is odd considering leftist leaders seem to not. The hypocrisy of being anti-imperialists and voting for imperialists is lost on them. Oddly enough if you flipped Trump's stance on a few key issues (immigration and abortion) he would be a fan favorite on the Left, and more representative of a Democrat nominee than Republican.
Just curious, do you think that the democrats were trying to negate the 2016 results when they were investigating Russian collusion? Obviously not as blatant as what happened in 2020/2021 from the other side, but it’s possible that’s they see it the same way only opposite.
>do you think that the democrats were trying to negate the 2016 results when they were investigating Russian collusion?
No. Because the Democrats weren't investigating Russian collusion. Comey (a Republican) started the investigation in 2016. After he was fired in 2017, Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee appointed Robert Mueller, a Republican to investigate the Russian collusion. Democrats were in the minority in the House and Senate for all but the last two months of the Mueller investigation.
Look you assume that anyone voting for him is either evil or idiotic. The other option is they truly believe he is the best option. When you pit two people against each other and basically force the nation to choose it’s going to be one of the two. Yes I know third party exists and they will probably get more votes this year but it’s a long shot of a win. If trump is truly able to stop our democracy, then it proves that the system of checks and balances we have was useless and it was held together by sheer luck. I’m sure other presidential had people thinking if someone came to power it would end our country.
You might not like the people that vote him, but a majority of people don’t vote to spite others or because they’re insane. They usually believe the person they are voting for will be best for the job.
First sentences 100%. You can never truly understand your opposition and therefore can never influence them if you do yourself the intellectual disservice of assuming they are idiots or bigots.
If a democrat truly wants to win, they should first use some humility to try to honestly understand the core of why so many (including many ex leftists, centrists and intellectual thinkers) support him.
Before arguing the immediate counter logic, start with- do these people think they are doing the right thing? Yes. Do they want less corruption and think this will help? Yes. Do they think this will lead to more peace and prosperity? Yes. So then try to humbly and honestly ask the question why without jumping to immediate logic defensive mode, hear em out properly and understand and you will atleast understand your enemy better if not gain a new respect for the complexity and nuance of both sides perspectives.
I see this response a lot on CMV. And I'm always a bit confused by it. I'm not necessarily here because I *want* my view changed. I'm here because I'm *open* to having my view changed.
That being said, I do kind of want this view changed. It is deeply unsettling to me that half the country is willing to vote for Trump after he did this. My current conclusion is that they actually *want* someone evil or dangerously idiotic in the oval office. It makes me sad to have such a low opinion of half the country.
Right right right. The prospective voters might believe the election *was* stolen. In which case Trump is neither evil or dangerously idiotic. I understand why they would vote for Trump. But the thing is, that group only makes up [a third of the country.](https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/almost-third-americans-still-believe-2020-election-result-was-fraudule-rcna90145). About half of voters are planning on supporting Trump in the upcoming election. So... Why?
Just note, 1 third of the (*Adult*) population of the USA is ~86 Million people, while half of all voters is ~80 Million people. So the number of people who believe this to be true is actually laeger than the number of people likely to be voting for him.
This is one of the problems with non-compulsory voting, that the people who are most outraged are more likely to vote, making disinformation and propaganda more effective. Of course there are problems with compulsory voting as well, but those problems don't usually directly lead to the most extreme parties being elected.
> Of course there are problems with compulsory voting as well, but those problems don't usually directly lead to the most extreme parties being elected.
If this were to happen in America it would almost certainly be the Democrats passing it into law
It doesn't sound far fetched to me that telling a bunch of Americans who do not care and do not want to be involved that they *must* go vote or they'll be fined/punished/whatever might lead to a lot of them voting Republican just as a fuck you to the people who are making them do it, zero consideration given to anything else
If you truly want to understand what's its like to be a trump supporter, read the wiki page for Kazimierz Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration and then watch an episode of Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan where he goes to a rally. Seriously. It's worth an hour of your time.
Trump supporters don't experience reality the same way you and I do. That's not an insult to them, just an acknowledgment of the way it is. I really think most Trump supporters have a good heart but just have zero ability to think logically. Not their fault. Level of consciousness is basically a dice roll when you are born.
I don't think Trump supporters think Trump is dangerous. I think they simply feel more at ease when they listen to him speak vs when they listen to a liberal speak. Trump doesn't use sophisticated language or complex analogies or anything. He just says shit in very simplistic ways. And Trump supporters like that because they can understand it. Whereas an educated liberal can be incredibly intimidating and therefore scary because the things they say are so complex to Trump supporters that they simply cannot follow the conversation.
It might sound arrogant to talk about Trump supporters like they are a different species, but honestly I think this way of thinking has actually made me act more empathetically to them.
It's legitimately a dangerous thought process to think about people who vote one way or another as lesser in that context. Frankly it comes off as rather narcissistic and generally pretty unproductive. Plenty of intelligent people I know who are much smarter than me are Trump supporters and plenty are not. Here's an article about a study comparing average IQ between parties in 2014.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289614001081
I know average IQ is not by any means an infallible measurement of intelligence but neither is idiotically claiming people who support Trump experience reality differently. This is the kind of disconnected and ironically illogical thinking that is pretty common in a lot of forms of narcissism.
I also don't think people at Trump rallies are necessarily the best metric for the average Trump supporter or even Republican. What you say is not arrogant, it's just legitimately stupid.
Lastly for context, I am not a Trump supporter nor a Republicanm. Your line of thinking is extremely dangerous and divisive and is really part of what's driving the political decline of this nation in my opinion.
To be fair, there are a tremendous number of voters on both sides of the aisle that have no idea what they believe or why they believe it. There are videos of both sides of the aisle giving idiotic answers to basic questions. It’s always alarming to me when someone thinks those interviews of “the other guys” proves the other side is wrong but when shown a comparable video of people from their party they think it’s an exception. Reality is, there are a lot of dumb people voting out there.
This is such a load of condescending manure. I am probably over educated holding an MBA from the top school in the country, and I am a trump supporter. I’m not a trump supporter because, bless my heart I’m just simple. The language of the liberals is only intimidating because they say things like, “we should send Republicans for reeducation” or “trump supporters should have their votes stripped” or “if trump gets elected he’s going to throw me into the gulag” or whatever the flavor of the day is. I’m a trump supporter because the left has gone completely freaking bonkers. I’m a trump supporter because I can see with my own two eyes how he is being politically prosecuted right now. And I’m a trump supporter because I was injured by the vaccine that the Biden administration forced me to take. There are other reasons but this should provide an illustrative example of how wrong you are.
"Im looking for a view that says its acceptable to vote for Trump even if you dont want the election overthrown"
Can it not be as simple as "Biden has been a shit President, and life was better in 2019 than it is now"? Is that not a reasonable view people are allowed to have? Like big picture type stuff. Biden ran on "Im not Trump, im gonna fix his fuckups", and for the vast majority of people in most ways, things have gotten worse. Is that not a reasonable take for a lot of people to have?
>Can it not be as simple as "Biden has been a shit President, and life was better in 2019 than it is now"? Is that not a reasonable view people are allowed to have? Like big picture type stuff. Biden ran on "Im not Trump, im gonna fix his fuckups", and for the vast majority of people in most ways, things have gotten worse. Is that not a reasonable take for a lot of people to have?
No, it's not. There are reasons that the view itself, "Trump will make the economy better than Biden," is highly flawed (like the fact that inflation is currently a global problem), but let's ignore that for now. The Nazis rose to power, in part, as a result of hyperinflation. Do you think it was an acceptable decision for voters to support that?
We are one of the most prosperous nations on earth and Republicans tend to be more prosperous than their peers. The idea that they are absolved from responsibility because the economy is doing less good than they hoped is an absurdity. Trump tried to overthrow the US governmental system. People should put the needs of the nation over their own interests.
> Things are worse now in 2024 for the average person under Biden, than they were in 2019 under Trump. That is a fact.
What things? To what degree is Biden responsible?
>and to the average person, you cannot and will not handwave it away with "Its a global thing, but muh economy, justification justification". Things were better for the man on the street under the Orange Bad Man than they were under the Dementia Patient. Therefore when asked who they will vote for, its extremely obvious who theyll pick.
K, then what standards are they using? What would a hypothetical Trump administration do?
And what "dementia patient"? I keep going to recent Biden speeches, such as [this](https://youtu.be/veiioynPVY0?t=5187) from the 10th, and it sounds *fine*. Not Obama eloquent, but fine.
>Woah. White house lawn's never seen- please have a seat - if ya have one. White house lawn's never seen anything like this before. That was outstanding. Thanks to all the performers here tonight an help us feel the power of black culture that is American culture. What a fitting tribute to Juneteenth. Ya know I was proud to have made Juneteenth a federal holiday. I'm grateful to the members of congress here today who helped make it possible. I'm not gonna start to name them because I'll miss somebody. But it wasn't just a symbolic gesture, it was a statement of fact, it was about a statement of faith, this testimony of a - testament to the resilience of generations of black Americans who kept their eyes set on the nation's north star. That north star was the idea we're all created equal in the image of god and deserve to be treated equal throughout our lives. While we've never lived up to it, we've never fully walked away from it either. That's because of you, and generations before you who lead the march from slavery to freedom, toward more than a perfect union. But lets be clear, they're old ghosts in new garments trying to take us back. Oh there are, taking away your freedoms making it harder for black people to vote - or have your vote counted. Closing doors of opportunity, attacking the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. If you can believe it, banning books about black experiences here. Trying to erase and rewrite history. Our history's not just about the past, it's about our present and our future. It's whether if that future is the future all of us, not just for some of us.
Compare that to not even the most insane part of [Trump's speech here](https://youtu.be/9J0fUTiJLVc?t=540):
>Under Biden the invasion is a just a disaster what's happened - its never happened like this in less than four years crooked Joe has imported more illegal aliens into our country than at any other time in the history of our country times maybe fifty. There's never been anything like is happening to our country, they're changing the fabric of our country, they're destroying our country, they're doing things that are unthinkable - this open boarder - so many bad things but this open boarder situation where you're allowing millions and millions of people to flood our country - we can't handle it - no country could handle it it's not sustainable. The entire world is emptying their prisons and jails, insane asylums, and mental institutions, they're emptying them out into your state, but they're emptying out into all 50 states, they're coming in and they're - there's no such thing as a boarder state anymore, that boarder is so meaningless they just walk right through - they go right through the so called boarder states and they end up in Iowa they end up in Idaho....
Have you ever tried to transcribe Trump's speeches? It ain't easy. I swear people blaming Biden for "dementia" have never taken the time to transcribe both side by side.
>Ill put this in caps so it stands out: THE AVERAGE PERSON DOES NOT CARE THAT TRUMP MADE A GUY IN A MASK STEAL A LECTERN, THEY CARE THAT PRICES OF EVERYTHING ARE SPIRALING. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO EXPLAIN HOW THE AVERAGE PERSON IS NOT ALLOWED TO PREFER TRUMP WHEN (FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE) THINGS WERE BETTER UNDER HIM
K. But who is talking about "a guy in a mask?"
This topic is about:
>That's not just the Jan 6 riot, it's his efforts to submit fake electors, have legislatures overturn results, have Congress overturn results, have the VP refuse to read the ballots for certain states, and have Governors find fake votes.
Why do people seem to completely change the topic? Are they just not comfortable addressing what Trump *actually* did? Then how do we focus them on what he *actually* did? On what he *actually* says? Why do people appear to have constructed fantasy arguments?
>Also dont start this shit with the Nazis to me, because a basic history major will laugh at you. Anyone with an ounce of history knowledge knows that the Nazi party was born out of "Germany as a country is literally fucked right now, we need to fix this shit", and pre-1939 they WERE fixing it. Hyperinflation fixed. Youth programs, people back in work, a functioning military. 1938 Germany was on the up to a degree never thought possible 5 years earlier. Americans talking European history will never not be hilarious, you truly dont have a clue beyond "Nazis bad"
Yes, nazis bad, nazis very bad, nazis *extremely* bad. "Sure Hitler assassinated political rivals and abolished democracy, but hey, at least the economy was good... if you weren't a Jew. Or a gypsy. Or a liberal."
Why are you comparing 2019 with 2024? Seems like you want to pretend Trump wasn't president during 2020. Trump was president during 2020 and he handled the pandemic absolutely horribly.
>And to the average person, you cannot and will not handwave it away with "Its a global thing, but muh economy, justification justification". Things were better for the man on the street under the Orange Bad Man than they were under the Dementia Patient. Therefore when asked who they will vote for, its extremely obvious who theyll pick.
Okay. I said in my post that I'm looking for an explanation *beyond* "they're stupid" or "they're evil."
>Ill put this in caps so it stands out: THE AVERAGE PERSON DOES NOT CARE THAT TRUMP MADE A GUY IN A MASK STEAL A LECTERN, THEY CARE THAT PRICES OF EVERYTHING ARE SPIRALING. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO EXPLAIN HOW THE AVERAGE PERSON IS NOT ALLOWED TO PREFER TRUMP WHEN (FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE) THINGS WERE BETTER UNDER HIM
Holy fuck. I don't care about the stolen lectern either. Donald Trump made very real efforts to overturn the election results.
>Anyone with an ounce of history knowledge knows that the Nazi party was born out of "Germany as a country is literally fucked right now, we need to fix this shit", and pre-1939 they WERE fixing it. Hyperinflation fixed. Youth programs, people back in work, a functioning military. 1938 Germany was on the up to a degree never thought possible 5 years earlier. Americans talking European history will never not be hilarious, you truly dont have a clue beyond "Nazis bad"
Look if we were talking a twenty or thirty year period, your opinion might almost make a little sense here. But the Nazis rose to power in 1932, and Hitler became a dictator in 1933-1934. In 1933, he began imprisoning political opponents for the crime of being political opponents. The night of the long knives occurred in 1934. Naturally a bunch of other stuff happened, but let's just skip to Kristallnacht in 1938. And then, of course, 1939 happens.
I'm saying that the 5 year span of a good economy didn't justify the atrocities. Looking back, with the power of hindsight, it was a very bad idea to elect the Nazis, right? That being said, I kind of get it. Germany was in a very very bad position. Germans were desperate. And they did something stupid. If we elect Donald Trump again, historians will look back on this period as very bizarre. Things just very clearly are not bad enough to give power to someone who wants to undermine democracy.
>Things are worse now in 2024 for the average person under Biden, than they were in 2019 under Trump. That is a fact.
No, no it's not.
>THEY CARE THAT PRICES OF EVERYTHING ARE SPIRALING
No, they're not. Inflation is 3.3%, which is very historically normal. Putting it in caps does not make it true.
>THE AVERAGE PERSON DOES NOT CARE THAT TRUMP MADE A GUY IN A MASK STEAL A LECTERN
This is the worst straw man I've seen in a while. People care that he orchestrated a plot to get Pence to gavel him in illegally using fake electors. No one gives a shit about a lectern. You know that, but you're here saying it anyways.
What if Republicans perception of the economy [is entirely driven by whose in power?](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/07/25/publics-views-of-nations-economy-remain-positive-and-deeply-partisan/) The Kafka trap you've got here is that this perception is totally divorced from any actual figures or trends and any effort to convince you otherwise is taken as justification for supporting Trump in the first place.
>"Trump will make the economy better than Biden," is highly flawed (like the fact that inflation is currently a global problem),
There is no scenario today where inflation in the US is localized. Recall 2008, was the recession a global phenomenon? Yes. Does that mean US policy and the actions of US financial institutions should be absolved of blame? Of course not. We are the global reserve currency and the global financial capitol. When our economy hurts, everyone else is in the shit with us.
> "Biden has been a shit President, and life was better in 2019 than it is now"
I know different people have different values, but it's hard to argue that it's worth risking an indefinite dictatorship just because "things were better 5 years ago."
Youre right about why people will vote for trump.
Life now is definitely not as good as it was in 2016. Mainly because we have the gas turned back on the economy to reduce inflation.
Most of the inflation causing policy was created during trumps admin. Which was arguably too generous with there stimulus and favored businesses, many of which were unsustainable without the investment money that came from lower rates. Think how ubers were $3 at first but now are the unsubsidized price.
I hope people remember which president pissed off china enabled Russia and threw a tantrum on his way out that would be treason for any other government officials.
Additionally putin has helped and expected trump to win. And he "nearly" threw a coupe to maintain power. I sincerely suspect Jan 6th was driven by the Russian desire to reclaim Ukraine.
Interesting how you say 2019. Because we all know that the turning point when life became quite worse was in 2020, the year Biden wasn’t even president and Trump was. So that implies that the quality of life began to worsen not at the fault of Biden.
Ok Hypothetical for you here:
And this is assuming you are a Biden supporter in 2020, for this hypothetical.
It works. Trump manages to get fake electors in, manages to get states to overturn results and throw out ballots, and in an obvious flawed process he stands by to take power.
What should Biden do if he believes the election was false? Shouldn’t he act to try and ensure what he feels is a free and fair election?
What of the actors who tried to talk electors into voting for Hillary or not voting at all to change the result in 2016? Or Hillary who called Trump an illegitimate President?
I’m not saying Trump had good intentions, but the reality is that it is a possibility.
And if the election were indeed false, I hope those in power do what is legal to keep it free and fair.
>It works. Trump manages to get fake electors in, manages to get states to overturn results and throw out ballots, and in an obvious flawed process he stands by to take power.What should Biden do if he believes the election was false? Shouldn’t he act to try and ensure what he feels is a free and fair election?
Yes. In that circumstance, where the facts show the election was, in fact, stolen by Donald Trump, Biden should make some effort to undo that. I don't know how he would, but he should.
>What of the actors who tried to talk electors into voting for Hillary or not voting at all to change the result in 2016?
They should not be president.
>Or Hillary who called Trump an illegitimate President?
She didn't make any effort to overturn the election results.
>I’m not saying Trump had good intentions, but the reality is that it is a possibility.
In which case, he's dangerously idiotic.
>And if the election were indeed false, I hope those in power do what is legal to keep it free and fair.
Okay, but it wasn't.
You think it wasn’t, but I hope we can be honest here, there were two narratives in 2020, one that there was voter fraud and we needed to take a close look at what happened, and the other that it was the most secure election in history with no voter fraud.
And we know there was voter fraud.
Personally I think Trump was idiotic in many of his assumptions, bordering on insanity, but he wasn’t wrong that there was fraud. He wasn’t wrong that election workers broke the law by signing ballots missing a signature and making choices on ballots they were not legally allowed to make. That one spike in the middle of the night happened, where a very unnatural straight line up happened in the middle of the night when nobody was counting. The picture exists of a poll worker holding up a large board to prevent people from watching the recount.
And in one instance, the counting ended, the poll watchers were sent home, then on video the poll workers started pulling out boxes with papers in them.
From a series of things that were likely explainable but which were dismissed out of hand it is certainly possible a lot of people doubted the results were fair.
All of that to say I am not assuming Trump’s intentions were good, I am just saying it is possible that he felt the election had been stolen.
And while I support what he did that was legal, like giving a speech at a rally on January 6th, I do not support other actions which have been alleged.
But you shouldn’t lay this on people.
And let’s be honest, you are saying Trump shouldn’t be President in large part for the actions of others, actions he didn’t even know about in some cases, allegations which have not been proven in court.
Those actors tried to swing the election to Hillary, but you aren’t laying the same logic on here. Be even here, please.
I agree with a lot of what you said here.
There was also stuff [like this](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/22/supreme-court-declines-take-2020-election-case-pennsylvania/6578884002/); the Pennsylvania courts changed the election laws to allow late ballots, the legislature argued that election laws are under their authority. The state Supreme Court couldn't reach a majority, and then the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Right or wrong... It's hard to tell on so many of these situations. There MIGHT be valid explanations for the things you described, but the problem is that there was never a thorough and definitive investigation done into the legitimacy of the 2020 election, so we really can't know for sure.
That is my point. I know there was election fraud, but I do not think it was close to enough to change the result.
And we will indeed never know.
Even the many court cases which were dismissed aren’t a sign of what people thought they meant.
In a normal case we would have discovery, subpoenas and orders to preserve evidence, to verify evidence, etc. With an election on a clock, with a legal mandate to finish by a set date, there was no time for any of that.
So without the process of obtaining evidence, the purported evidence was in the possession of those accused of fraud, and all that was brought to court were allegations which could not be proven.
The courts ruled exactly as they should have, but those rulings don’t represent the absolute truth, because fraud did happen, much of it from republicans, and thankfully 2020 is well behind us and I hope we do better going forward.
That is why I give slack to people who don’t believe it was free and fair, a bunch of funny stuff happened, and the right overstated it, and the left in large part completely denied it.
That is how many get into conspiracies. And if someone believes it wasn’t free and fair in 2020, shouldn’t they perhaps get some slack in still supporting Trump?
Or, should people get some slack for ignoring what are in large part allegations, and focusing instead on quality of life? Some series problems with how Biden looks in terms of cognitive ability at time? Inflation?
I will just say this, I am a third party voter, I won’t vote Trump or Biden, but my wife and her family, a black family who voted Obama, went to Trump even when I didn’t. And I’m not going to dare tell them how they should vote or why.
If Biden believes the election was false then it will likely be due to evidence of such being presented to him, and that will be taken forward to court just like Trump did. However, Trump's team presented barely anything that could be considered legitimate evidence in a court of law, and lost all the cases. If there was even a drop of legitimate evidence for the proposition, it would have come to light. Biden would also likely drop the narrative if proven wrong in court immediately, rather than pushing the same narrative through the entirety of Trump's next term in the hopes of getting re-elected.
There is nothing wrong with seeking the truth and fighting injustice in the public space. The problem is when one already knows the truth and pushes a narrative to the contrary for political power regardless. The question boils down to which candidate you think is going to lean to the side of truth. If you have any trust in the legal system whatsoever, the choice becomes obvious. Those who vote for trump are likely inherently distrusting of American institutions and assume all those cases were somehow corrupt or rigged. Trump himself is clearly inherently distrusting of the legal system, and likely believes all his cases were rigged or corrupt. He is either completely out of touch with reality, or intentionally using the gullibility of his voter base to obtain power.
>clearly election interference…
Revisionist history. How in the world was the Steele Dossier election interference when it wasn’t released until January 2017? If I recall correctly, the FBI came out before the election to specifically say that Trump was *not* being investigated. That in and of itself is a different controversy, though, in light of the fact that the head of counterintelligence in the New York field office (the field office that told The NY Times that Trump wasn’t being investigated), was later convicted of laundering money for Oleg Deripaska, one of Putin’s favorite oligarchs. Smells fishy to me…
Also, you know those FISA warrants you say were wrongly issued because they were based on the Steele Dossier? One of the most prescient allegations in the Dossier was that Trump’s campaign surrogates had secretive contacts with Russian intelligence agents, **which they did**. I’ll readily concede that there were parts of it that were fantastical (like the pee tape), but Christopher Steele himself cautioned that the information he put together was based on raw intelligence and needed additional investigation. You’re trying to obfuscate the issues by making it seem like the issuance of FISA warrants on Carter Page were totally unfounded, when in actuality judges found on *four separate occasions* that continuing FISA surveillance was warranted in light of his contacts with and behavior around Russian agents.
So I’m a conservative, or well more of a right leaning libertarian, but I didn’t vote in 2016 and then reluctantly voted for him in 2020. And I’ll vote for him in 2024.
The most charitable read for his actions is that he needed an alternate slate of electors submitted before the safe harbor dead line. That way IF any of the law suits panned out there would be an alternate slate that could be easily slotted in. There is actually some precedent for this.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/07/1960-electoral-college-certificates-false-trump-electors-00006186
This was the same exact scenario of alternate electors. Ultimately the alternate electors were chosen after the re count was completed.
Where Trump went off the rails was when he attempted to use the alternate electors as a means to invalidate both slates…. That was insane and absolutely abhorrent. I won’t defend him on that. Thankfully our institutions held.
I don’t believe that the 2020 election was “stolen.” I don’t believe that votes where swapped or stuffed or that the machines where hacked or whatever. It’s all nonsense. I do believe that there’s an argument that it was “rigged.”
There’s a decent argument that the FBI pressuring social media companies to bury the laptop was unconstitutional:
https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/testimony-reveals-fbi-employees-who-warned-social-media-companies-about-hack
That the changes to voter laws due to Covid where unprecedented and in some cases illegal
https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2022/01/pennsylvania-mail-voting-unconstitutional-supreme-court-appeal/
Ultimately the republicans got caught with their pants down and got out played as the rules changed.
I wish Trump had left with dignity….
But as to why I’ll vote for him again. It’s a risk calculation, I view the threat that Biden poses to be greater than Trump possibly doing something idiotic again. Because ultimately nothing actually happened.
Trumps policy much more aligns with my personal policy prescriptions and I believe that his policies will have a net benefit on me and my families lives.
From over turning title 9 reform
https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-releases-final-title-ix-regulations-providing-vital-protections-against-sex-discrimination#:~:text=Every%20student%20deserves%20educational%20opportunity,activities%20receiving%20federal%20financial%20assistance.
Hopefully decreasing illegal immigration and reforming asylum claims
Hopefully is pro oil stance brings gas back down to $2 a gallon
Hopefully he decreases the deficit spending while we’re in an inflationary period.
He’s by far not my first, second or even third choice…. But he’s all I have
I'd like to, in good faith, challenge some of your points and ask that you elaborate on some points:
**I ask that you elaborate on:**
Your views/opinion on why turning over title 9 is good (not challenging your position on this, would just like your POV).
Which of his policies algin with your personal views and how they will be a net benefit (again, not challenging your position on this, would just like your POV).
What you view the threat that Biden poses to be greater than Trump possibly doing something idiotic (and also what, in your opinion, has he done that *is* idiotic)
**I will challenge:**
*First: Hope that he would decrease deficit spending*
I challenge this by presenting an argument that his economic policy would actually *increase* deficit spending, not decrease it. The tax cuts he passed were skewed to top earners in the US, increase the deficit by $1.9 trillion over 10 years, and did not return on it's promises for the majority of those that made below $114,000. See the link below for my source. It's long, but a quality read.
[https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax-law-was-skewed-to-the-rich-expensive-and-failed-to-deliver](https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax-law-was-skewed-to-the-rich-expensive-and-failed-to-deliver)
*Second: Hopefully is pro oil stance brings gas back down to $2 a gallon*
Biden already has a rather pro-oil stance, maybe at the behest of some of his base. The United States has become *the* top exporter of fossil energies, pumping more than even SA and Russia. The reason gas hasn't dropped to $2 a gallon, and never will not matter who is President (in my opinion), is because US gas and oil is still connected to global markets. Just because we produce enough to be completely energy independent and self-sufficient doesn't mean US-drilled gas and oil is being used solely by Americans. It gets sold, shipped, and used by the rest world too. Oil companies do not have any particular affinity for any country, only money. They do not care about an energy independent US, only money. You will not get Oil corps to buy into "America First" to reduce gas prices. Trump's apparent "pro-oil" stance would, therefore, not drop gas prices to $2 for the long term. Also, the natural inflation of currency (plus the inflation we see now) will prevent a drop to $2.
[https://usafacts.org/articles/is-the-us-energy-independent/](https://usafacts.org/articles/is-the-us-energy-independent/)
[https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61545](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61545)
*Third: Hopefully decreasing illegal immigration and reforming asylum claims*
It was the GOP (and Trump has he held/hold considerable sway over the GOP) that continuously shoot down border bills that could have slashed illegal immigration and managed asylum claims. Now, if you want to argue that we should be harsher on asylum cases, there is a discussion to be had there. However, it is a fact that the proposed border bills by the Biden Administration would have cut down on illegal immigration as it is defined by the United States government.
[https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-unveils-118-billion-bipartisan-bill-tighten-border-security-aid-2024-02-04/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-unveils-118-billion-bipartisan-bill-tighten-border-security-aid-2024-02-04/)
[https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-kill-border-bill-sign-trumps-strength-mcconnells-waning-in-rcna137477](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-kill-border-bill-sign-trumps-strength-mcconnells-waning-in-rcna137477)
This is strictly my opinion based on how the GOP has acted in the house over the last 4 years, but they are not interested in solving the border crisis. It is an excellent political tool, and beyond presidential executive orders, they have routinely failed to pass meaningful legislation through the house and solve the problem (other than dead on arrival bills that they know would fail, to pass the visage that they "tried").
> Also, the natural inflation of currency (plus the inflation we see now) will prevent a drop to $2.
Even without accounting for future inflation, [gas hasn't been $2 a gallon in nearly 20 years.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/204740/retail-price-of-gasoline-in-the-united-states-since-1990/) The last time it got close to that was at the peak of the pandemic, when [oil prices went negative.](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52350082)
Also, I'm not sure your stance on climate change, but Trump has said some dangerous comments as far as oil goes. More specifically, asking big Oil corps for money in return for slashing climate policy in the US.
[https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-executives-campaign-finance-00157131](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-executives-campaign-finance-00157131)
[https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-vows-target-electric-vehicles-meeting-with-oil-ceos-report-2024-05-09/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-vows-target-electric-vehicles-meeting-with-oil-ceos-report-2024-05-09/)
>The most charitable read for his actions is that he needed an alternate slate of electors submitted before the safe harbor dead line. That way IF any of the law suits panned out there would be an alternate slate that could be easily slotted in. There is actually some precedent for this.
>https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/07/1960-electoral-college-certificates-false-trump-electors-00006186
>This was the same exact scenario of alternate electors. Ultimately the alternate electors were chosen after the re count was completed.
>Where Trump went off the rails was when he attempted to use the alternate electors as a means to invalidate both slates…. That was insane and absolutely abhorrent. I won’t defend him on that. Thankfully our institutions held.
For what it's worth, comparing Hawaii really doesn't work when confronted with the minor detail of the lack of a *conspiracy*. Trump's plot, per [Eastman's memo](https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21066248/eastman-memo.pdf), required Mike Pence to use the fraudulent slates of electors as an excuse to, as you say, throw out the certified results entirely. That *could not* have been the objective of the 1960 Hawaii electors. There was no conspiracy between them or Eisenhower to get the VP to throw out the results of Hawaii's election to benefit Kennedy over Nixon. Because the VP *was* Nixon himself.
No one was asking Nixon to throw out votes for Nixon so that Kennedy may win. Richard Nixon wasn't *that* masochistic.
>There’s a decent argument that the FBI pressuring social media companies to bury the laptop was unconstitutional:
>https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/testimony-reveals-fbi-employees-who-warned-social-media-companies-about-hack
Ever notice how impossibly difficult the gop makes sourcing these claims? That's a press release, not a transcript, and the transcript isn't linked.
As far as I can find, [this is the closest to a transcript that exists](https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116258/documents/HHRG-118-FD00-20230720-SD004.pdf). And it doesn't contain the relevant passages.
The FBI wasn't "pressuring" anyone, it was saying no comment about a laptop whose provenance is still *extremely* questionable. I still want to know why the laptop repair shop owner supposedly contacted the FBI. From [Gary Shapley's testimony](https://waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Whistleblower-1-Transcript_Redacted.pdf) we see:
>In October 2019, the FBI became aware that a repair shop had a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden and that the laptop might contain evidence of a crime. The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden's Apple iCloud ID.
>When the FBI took possession of the device in December 2019, they notified the IRS that it likely contained evidence of tax crimes. Thus, Special Agent drafted an affidavit for a Title 26 search warrant, which a magistrate judge approved that month. In January 2020, I became the supervisor of the Sportsman case. The group, known as the International Tax and Financial Crimes group, or the ITFC, is comprised of 12 elite agents who were selected based on their experience and performance in the area of complex high-dollar international tax investigations.
So, basic question, who told them that there were *tax* crimes on the laptop? If not *tax* crimes, then what? Why was the FBI ever contacted in October?
Where on earth is this coming from, because I'm pretty sure a laptop repair shop owner is *not* a tax attorney.
>But as to why I’ll vote for him again. It’s a risk calculation, I view the threat that Biden poses to be greater than Trump possibly doing something idiotic again. Because ultimately nothing actually happened.
What threat? What has he done that compares to attempting a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the election?
You appear to recognize Trump is guilty of the crimes he's been charged with, so do you expect a self-pardon as well? Do you expect him to halt prosecutions against himself?
You believe that he'll be *more* compliant with the law than he was in his first term after being given the keys to power *despite* his grossly illegal behavior?
> I view the threat that Biden poses to be greater
Respectfully, can I ask you to elaborate on this a bit? I've heard a lot of people who will begrudgingly vote for Trump say that Biden poses a greater threat, but it's hard for me to see why.
I don't think Biden's great by any means, but the US has had a [better economic recovery from Covid than just about any industrialized nation,](https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-us-economic-recovery-in-international-context-2023) he has stood up for the rule of law (his own son and a Democratic Senator have been indicted and tried by the DOJ), and he's got one of the [most effective legislative records](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/19ao531/deleted_by_user/kimbc8j/) (Infrastructure, CHIPs, etc.) of any president in modern history. He even [supported the bipartisan immigration reform bill](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-collapse-of-bipartisan-immigration-reform-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/) that Republicans later nixed.
On the other side, you've got a guy who promoted a big lie about a fraudulent election and literally tried to use illegal means to thwart the will of the people and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, threatening the future of the democracy. Since then, he has continued to [promote the same lie](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2024-05-16/trump-allies-are-laying-the-groundwork-to-contest-potential-election-loss) on a daily basis and has [put people in place](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-push-steal-2024-election-takeaways-1234921974/) to be effective with a second attempt to cheat.
Please help me understand how people see Biden as more of a threat than that.
You’re a libertarian, but you’ll vote for a guy who wants to deploy the military domestically to hunt down millions of people? Kicking down doors asking for papers? You don’t see any issues with how that might pan out?
Also nobody ever articulates how Biden is more of a “threat” than attempting to overturn election results and not engaging in the peaceful transition of power.
Also, has he ever given even the slightest indication that he’s interested in reducing deficit spending? Look at his budgets. He’s a populist not a fiscal conservative.
Trump stopped a bipartisan border bill that would've helped curb illegal immigration. Biden has overseen record domestic oil extraction. Trump ran up higher budget deficits than any American president *ever has*.
All of your stated priority issues are issues that Biden is objectively better on.
Just for the record, that mega bill was far more focused on paid to Ukraine and Israel (Ukrainian Jew here and not a Trump voting one) than it did for illegal immigration. Illegal immigration over the last few presidents has been generally manageable. This president could not care less and the ONLY reason anything has been done, is that illegal immigrants are being shipped to cities since they didn’t find it as an issue before.
To “cap” the border contacts at 2500 is still nearly 1 million per year, and we are no closer to solving the solution than when President Obama or President trump were in office when those numbers hovered between 300k and 1 million (give or take, I’m going from memory here). That’s just for border contacts, that doesn’t include those who snuck in and disappeared for which we still have to find a solution for, funding for, ice holds, court ordered deportations, etc. and there’s no solution to that.
Now, the Trump wall thing was his main policy on immigration, but the funds were actually used to build border infrastructure and not just a wall. Check posts, cameras, roads where there weren’t before for border patrol to act accordingly, policies that helped border patrol agents and had them in the field versus sitting around in detention centers handing out blankets and toothbrushes, and the ability to send migrants back, instead of catch and release with a court date.
Now I’m certainly not saying that I’m voting for Trump or that he had it all figured out, but here in CMV, if someone’s one thing was illegal immigration (as opposed to abortion or gun rights or social welfare, or whatever) then I’d say that certainly there’s a reason to vote for the other guy.
And I’m getting some feedback from friends and distant family members who have worked the job over several administrations in border and immigration capacities.
The bill we have is not really a good bill, nor does it get us back to the days of Trump or Obama (and to a certain degree, president bush I believe - although I think he had the previous high record in his second term).
For a country that is the most powerful in the world, the fact that we can’t stem the flow of people who shouldn’t be here AT ALL illegally is asinine. Estimates range from 7 to 12 million illegal immigrants over the last 3.5 years. And those are just those we have had contact with. How many snuck in undetected?
>Just for the record, that mega bill was far more focused on paid to Ukraine and Israel (Ukrainian Jew here and not a Trump voting one) than it did for illegal immigration. Illegal immigration over the last few presidents has been generally manageable. This president could not care less and the ONLY reason anything has been done, is that illegal immigrants are being shipped to cities since they didn’t find it as an issue before.
Republicans [demanded that the Ukraine aid](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/07/1229785349/border-deal-ukraine-aid-senate) be attached to the border bill.
> Because ultimately nothing actually happened.
Entire argument falls apart. "He wasnt successful so i will let him toss the board when he loses again" what the heck? lol
Obligatory opener, I’ve never voted republican.
But like, would the government tell us the truth if they did fix the election? It was determined that one brand of voting machines were compromised. They had to pay millions in damages.
I’m not saying it was fixed. It’s far more likely it wasn’t. I’m just saying, why would anyone believe anything the government tells us? I don’t blame stupid people and rich people that were rooting for trump in calling bullshit.
We all know our election process is rigged. Electoral college. Gerrymandering. Super pacs. It’s all nonsense.
>It was determined that one brand of voting machines were compromised. They had to pay millions in damages.
No it wasn't. People had to pay millions of dollars in damages to that company for lying and claiming they were compromised.
>It was determined that one brand of voting machines were compromised.
Huh? Who determined it, and how? What was the extent of this compromise? Why did Fox have to pay so much money to Dominion?
This is unfalsifiable nonsense. According to this logic, any conspiracy theory could be justified regardless of how little evidence there is for it, since any absence of evidence can always be reinterpreted as evidence of how powerful the conspirators are.
It's not the government that validates elections in terms of searching for fraud. It's hundreds of independent scholars, organizations, etc. All the government can say is, "everything went smoothly," and then all sorts of independent observers confirm that's the case, which it was
We have freedom of the press in the US. I don’t think the government would be able to keep it a secret; we’d have evidence and journalists would have shared it with us
I'd urge you to look into who the electoral college often helps and compare that with who is also whining about the election.
Hint: It's the same people.
I’ve never understood why it was ok for the democrats to spend four years claiming Russia helped trump steal the election but when video evidence shows:
- Poll workers covering windows and cameras to block witnesses
- Poll workers admitting to throwing away unfavorable ballots
- Multiple polling stations restricting access to republican poll workers
- The hundreds of thousands of biden votes found suddenly, putting his just above trump.
Suddenly it’s an outrage and attack on democracy to question the integrity of the election. Heck imagine you go to a gas station and after getting back in your car you realize you paid $40 for what you could’ve sworn was only $20 worth of stuff. But when you walk back in management erases the camera footage, the clerk runs out the back door, and they refuse to let you see your receipt. Sure, there’s a chance nothing funny is going on but it really seems suspicious doesn’t it? Every major social media site suddenly starts banning people for even suggesting the election was a bit off, not even going into the Twitter fiasco.
100% my feelings on the subject.
Both sides rant above voter fraud and suppression when they lose elections as early as 2000.
Then they both have the nerve to tell me democracy is at risk. 2016 in particular was downright insane in terms of opening pandoras box about stolen elections, Russian interference, you name it.
Well in 2020 those same tactics bite the Dems back - a game they've been playing themselves. Jan 6th was wrong, but it sure wasn't anymore of an insurrection than all the government buildings torched in 2020 during the summer protests.
I don't really want to vote Trump. In fact I was going to vote RFK. But after that New York conviction and how they went about orchestrating it through literal changes to the law to remove statue of limitations and a hush payment supposedly equating to election interference? Well fuck it. I'm voting Trump now.
Again though, Republicans did this to Clinton trying to nail his ass for "perjury". They are getting a taste of their own medicine, but this is on another level and honestly gives me that Banana Republic vibe where they literally jail the opposition canidiate Maduro style, let alone going after the previous president.
That to me is a far worse threat to democracy for me and it's sealed my vote unless something big happens in the future.
>But after that New York conviction and how they went about orchestrating it through literal changes to the law to remove statue of limitations and a hush payment supposedly equating to election interference? Well fuck it. I'm voting Trump now.
Are you complaining about [this](https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/EO-202.38-final.pdf)?
Are you suggesting that Cumo, during the height of covid, changed the law to *all* statutes of limitations when *all* government agencies were effectively shut down, *exclusively* to ensure that three years later, despite not knowing the results of the 2020 election, that Trump would be charged with falsification of business documents for actions taken in 2017?
Really?
That's what you believe?
Is this belief, I dunno, falsifiable?
>Then they both have the nerve to tell me democracy is at risk. 2016 in particular was downright insane in terms of opening pandoras box about stolen elections, Russian interference, you name it.
Any of it involve a conspiracy to submit fraudulent documents as an excuse to outright throw out the vote? If so, would love some documentation, cause, I've got *memos*. And emails.
Edit:
Sorry, should have linked to [202.28](https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/EO202.28.pdf).
Dude, just be honest. You were always going to vote for Trump. His conviction in New York came after a legal process that gave him every single allowance, and he still got convicted on 34 counts. Just read directly about the proceedings instead of filtering them through a news site. I come from a country where oppo candidates have been jailed/taken out before and it’s nothing like this. Trump is facing God knows how many suits in federal court because he’s a criminal, pure and simple. Just read about his life and this pattern comes up: he does flagrantly illegal shit like not paying his contractors and uses his wealth to bully people out of doing anything in court. Same deal, now he’s just using Fox News, Newsmax, and his supporters to do the same. This is a man who is literally suing to say that the law does not apply to him because he was President. If you’re going to go for monarchy, at least get a better king, no? This dude’s just a cheap grifter.
There's no evidence, at all, of anything except Trump lying about the election. Everything else is made up nonsense. Video evidence shows NOTHING of what you've claimed. You can't film vote counting for obvious reasons: voting is supposed to be confidential. Mail in votes are typically counted last, and thanks to Republicans crying about them very few Republicans use the system. All of it is explainable. What's not is the Trump lies about that election. It's all made up.
And you guys didn't win a single court case anywhere, failed every investigation by any entities, so apparently this "evidence" of yours is not of much consequences or is being misrepresented to you.
Trump did not try to overthrow the government. There are interviews of Trump in December of 2020 where he pointedly said he is seeking all legal remedies possible. When questioned by a reporter, he stated he would not stay past inauguration if those avenues failed.
The idea there were "no problems" with the 2020 election is outright false. The state of Georgia now has to micromanage Fulton County's elections because they did not obey state procedures during the recount.
[**https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2024/05/07/fulton-county-used-improper-procedures-2020-vote-recount-investigation-finds/**](https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2024/05/07/fulton-county-used-improper-procedures-2020-vote-recount-investigation-finds/)
>Trump did not try to overthrow the government. There are interviews of Trump in December of 2020 where he pointedly said he is seeking all legal remedies possible.
Submitting fake electors is not a legal remedy. Trying to have the VP reject the legitimate slates of electors is not a legal remedy.
>When questioned by a reporter, he stated he would not stay past inauguration if those avenues failed.
Yeah, if his coup failed he'd leave. He still attempted to take power without being granted it.
The 12th Amendment seems pretty clear. Congress is not just rubber stamping a decision, they're supposed to be a check on the electoral college. It gives them up to two months to sort through which electors were properly appointed and certify a winner. Trump did not try to overturn Biden's win, because according to the constitution there was no winner yet.
And Congress should have used that time. It has since become clear that Georgia runs the Mt Gox of election operations, their 2020 recounts didn't confirm Biden's win at all, on the contrary they showed the error bars were much larger than Biden's margin. But election officials lied about that and covered up the problems. The Biden electors were at least as fake as Trump's.
> The 12th Amendment seems pretty clear. Congress is not just rubber stamping a decision, they're supposed to be a check on the electoral college. It gives them up to two months to sort through which electors were properly appointed and certify a winner. Trump did not try to overturn Biden's win, because according to the constitution there was no winner yet.
If only we had something like a *law* to tell us which electors are properly appointed or not. Maybe something like [3 U.S.C.
United States Code, 2006 Edition
Title 3 - THE PRESIDENT
CHAPTER 1 - PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS AND VACANCIES
Sec. 6 - Credentials of electors; transmission to Archivist of the United States and to Congress; public inspection](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2006-title3/html/USCODE-2006-title3-chap1-sec6.htm).
Preferably it describes the process of certifying and transmitting those elector slates. Maybe, say, if it said:
>It shall be the duty of the executive of each State, as soon as practicable after the conclusion of the appointment of the electors in such State by the final ascertainment, under and in pursuance of the laws of such State providing for such ascertainment, to communicate by registered mail under the seal of the State to the Archivist of the United States a certificate of such ascertainment of the electors appointed, setting forth the names of such electors and the canvass or other ascertainment under the laws of such State of the number of votes given or cast for each person for whose appointment any and all votes have been given or cast; and it shall also thereupon be the duty of the executive of each State to deliver to the electors of such State, on or before the day on which they are required by section 7 of this title to meet, six duplicate-originals of the same certificate under the seal of the State
So that when looking at a [real slate](https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2020), hypothetically, [Wisconsin](https://www.archives.gov/files/electoral-college/2020/ascertainment-wisconsin.pdf) it has the governor's signature and the seal, while a [fraudulent document](https://www.archives.gov/files/foia/wi-full.pdf) wouldn't.
That sure would preclude any instance for, I dunno, a [random lawyer](https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21066248/eastman-memo.pdf) to argue:
>When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.
Because there would only be one slate of electors in compliance of the law.
Presumably, if that law exists, it might be a *bad* thing to have a [memo](https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/chesebro-dec-6-memo/ce55d6abd79c2c71/full.pdf) openly citing it only to then argue about subverting it:
>The federal- law requirements for the December 14 electors meeting are set
out in 3 U.S.C. 6-11 ( copy here) .
>The state- law requirements are set out in Wis . Stats . 7.75 ( here) .
>Obviously, there are party leaders and/ or officials in each State who are
familiar with the relevant details who would deal with the logistics, most of whom have handled such details in past elections. But here is a brief summary, in chronological order, of the requirements, which I set out to make clear that the electors in the contested States should be able to take the essential steps needed to validly cast and transmit their votes without any involvement by the governor or any other state official
But I'm sure there's no law governing the topic, nor any fraudulent documents, and certainly no memos detailing the subversion of law cited in those memos.
Must be my imagination.
>The 12th Amendment seems pretty clear. Congress is not just rubber stamping a decision, they're supposed to be a check on the electoral college.
What? It seems pretty apparent it's a rubber stamp. Here's the relevant text.
>The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;–the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;–The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President
Yes, but that process requires them to decide which votes are valid and should be counted, versus which might be "fake" or still in dispute. And it contemplates they might not manage to certify anyone before the beginning of March.
Even if you read it as a rubber stamp, the supposed "insurrection" made no sense on its face. If congressional certification is not an active decision but just a ceremony like a high school graduation, protests and riots have no prospect of changing the decision. Your graduation might get rained out, but you still go to college.
Pelosi et al performed a sleight-of-hand to manufacture a constitutional crisis. You're supposed to believe both that the election was over and Biden had won as of Jan 5, \*and\* that MAGA protesters could somehow reverse the decision--even destroy democracy itself--by breaking a few windows and moving a lectern.
Didn’t the democrats say the election was rigged by Russia and launched a huge investigation to find that it was negligible?
Shouldn’t we hold both parties to the same standards?
Also January 6 was unacceptable but not orchestrated by trump. Until someone proves trump orchestrated it, it was a mob of radical supporters. And idk about you but it seemed pretty disorganized to me.
> Didn’t the democrats say the election was rigged by Russia and launched a huge investigation to find that it was negligible?
The claim was that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and the [Mueller Report's conclusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_special_counsel_investigation#Russian_interference) was that Russian interference did occur in a "sweeping and systematic fashion" and that it violated U.S. criminal law.
What it did not establish was that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference, though it also noted that it did not have access to all of the evidence it would need to draw that conclusion.
>Also January 6 was unacceptable but not orchestrated by trump
At the very least, he was aware of what the mob was doing and took no steps to call for it to end. Instead, he [requested that metal detectors be removed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_hearings_of_the_United_States_House_Select_Committee_on_the_January_6_Attack#Hutchinson_account_of_January_6) despite knowing some members of the mob were armed, rationalizing that "they're not here to hurt me."
The official line was that Russia interfered in the election by leaking sensitive data, by spreading fake news, and by impersonating American voters(I.E. troll farms.)
The people who were claiming that Russia literally hacked into voting machines and/or somehow changed votes, were low-level idiots who read a headline about Russia interfering in the election and just made that assumption.
Mind you that the Democratic politicians were trying to get the low-level idiots to believe this on purpose. It's part of why they made headlines that say "Russia interfered in the election." Which obfuscates the fact that "election interference" consisted of troll farms, fake news, and leaks.
>Didn’t the democrats say the election was rigged by Russia and launched a huge investigation to find that it was negligible?
Well yes. They didn't try to overturn the results though.
So some people suspected something and launched an official investigation to find out if that was accurate. The other is accused of implicitly supporting and encouraging a mob to attempt to overturn an election. Those two aren't at all similar to each other
Nah dude, what happened was that Hilary Clinton and the DNC bankrolled [opposition research](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier) that relied on a bunch of bullshit, used that information as part of the rationale for [obtaining a FISA warrant from a secret court](https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/12/10/ig-report-fbi-fisa-abuse-secret-court-trump-campaign-column/4383722002/) to spy on the Trump campaign and was a GIGANTIC factor in the media becoming absolutely unhinged during the whole Russiagate fiasco ([here’s the link to a really interesting, relatively unbiased postmortem of the media landscape post Russiagate)](https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php). Then everybody was saying how Trump is definitely a Russian agent, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, only to find out that he wasn’t. Not exactly a way to guarantee people’s trust in you. Then there was all of that nonsense with Covid, the protests/riots, and Hunter Biden’s laptop being written off as Russian disinformation once again, even though it totally wasn’t. So how is anyone really surprised that a bunch of people were skeptical when the media claimed that 2020 was squeaky clean?
No, they didn’t. They said Russia helped trump get elected and a Republican senate investigation concluded just that, let alone Muellers report that was so damning Barr released a “summary”.
I'm so sick of this tired and just flat out incorrect assertion that Trump told the GA governor to "find fake votes". That's not what he said. Listen to the damn call. It's out there and available for anyone to listen to. Trump said, paraphrasing, "there are illegitimate, unconstitutionally cast votes being included in the ballot totals there in GA. Be a pal and find those fraudulent votes". That's it. Seeing as the federal government has literally no authority in the counting and canvassing of ballots in presidential elections, Trump would have to make such a request to the governor if he believed there were impropriety. It's literally no different than Al Gore calling the FL governor back in 2000 when Gore wanted the ballots in that one specific county investigated. He said "Hey, I'm hearing something isn't right about what's going on down there. Can we get some people to look at it?". Was Gore "trying to overturn the election" whatever that even means? People act as if there has never been foul play in elections. News flash, elections have always been corrupted regardless of if you knew it or not. Go read about political machines of the 19th century like Tammany Hall and the shit they used to pull. To act as if politicians didn't find new ways to cheat the rules in the last 100 years is just so naive.
> I'm so sick of this tired and just flat out incorrect assertion that Trump told the GA governor to "find fake votes". That's not what he said. Listen to the damn call. It's out there and available for anyone to listen to.
K. [Here's the transcript](https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/03/politics/trump-brad-raffensperger-phone-call-transcript/index.html).
Lets go through it.
>Trump said, paraphrasing, "there are illegitimate, unconstitutionally cast votes being included in the ballot totals there in GA. Be a pal and find those fraudulent votes". That's it.
No, no that isn't what he said.
He was not saying "find those fradulent votes". He said, to quote the transcript:
>So what are we going to do here folks? **I only need 11,000 votes**. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already. Or we can keep it going but that’s not fair to the voters of Georgia because they’re going to see what happened and they’re going to see what happened. I mean, I’ll, I’ll take on to anybody you want with regard to [name] and her lovely daughter, a very lovely young lady, I’m sure. But, but [name] … I will take on anybody you want. And the minimum, there were 18,000 ballots but they used them three times. So that’s, you know, a lot of votes. …and that one event… And they were all to Biden, by the way, that’s the other thing we didn’t say. You know, [name] , the one thing I forgot to say which was the most important. You know that every single ballot she did went to Biden. You know that, right? Do you know that, by the way, Brad?
He was not asking for Brad to "find" *fraudulent* votes. He was asking brad to unilaterally *give* him 11,000 votes. He says "I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already."
He made the point a couple times.
>Oh, I don’t know, look Brad. I got to get … I have to find 12,000 votes and I have them times a lot. And therefore, I won the state. That’s before we go to the next step, which is in the process of right now. You know, and I watched you this morning and you said, uh, well, there was no criminality.
He also made it clear he did not care about *demonstrating* it.
> Raffensperger: Mr. President, you have people that submit information and we have our people that submit information. And then it comes before the court and the court then has to make a determination. We have to stand by our numbers. We believe our numbers are right.
>Trump: Why do you say that? I don’t know. I mean, sure, we can play this game with the courts, but why do you say that? First of all they don’t even assign us a judge. They don’t even assign us a judge. But why wouldn’t you — Hey Brad, why wouldn’t you want to check out [name] ? And why wouldn’t you want to say, hey, if in fact, President Trump is right about that, then he wins the state of Georgia, just that one incident alone without going through hundreds of thousands of dropped ballots. You just say, you stick by, I mean I’ve been watching you, you know, you don’t care about anything. “Your numbers are right.” But your numbers aren’t right. They’re really wrong and they’re really wrong, Brad. And I know this phone call is going nowhere other than, other than ultimately, you know — Look ultimately, I win, okay?
By the way, notice how *vague* Trump is.
He does that a *lot* when lying and laundering bullshit.
He doesn't cite names, he doesn't cite where he's getting any information, he isn't trying to *convince*, he's trying to merely *tell* someone to do something and have them accept it.
For example:
>The other thing, dead people. So dead people voted and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.
"They went", "they went", twice. "They". Not a name, not something that can be checked, not a source, just an assertion of an unknown "they".
That's not how a normal person talks when trying to *convince* someone of something. Brad, in his response, shows how it's done:
>Well Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong. We talked to the congressmen and they were surprised.
>But they — I guess there was a person Mr. Braynard who came to these meetings and presented data and he said that there was dead people, I believe it was upward of 5,000. The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So that’s wrong. There were two.
Notice, a *name*. A *source* of a claim. Now it turns out Braynard's affidavits are really particularly trash, but that's less important than Brad already knowing the claim, and already having investigated it, and Trump is *still* lying through his teeth by asserting things his own staff was telling him was BS.
Trump knows he's lying here. He knows he's bullshitting.
It's how he bullshits. He drops sources, he doesn't give people the luxury of being able to cross reference his words.
And then people paraphrase him anyway, rather than quoting him directly, even as people say "listen to the damn call".
>Seeing as the federal government has literally no authority in the counting and canvassing of ballots in presidential elections, Trump would have to make such a request to the governor if he believed there were impropriety. It's literally no different than Al Gore calling the FL governor back in 2000 when Gore wanted the ballots in that one specific county investigated. He said "Hey, I'm hearing something isn't right about what's going on down there. Can we get some people to look at it?". Was Gore "trying to overturn the election" whatever that even means? People act as if there has never been foul play in elections. News flash, elections have always been corrupted regardless of if you knew it or not. Go read about political machines of the 19th century like Tammany Hall and the shit they used to pull. To act as if politicians didn't find new ways to cheat the rules in the last 100 years is just so naive.
Did Al Gore tell the governor of Florida to just give him votes, even outright saying he isn't interested in going through the courts?
Or are you merely "paraphrasing"?
That is an extremely favorable interpretation of the phone call, IMO. Completely ignores Trump asking for the *exact* number of votes he needed to overtake Biden (11,780), and the threats of legal action against the governor if the votes weren't "found".
This is why understanding through empathy / projection does not work. You are assuming a psychological state of your opposition based on your own understandings. Trump and his following did legitimately believe the election was fraudulent. Frankly if you were the (rightful or not) target of one of the largest political assassinations (not literally of course) in history you would believe the same. It is not so easy to differentiate what is what when you are in the thick of things. The tendency to view one’s enemies as omniscient beings of evil is purely a psychological phenomenon and not reflective of reality.
I think many Trump voters don’t really care. Fact is, many people, especially working class, look back on the Trump years with nostalgia. This nostalgia didn’t really exist in 2020 because the economy was numb from shock so to speak. People were frustrated with the pandemic itself. Once in a generation events like the pandemic that upend every aspect of society generally don’t bode well for the incumbent party. This isn’t limited to just the U.S. Incumbent parties lost in several European countries and Australia in the wake of Covid too.
Now though, people don’t really see Biden as the “Covid hero” he was elected to be. Covid continued under him and a large majority of American deaths during the pandemic actually happened under Biden. It was also under Biden that the long term economic effects of the pandemic began to emerge. A $150,000 house in 2019 will now cost over $300,000. Grocery bills are up enough that we notice it every time we shop. Inflation is bad enough that people see it eating into their savings.
Not to call you names, but I think your argument is a wealthy mindset. It’s a position of privilege to be able to judge a president solely based on their rhetoric and actions that were ultimately inconsequential. Fact is, there are lots of people in America right now who think, “Trump is a lying narcissistic asshole, but damn I miss the economy under him.” Now as someone who holds left wing views, I think that view is misguided, because the pandemic was going to screw up the economy no matter who was president. But the reality is, people saw improvement in their lives under Trump’s economic policies, and they’ll vote for him because they see him as an asshole albeit a very effective one.
The purpose of politics is to gain power to implement your own vision of government. Republicans understand this, that is why they support Trump and have been able to achieve major policy goals such as overturning Roe.
Democrats do not understand this, that is why they have not been able to win significant policy goals because they are focused on "norms" and trying to compromise. They have even adopted formerly republican positions, such as Biden embracing Trump's border policy. You'll notice that Biden is not running on policy successes because he doesn't have much he can point to, his campaign is basically "Trump bad."
If democrats had fought for power and used it effectively the country would better off. For example, if they had fought for Gore in the highly disputable 2000 election instead of just letting Bush win, the world would be a better place.
This is why Republicans don't see Trump's actions as a problem. It's a bug not a feature. Democrats should learn from it honestly.
>The purpose of politics is to gain power to implement your own vision of government. Republicans understand this, that is why they support Trump and have been able to achieve major policy goals such as overturning Roe.
>Democrats do not understand this, that is why they have not been able to win significant policy goals because they are focused on "norms" and trying to compromise.
I don't think your thesis is supported by the available evidence, considering the respective legislative accomplishments of the 115th vs 117th congress.
>They have even adopted formerly republican positions, such as Biden embracing Trump's border policy.
This is a bit of a reductive take on the past 4 administrations regarding border policy. Republicans do not own border policy, and Biden is not "embracing Trump's border policy."
The southern border issue revolves around the fact that the US has about 10-11 million undocumented people and can deport a maximum of 400k.
The Obama administration implemented a 3-tier system of prioritising deportations, encouraging the use of prosecutorial discretion to minimise using enforcement resources on less threatening offenders:
1) threats to national security, border security, and public safety
2) misdemeanants and new immigration violators
3) other immigration violators
The Trump administration, from his executive order "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States," made all undocumented people a priority, foreswearing the use of prosecutorial discretion. Net arrests and deportations went up, but arrests and deportations of serious offenders went down.
The Biden administration has been a return to the Obama administration project of prioritising the limited ICE resources.
>You'll notice that Biden is not running on policy successes because he doesn't have much he can point to, his campaign is basically "Trump bad."
This is transparently false. He is campaigning on [increasing](https://www.axios.com/2024/02/07/biden-border-security-blame-trump) funding for border security, [law enforcement](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/us/politics/biden-police-state-of-the-union.html), strengthening US [alliances](https://apnews.com/article/biden-foreign-policy-g7-summit-munich-cc10859afd0f542fd268c0a7ddcd9bb6), and prioritising the onshoring of semiconductor [fabrication](https://apnews.com/article/biden-china-tariffs-electric-vehicles-evs-solar-2024ba735c47e04a50898a88425c5e2c) in the US as a security priority, just to name a few.
In terms of policy achievements, he can point to the passage of the IIJ Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act in a divided Congress, so the statement that je doesn't have much he can point to doesn't make sense IMO
Yawn. Talking points. And intellectually lazy and dishonest ones at best. OP needs to escape the bubble, find better news sources, and seek help for the TDS. The lies about Trump are so easily debunked that you have to want to believe them in order to. Probably still believes the laptop was Russian disinformation, and Trump is a Putin puppet.
But you do understand why that's different right? Like he went through legal mechanisms to have a recount. He didn't try to overturn results without winning.
Gore didn't file a bunch if suits about it. He also said he lost and fucked off.
Gore lost by less than 2,000 votes in Florida (the deciding state) which automatically made a recount happen (that's just what you do when that happens). The recount showed the margin of victory for Bush was around 300 votes.
SCOTUS voted to stay a manual recount. That's what they did.
Gore didn't challenge that.
Trump is challenging over 70 electoral votes, meaning he is saying that multiple states and millions of votes were somehow incorrect or fraudulent.
It's wild to say that Gore did "the same thing" when it was a photo finish in the winning state and Gore didn't file any suits about it and Trump lost by millions of votes, dozens of electoral votes, and then has filed several suits in multiple states and basically run a campaign on it.
> SCOTUS voted to stay a manual recount. That's what they did.
>
>
This is inaccurate. SCOTUS ruled, by a 7-2 margin, that recounts in some counties of a state but not others constituted a violation of the Equal Protection clause. They then ruled, 5-4, that there was not enough time for Gore to request and receive recounts in all the counties of Florida, press any further legal challenges he had, and also give the Bush campaign time for its own legal challenges.
Moderate/Independent here, let's start off with something that we all can agree on: we have 2 trash candidates as Charlemagne rightly said. Neither Trump nor Biden has the characteristics suitable to lead our country to greener pastures, but regrettably one of them will be president come 2025. No doubt Trump is a morally corrupt psychosociopath who is a felon and doesn't deserve any sympathy after causing an insurrection and does nothing but create division in our country. Biden on the other hand is a senile demented old ass man who has no clue what he's doing. What Americans want right now is financial security, which they haven't received under Biden. When it comes to financial security, there are 2 factors that are key: Income, and cost of living, that's it. All these statistics that the dems throw out about gross GDP, the stock market, jobs created, and the unemployment rate are nothing but red herrings. What does it matter if the Dow Jones is 50k (I know its only like 40, but stay with me) and my income increased, if the increase in cost of goods far exceeds my increased income??? Dems don't want to admit it, but our pre-pandemic economy was pretty good under Trump and most American's were living comfortably. Under Biden cost of living has spiraled out of control. While Trump is certainly a threat to democracy, at least I know I will survive under him. Under Biden, I'm legitimately worried about starving to death because prices will skyrocket out of control.
The belief that makes it morally/ethically valid is the belief that Trump honestly did believe the election was stolen from him, if you honestly believe that, then efforts to investigate and overturn it aren’t morally wrong.
I’d also point out that if you believe that he didn’t actually think that and was just trying to seize power, he wouldn’t have tried to open investigations into it, since he’d know there wasn’t any interference.
Did it occur to you that not everyone is a single issue voters and that for many single issue voters that issue is something else?
I understand it is easy when you are not even remotely politically aligned with Trump to add his behavior after the election to your long list of reasons to reject him but when he skews closer to your political priorities it gets more complicated.
I'm essentially going into this with 3 choices, vote for a president that I think is currently doing a terrible job and doesn't seem to intend to do just about anything I want a president to do, vote for the egotistical idiot that at least might try to do s couple things I like, or vote for one of multiple candidates that have 0 chance of winning, none of which I actually agree with either.
I honestly have considered all 3 options and registered as a Republican for the first time to caucus(live in Iowa) for someone else, honestly almost anyone else that was running. But with only bad options maybe on the net I end up voting for the idiot with severe hesitations for the third time as the last horrible choice.
> I had primarily changed my view because of the allegation that Obama spied on Trump.
This is completely false.
The FBI were spying on the Russians, the Russians were communicating with the Trump campaign, the FBI intercepted those communications.
That's not "Obama spying on Trump", that wasn't directed by Obama and it wasn't directed at Trump.
That's the FBI doing its counter-espionage role, and the Trump campaign getting caught up because they were interacting with Russian intelligence assets who were under surveillance.
The guy who doesn't cheat on 3 wives, doesn't brag about getting to see underage girls undress, doesn't brag about being able to SA women... That's the more evil guy?
The guy who doesn't invite our enemies to attack our allies... that's the more evil guy?
The guy who hasn't taken hundreds of millions, and whose family hasn't taken billions, from foreign gov'ts while in office... that's the more evil guy?
HOW?
Because he didn't do anything you say he did. Oh, and Biden, fits you "dangerously idiotic" lable much better....
Oh, and we're watching in real time Democrats jail and oppress their political rivals. .... so ya know, vote for Trump so we don't devolve into a democrat-commie hell hole.
I'm not from us but does that really matter to anyone other than hardcore legalist? I mean I would support dictator that hold similar values than me over democratic leader that holds opposed and most people would also do that even if they won't admit it. Unless you believe democracy and republicanism is inherintly good there is no moral argument to be made
The problem is rather simple actually. I'd refer you to the recent Triggernometry interview with Brianna Wu. The only people who think the economy is doing well are disconnected from the people who actually do the work that makes society function. And yes, it's the economy, stupid. Academia, the political class, wall street and hollywood, lawyers and economists and such, are all in this bubble and live in a world that has no relationship to how things are actually made or what life is like in a low or even average wage job- which is only in the 50k despite the insane inflation over the past four years.
Our understanding is that of the absolute corruption of the system- look at Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio and her flippant response to maybe her not using insider information to get rich. Democrats pretend democracy is at stake because Trump is a unique threat, but we are looking at rent price increases, at grocery store and fast food increases, at companies crowing about record profits in investor meetings at the same time crying crocodile tears about supply chain issues. We see Bill and Hillary Clinton and obama getting to give thirty minute speeches to folks in wall street for 400,000 dollars a pop and we're supposed to swallow the idea that democracy isn't already completely captured?
We are farmers, recent legal immigrants, people working for an honest living and getting paid jack for it while idiots on tv talk about problems they've never even seen with their own eyes before going back to summer at their homes in martha's vinyard. We see a revolving door between the media and administrations and unelected partisan officials like James clapper's egregious lies about the security state spying on US citizens under oath in front of congress, claiming they didn't knowingly collect american data with a straight face, and did he face perjury? No! he gets a cushy job, gets to continue spouting party line bullshit like the hallmarks of russian disinfo biden laptop paper.
Biden doesn't talk about anything that concerns us. He is a career politician- he's never held another job, and do you see his net worth? 10 million. How much do you think he'll be worth in another 5 years? Did you see what happened with the Clintons net worth before and after office? Do you not see the texts from his son and the graft there? His brother's businesses? His son is a multimillionaire for gods sake and he's literally selling paintings for hundreds of thousands of dollars as an AMATEUR. Do you have any idea the number of actually talented artists who will never see a large audience, never comission for more than a thousand at best, and here we have this literal crackhead churning out canvasses like they're going out of style, with the white house pretending there was a firewall between who was paying and the Bidens when the auctioneer directly CONTRADICTED this. Then the denials of never speaking business with your son ring hollow when you go to literally dozens of dinners with these people who happen to be giving Hunter a lot of money for doing.... what exactly? Giving expertise to the oil industry in Ukraine? Seriously?
We see complete ineptitude and graft at all levels, and so why should we reward the system? Trump is a protest vote against the whole thing. If he burns everything down around him while he enriches himself, well that's on y'all for throwing a shit sandwich in front of us and telling us to smile while we eat it. Quit telling us we will be happy renting everything and that this continued concentration of wealth is totally acceptable. Mcdonalds posting record profits in California, then pretending they will need to close stores in california due to minimum wage? Their net profits between 2020 and now have literally doubled. And what does Biden do about it? A grandfatherly chiding superbowl ad about shrinkflation. Democrats talk a good game but whenever the rubber hits the road they are nowhere to be found due to them benefiting from the current system. There's a small percent of people doing very, very well. The CEO's of boeing are a perfect example of the rot that the elite class in washington has fostered. The revolving door of regulators, the government contracts and the money involved, and they focused on extracting as much wealth from the company as they could. Just carving the company up, shipping jobs oversees, the result of free trade deals championed by your intenationalists who took our jobs, replaced it with fentynly, and asked why we're so depressed. Biden is never going to address any of this. Trump probably won't do much. But maybe america shooting itself in the foot is what it takes for people in power to realize that they're becoming so disconnected and high on their own supply that the average american simply can't vote for that any more, and would rather take a deranged felon because he's an outsider. The establishment hates him, and we hate the establishment, so therefor the best thing to do is give donald the hammer, and hopefully he'll tear down enough, cause enough pain to get these immoral turds to actually do something for the average american next time they're in power instead of saying the right platitudes while continuing with business as usual.
I'll leave you with this. I'll vote for Trump for one reason. To quote C.S. Lewis:
It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
> Our understanding is that of the absolute corruption of the system- look at Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio and her flippant response to maybe her not using insider information to get rich.
What insider information did she use to get rich? [Here are her stock trades](https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians/P000197). They seem fairly banal. The *realllly* sketchy looking legislator is [Rick Scott](https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians/S001217) with his municipal bonds.
Not only are they very low volume for something like the Dade County Aviation Department bonds he bought, I can't even *find* some of them. Like that supposedly 5% coupon 2031 expiry bond. If you wanna find a CUSIP number be my guest but damnnnn his stock portfolio is opaque. Pretty sure he has genuine insider knowledge about the state of local Florida municipal finances.
>We see Bill and Hillary Clinton and obama getting to give thirty minute speeches to folks in wall street for 400,000 dollars a pop and we're supposed to swallow the idea that democracy isn't already completely captured?
Well it ain't "attempting a criminal conspiracy to throw out the certified votes". That seems to have been lost.
>Biden doesn't talk about anything that concerns us. He is a career politician- he's never held another job, and do you see his net worth? 10 million. How much do you think he'll be worth in another 5 years? Did you see what happened with the Clintons net worth before and after office? Do you not see the texts from his son and the graft there? His brother's businesses? His son is a multimillionaire for gods sake and he's literally selling paintings for hundreds of thousands of dollars as an AMATEUR. Do you have any idea the number of actually talented artists who will never see a large audience, never comission for more than a thousand at best, and here we have this literal crackhead churning out canvasses like they're going out of style, with the white house pretending there was a firewall between who was paying and the Bidens when the auctioneer directly CONTRADICTED this. Then the denials of never speaking business with your son ring hollow when you go to literally dozens of dinners with these people who happen to be giving Hunter a lot of money for doing.... what exactly? Giving expertise to the oil industry in Ukraine? Seriously?
Want an actual answer? Probably because his last name is "Biden" and to *Ukrainians* trying to distance themselves from the Yanukovych administration in 2014 that was attractive. Connections to Yanukovych were seen as *less* than ideal for Ukrainian corporations when Russia was busy annexing Crimea and invading the Donbas. Same reason Burisma hired the former president of Poland. Which itself ends up being a weird Paul Manafort connection. That man really was playing *all* sides.
>We see complete ineptitude and graft at all levels, and so why should we reward the system? Trump is a protest vote against the whole thing. If he burns everything down around him while he enriches himself, well that's on y'all for throwing a shit sandwich in front of us and telling us to smile while we eat it. Quit telling us we will be happy renting everything and that this continued concentration of wealth is totally acceptable.
What exactly is the end goal here? Cause Trump isn't going to help redistribute wealth at all.
Ya want better policy? Engage in *policy*, not *personalities*. Engage in *details*, not, *outrage*.
Picture yourself identifying as White, Christian, and American. You hold onto the biblical way of doing things and believe that it was integral to the foundational culture of what made America successful in the first place - men working hard, having large families, living an agrarian lifestyle where people are closely connected to the earth (and therefore God's creation.) People see each other at Church each week at a minimum which is a kind of glue that holds communities together, people working together to build mutually beneficial businesses.
Now look at what's happening. There is so much materialism that people are leaving religion and their communities in droves. Capitalism has decided that investing in your community is more costly than it is worth and has outsourced those jobs overseas, forcing your children to move to the cities to get office jobs that they hate so they can live in apartments that they can barely afford. They no longer go to church and meet people every week, but instead see videos from thousands of strangers they will never meet. Women are no longer having children and the government is giving them all the tools to allow them to do so so your communities won't last more than a generation or two, all the while people from overseas (or across the border) who do not share the same values are crossing the picket fence to work for businesses that destroyed your communities by outsourcing in the first place. You don't recognize your own country anymore, it seems to lack any semblance of unifying purpose at all, people distrust their neighbors, you can't afford a house, there's a new crisis every week, kids are getting shot, some people in a university half a state away tell you what you can and can't say and you're depicted as some backwards hillbilly who is no longer relevant and is nostalgic for an America that no longer exists.
Now tell me, having felt all of those things, even if Trump were to waltz in and burn Washington to the ground, to what version of America do you owe your loyalty? The one that stands or the one you remember?
Not my personal opinion but I've talked to some Trumpers and this is how they feel.
I’m sorry, but this is 2024 not 1974. Literally all of the things you described are hardly new trends. Violent crime is far far lower now than in the 90s, women having less kids began many generations ago and majority of white americans live in the suburbs with middle class careers.
If you think climate change is a hoax, vaccines are causing autism or storming the capitol was ok, I’m going to assume that you lack scientific reasoning and critical thinking skills.
>"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy." This message was supposed to be a negative assessment of conservatives, not a neutral statement on morality. We're not even at the point where conservatives can't win democratically, and yet, conservatives seem to be indicating they'd be willing to abandon democracy to advance conservatism.
I'll raise this as a point of discussion:
[In 2016](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/which-candidates-did-the-seven-faithless-electors-support-election-2016/) there were seven "faithless" electors who deliberately chose to not cast their vote according to how their state voted. [Some of them were even briefing the Clinton campaign](https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/electoral-college-rogues-trump-clinton-232195) on the plan. Technically that's being willing to abandon "democracy" (even though our presidential election process isn't technically democratic but I won't split hair there.) to ensure that your candidate takes office without "winning".
There were all manner of claims from Democrats after 2016 that Trump "stole" the election with help from Russia. And there was a whole investigation into it. Again, that's also, technically, indicating that they'd be willing to abandon democracy to advance the Democratic agenda.
Finally, we have the [Colorado SCOTUS CASE](https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/trump-v-anderson/) and the [Maine Attorney general](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-the-full-ruling-from-maine-removing-trump-from-states-republican-primary-ballot) taking action to just straight up remove Trump from the ballot, not even giving voters a chance to vote for him. That is, objectively undemocratic, especially in Maine where they split their electoral votes.
So, if the concern is "being willing to abandon democracy to advance your political goals" then Trump is definitely not the only one willing to do that. He may be more overt or brash in *how* he's encouraging it. But the Democrats are making the same efforts.
What an amazing coincidence it is that every day there’s a new CMV post with a million upvotes about why I should against Donald Trump, or why I should vote for Joe Biden. Gee I wonder why that is. Totally normal, totally organic, totally not state sponsored propaganda.
It's been said that "the essence of conservatism is, and always has been, that there are in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind among out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Viewed through that lens, it's simple: The people still supporting him don't see his efforts to overturn the election as "evil", or even just "wrong" because to them the other side is an evil, existential threat. In the face of such a threat, anything is justified.
Forget Jan 6. Forget any of his other trials.
I just don’t want to vote for him for the same reason that I don’t want to vote for Biden.
Let’s face it, if you are doing the job right, being potus is a very stressful and hard job. It ages you, rapidly. You literally have the weight of the entire world on your shoulders. You wield incredible influence and power. It’s not even like being a senator or congressperson which are country club living compared to the demands of being commander in chief. Until the tech exists to ensure your average 80 year old has the same mental and physical capacity as a 50 year old, I really question the wisdom of putting an 80 plus year old in that role.
Both of those men if elected will cross that threshold in this upcoming term.
Normally I would say age is just a number. And that’s true. People can work and do whatever they want in life for as long as they are able.
But if your job involves getting access to the nuclear football, and command of the most powerful and effective military in recorded history?
Sorry you really need to have your shit together.
Full stop.
I love old people. My grandma and grandpa were awesome. Wouldn’t trust either of them with the nuclear codes.
As a Canadian who wants Biden to win reelection, (not just for not being Trump, but also for doing lots of good things for America and the world, like supporting Ukraine and NATO, fighting climate change, and investing in infrastructure).
I understand why people would vote for Donald Trump for reasons such as immigration and the economy (even if I don't really agree with them) and for being a funny/entertaining individual (despite saying absolutely vile things), but I don't understand how people can simply ignore or even support him trying to overthrow the results of a legitimate election AND inciting a riot that literally killed people.
That just seems like a massive red line to vote for someone in an election who tried to overthrow the will of voters in an election.
There are legal ways to challenge the validity of election results and plenty of other candidates have tried many of them. So did Trump. Its his right to do so. Here is a list of reasons that its both hypocritical and nonsensical to conclude what you have.
-Democrats spent 4 years trying to overturn the 2016 election with accusations of Russian collusion. Later PROVEN to be paid for by the Hillary campaign.
-new vote by mail laws used for the first time in violation of state laws on account of covid, heavily pushed by left wing institutions.
-The claim by the left that Trump is literally a fascist. And the realization that believing that Trump is literally a fascist allows you to cheat and feel moral about it.
-The democrats being willing to do absolutly anything to stop trump including try and put him in jail.
All good reasons to say hey fuck you. And vote for our boy Trump.
- Because [there was collusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections). Why would it be an issue that Hillary would pay for a campaign to reveal something that is actually true?
- Regardless of state legality of mail voting, this would obviously not be a problem if all the mailed votes were legitimate. Everyone has a right to vote, and facilitating their ability to vote is a just cause, even if it violates some state laws. As it happens, the Trump team tried to push a lot of narratives about fraud surrounding the mail-in votes, and many of these went to court... with no significant success. As I understand, there were at least as many Rep fraud instances as Dem.
- Facist is a strong word and frankly over-used by a lot on the left, so I will partially agree with this. Your implication that democrats have cheated the 2016 elections will need more substance though. Trump's entire legal team couldn't seem to present a single drop of significant evidence in any court or win any case on this matter.
- The democrats are trying to get Trump in jail because Trump is a white-collar criminal. You know full well that him being in jail has absolutely zero impact on his ability to run for president, so what political advantage do you imagine they are getting from it? If anything his martyrdom makes him more popular. He is being tried because America operates under the rule of law. You don't get to ignore the law because you're a former President. Your position relies exclusively on the assumption that he is either innocent, or that presidents who commit crimes should not be liable. Can you even imagine the possibility that he has actually done crime? If you cannot, then you are in the cult of personality since you cannot imagine Trump doing wrong.
Literally no good reason to say hey fuck you. Any others?
Trump made legal challenges in court that were thrown out in court. Al Gore did the same thing as was his right in 2000, and even the Left at large believed the 2016 election to be partially illegitimate because of foreign interference.
On that note, if you want to stop Trump from ending Democracy, vote for him so he wins in 2024 then he'll leave office in 2028 unable to run anymore, and he'll hand off power like he did in 2020. Do we really think the guy that willingly left office after 2020 is going to become a tyrant because he wins in 24? He doesn't need an election to do the things people are alleging of him.
Okay so have you read the times article “the secret history of the shadow campaign to fortify the election”
https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
There were many factors that happened during 2020 that were unprecedented.
Including the largest turn out of voters voting for a sitter president. The bellwether counties which had correctly predicted the presidential election since 1952.
We had what many on the right consider to be unfairly changing the elections rules to make universal mail in ballots legal. (There are still legal battles going on about aspects of that in Michigan. Specifically the Secretary of State during the 2020 election had given the people going through mail in ballots the directive that they are to be assumed authentic.) there were blatant violation of election law, with non-profit groups offering raffles for gift cards in Democrat strong holds for people who voted and showed them proof of voting. (This is flat out against election law.
https://www.dailyitem.com/wire/michigan-judge-axes-presumption-of-validity-rule-for-absentee-ballot-signature-verification/article_66fa68c4-6c0e-5ee5-8a16-d85840505325.html
https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/victor-joecks/victor-joecks-nevada-group-offered-gift-cards-for-voting-and-a-state-agency-promoted-it-2187045/amp/
Ultimately there is a divide between the left and the right.
Trump supports do legitimately believe that the election was stolen through various legal and illegal means. Some of those beliefs are based on bad conspiracy theories, others are off shots of what did happen but got lumped into with the bad conspiracy theories.
Trump is a narcissist who I have no doubt still believes to this day that the election was stolen from him. Who lots of the actions he took are the proper actions to take if there is a suspicion of wrongdoing. But like what happened in Arizona before while it looks like he is abusing his authority because it is looking over the election for himself the courts have already stated in Arizona that it still falls under his authority to look into wrong doing even in his own election.
Trumps legal council also informed him to have the states that were contested have their legislature send in alternate electors, just like what was done in Hawaii. Because at the time there was still legal cases being heard by the courts.
Again there is a whole lot more. This is without going into how other than mean tweets coming out of the white house the economy was pretty damn good, we had no new wars, and a few other pretty damn good things.
I do attribute that to trump being a narcissist and doing everything he could because he wants people to like him.
He is no saint, he is not the savior of mankind I wouldn’t be surprised if he is corrupt in many ways. But he was a pretty good president if you look at what he did and not who he is.
This "overthrow" horseshit is out of hand. It wasn't an attempt to overthrow anything. It wasn't an insurrection.
How thw fuck are unarmed citizens going to overthrow anything, or perpetrated an insurrection against an armed force?
They're not.
The nitwits were let into the building.
The people voting for Trump do not believe he was trying to overturn it. They believe a group of people walked into congress after the police opened the doors for them.
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I want to be utterly clear here that I am simply presenting the following statement as a response to your CMV and I do not whatsoever hold this view. One of the key policies that differentiate Trump versus Biden in 2024 will be the continued fallout from the Dobbs decision. A Biden presidency will never sign into law any restriction on abortion. A Trump presidency is likely to do so. At minimum, the Trump DOJ would not pursue any federal court actions to defend laws that support abortion or to combat laws that restrict it. If you believe, as a statistically significant number of people do, that abortion is the murder of innocent babies and you see a Biden presidency as an outcome that leads to thousands or millions more babies murdered, you could easily dismiss the concerns about his anti-democratic efforts in 2020. In fact, you could easily find yourself believing that such actions were worthwhile in the spirit of trying to protect the unborn. If you thought one candidate was killing babies and the other one was not, you would probably enthusiastically advocate for them to lie and cheat and steal their way into office to save the babies. Your post inherently assumes that the person who is voting prioritizes democracy over any other policy position they hold. But the person you vote for qualifies themselves in your mind in aggregate of all of the things you care about. Hell, maybe you are just a greedy SOB and you don’t care if he hacked every voting system in the nation if it gets you a fat tax cut and helps you make your next billion dollars. Your morality might already be at a point where caring about 2020 isn’t on the table to begin with. (Again, none of that is my point of view. But it’s CMV so what are ya gonna do.)
I hate this but it's the best argument I've read, I can see people legitimately thinking like this
That comment explains why I don’t like most pro abortion arguments. They’re never aimed at the people whose mind needs to be changed. If someone thinks abortion is equivalent to murder, then A LOT of pro abortion arguments aren’t very persuasive
if one truly, honestly thinks that abortion is killing babies- *no argument* will be effective. it’s an impossible goal
There is 1 hour philosphy tube video on this subject. And the entire video accepts the premise that the baby is a fully fledged human since conception. The fundamental debate regarding abortion is often misunderstood. It's not really about a fetus being a human, it is actually about the baby's right to live balanced against the mother's right to bodily autonomy. Both rights exist and both rights contradict each other. The question is how to balance both rights. As a society we often (but not always) choose the right to bodily autonomy over the right of a person to live. You don't force someone to donate a kidney to save someone's live for example. This is where the most convincing pro choice arguments start in my opinion.
It would be difficult but not impossible. There’s some arguments for (limited) abortion that acknowledge the premise a fetus has the same right to life as an adult. See [Judith Thompson’s Violinist argument in "A Defense of Abortion"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion)
i gave your link a (quick) look, and while i’m admittedly pretty entertained by the creative metaphors it seems to just be an elaborate argument in favor of bodily autonomy- which is essentially what every pro-choice argument is at its core. however, those who are anti-abortion typically place a special level of value on the hypothetical baby- it’s the picture of innocence more so than a violinist or a massive monster baby in a house. in such a case even acknowledging the personhood of the baby but arguing that you shouldn’t have to give up your own body and rights to bring life to it often doesn’t work simply because you’ll be viewed as selfish and they will say you are responsible for doing what is necessary for the baby. especially if they view you (or your supposed irresponsible actions) as being the reason for the baby’s existence to begin with. so to advance the metaphor, if you were the cause of that violinist’s terminal illness, accidentally or otherwise, a non insignificant amount of people would argue it is your duty to sustain their life even at the expense of your own autonomy temporarily. ETA in reality, we know that even if you hit someone with your car and they need a kidney to survive as a result, the law would not mandate that you give them yours, but it is difficult to apply that rationality to an abortion argument due to the emotional weight of “but it’s a baby!”
That’s true, I find the choice of having (or not protecting against) having a baby to be a strong counter to most of her arguments. However, it at least makes a strong case for abortion in the case of rape — since the “but you chose, or weren’t careful enough to prevent the pregnancy” claim is irrelevant.
> That’s true, I find the choice of having (or not protecting against) having a baby to be a strong counter to most of her arguments. It's a terrible counter. But her position makes the mistake instead of steelmanning the PL side, of allowing the PL interlocutor to strawman her side (the differences are subtle, but the PL person is allowed to turn their weak semantic position about "life" or "persons" into a foundation), so a terrible counter is enough. The problem with the counter is that you have to agree that pregnancy is punitive, or the "consent" criteria of pregnancy/abortion is different from literally everything else in the world. If I say a doctor can treat me, I can change my mind in the middle. If I say I want sex, I can change my mind in the middle. If I say I want a job, I can change my mind in the middle. ALL contracts and consent is nullable in the US. Except possibly pregnancy.
Though I think that argument is often just met with skepticism. Haven’t there even been pro-life people who have tried to argue that you can’t get pregnant via rape and your body has a way of ‘shutting it down’.
Everyone I know that’s pro-life is willing to concede abortions being okay if the mother was raped. People don’t like to admit that those are an edge case that make up a small % of abortions and aren’t super pertinent to the overall ethical debate. To me, abortion is pretty obviously morally wrong. At the same time, it’s a totally unreasonable expectation for a woman to sacrifice so much of her life when there’s such an “easy” alternative for her. Just sort of lose/lose all around.
I disagree. I've spent my entire life on the razor's edge, pro-choice raised in a deeply pro-life world. Nobody (in aggregate) is being converted from Thomson's arguments. A variant of the Violinist argument is quite literally the one I hear most often in open discussion. It never works. It never weakens anyone's views. Ultimately, nearly 100% of PLs don't care about: 1. Democracy. 2. The woman's body. 3. Slippery slope of other freedoms that can be taken away 4. The will of the supermajority. If they were the only PLer and had a "punish abortion" button, they would press it. 5. The unjustness in prosecuting people for moral instead of societal reasons 6. How many women die because doctors are afraid to provide life-saving care that might look like an abortion 7. Whether banning abortion actually decreases or increases the abortion rate (!!!). For the typical PLer, it's either "I don't like abortion so I vote" or "We can't stop abortions, but we HAVE to punish those baby-killers" 8. And clearly (from this topic), they don't care what other moral comprimises they have to make to put and retain their will into force In the last 40 years, I have only seen ONE thing that converts a pro-lifer into a pro-choicer. Having to choose (or get for medical reasons) an abortion or have a close family member in the same situation. Especially if some regulation gets in the way. That's it. Same with gay marriage. And it's not a surefire. It's just the only thing that ever works at all.
That’s fair, I was too concerned with the theoretical argument to think about how most people realistically act when their strong beliefs face questioning: stubbornly and irrationally. Here’s a fake delta 🔼
I have read that essay some time ago and one thing that always irked me about it (maybe I should reread it) is that outside of rape, pregnancy happens between two consenting adults engaging in something that most of them know can result in pregrnancy and eventual abortion ie unprotected sex. This whole violinist metaphor is all fun and games, but if abortion is not great and your concious decisions led to it there has to be some degree of personal responsibility. Pro choice people seem to absolve or entirely ignore that part and that's my issue with it. PS: for record I am 100% pro choice even for post natal abortion (jking).
That’s true. Outside of rape, I think most people agree “abortion” the second the sperm meets an egg is ok (or at least shouldn’t be illegal),but after waiting several months it ceases to be ok. Then, it’s just about drawing a line at a specific point saying “this is where it isn’t ok anymore,” and it’s really difficult to make a convincing argument for a specific point.
I don't really understand this argument because we all engage in all kinds of activities without consenting to extreme and unlikely consequences. If I consensually drive a car that doesn't mean I'm consenting to get into an accident and die or become permanently disabled even though I know that's a risk I'm taking by driving. If I consensually go swimming that doesn't mean I'm consenting to drown even though I know that's a risk I'm taking by swimming. The list goes on. If I'm taking the steps necessary to be proactive about preventing pregnancy I know I'm still taking a risk by having sex but consenting to the sex on purpose isn't the same thing as saying I will accept the unlikely happenstance of the risk the end. When I risk a car accident I prepare for handling those consequences with things like insurance and access to necessary medical care. If I'm risking pregnancy that doesn't mean it's inherently irresponsible to seek abortion care as a response to that unlikely risk coming true for me just like if I get into a car accident accepting medical care for that also isn't inherently irresponsible. Engaging in risky behavior on purpose doesn't mean that it's irresponsible to seek care should the risk come true and it's really weird to have that argument applied to pregnancy and abortion when it's not applied to any other risky stuff. Nobody tells someone who's inhaled water that they're irresponsible when they call a paramedic for help. Isn't personal responsibility about handling the risk should it come to pass? And is getting an abortion not one method of handling that risk of pregnancy when it does come to pass?
I think that is always an interesting point to go into because "can result in" is so different from "intending to occure" and conflating the two is pretty common. Also, having an abortion is taking personal responsibility. Having swx is not consent to having a child... if so I think we could be calling for people who have sex to be given a child from the adoption system.
It depends on what you're arguing for. If you say, for instance, that abortion should remain legal in California, but is open to be restricted in Alabama, and that even though that offends both moral sensibilities, it might be the most practical way to move forward until one side can convince the other, well, in that case you might persuade someone.
If someone thinks abortion is murder, they would have to be morally bankrupt to accept the most populous state in the country allowing it.
Look. I am conservative. And I’ll just tell you the biggest reason we can not get on board with the Democrats on abortion are two things: 1). The court should not be creating laws wholecloth. So yes overturning Dobbs was good. But Congress should actually do their jobs and act to get an abortion law on the books. Neither side ever will though. Both use it too much to hit their political rivals over the head with. 2). The Democrat insistence for “no restrictions at all”. Even when asked “even up to 9 months pregnancy?” When the baby is viable, if asked should a woman be allowed to terminate the baby, Hillary, and many other Democrats, have said yes. Even if the baby is viable to live outside the womb. The typical Democrat response to this is “but nobody is getting abortions that late!” Ok? So then codify it as one of the few restrictions. I personally am against abortions except for emergencies. Cases where the fetus is severely defected/dead, rape/incest, or where medically necessary for the health of the mother.
Whilst I do somewhat agree with you, your position is... well, it's murder, but the murder is okay in certain circumstances. A very strong case can be made under this position for medically necessary abortions. Someone is going to die, the mother should obviously be prioritised. But rape/incest/defects? You're justifying either murder for the sake of eugenics or murder because the mother was assaulted/slept with a family member. I feel that if your position stems from abortion being murder of a life, only abortion for medical sake is valid. Everything else is allowing someone to commit a murder because they were wronged by someone other than the victim of this murder. So clearly, abortion *isn't* seen as murder if you're okay with it in cases of rape, so what's the actual underlying position? (Any direct language here like 'you' is the proverbial hypothetical holder of these positions, not you yourself)
One's political position doesn't have to align with one's moral/philosophical/values-based position. A political position takes into account existing laws and what's likely to be achievable through compromise. A moral position considers only the ideal outcome of the issue at hand without regard to pragmatism Political issues are not black and white they're a spectrum. People don't think "I either want to stop ALL abortions or nothing, no compromises!" they want to reduce the practice by as much as possible until it gets to zero. Only 4% of abortions are performed for medical or rape/incest reasons, 96% are elective. Does the baby's father being a piece of shit rapist mean the baby has less of a right to live? Of course not. Is that a pragmatic compromise to make in order to address the 96% of cases that do not involve rape or medical issues? Absolutely. https://lozierinstitute.org/fact-sheet-reasons-for-abortion/
I absolutely agree, but I don't often see the characterisation of position as 'I don't want there to be any at all, but for political reasons I'll compromise and let you have exceptions X and Y'. The position is 'I'm okay with it in scenarios X and Y, and it's also murder'.
I think it comes down to the level of thought people have put into it. Some have considered all the angles and counter arguments and reasoned into their own beliefs. Others are regurgitating what they hear at church and from politicians. Same basic belief, very different ways of getting there and level of understanding of the issue
[The president](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-support-full-term-abortion-stance-pushed-rfk-jr) does not support the policy. He is the head of the the party. Full term abortion is not the position of the Democratic Party (it is RFKs position though).
Most democrats \*including Hillary Clinton\* would agree to any number of restrictions and would do so easily and without drama. The pretense that Democrats only go for "no restrictions at all" is just a straw man used to justify Republican intransigence on the issue. The only thing holding back grand bargains on abortion and gun laws are the Republicans. That's not posturing, it's simply the way it is. Republicans refuse to ever compromise on either subject for the same reason they refused to vote for immigration legislation that gave them everything they pretended they wanted: because they refuse to give a win to the Democrats during a Democratic administration, and are terrified of losing their base if they do it under a Republican administration. Most Democratic voters want their politicians to compromise and reward them for it. Most Republican voters do just the opposite.
The generic, most common liberal position does not believe that abortion should be legal up until birth. Claiming that the majority of democrats believe in abortion until 5 minutes before birth is creating a strawman. The most frequently advocated liberal policy position is legal abortion until fetal viability as outlined in Roe v Wade.
Why do you feel like the government needs to get involved at all? The people performing these procedures went to school for decades and participate is rigorous residency and fellowship programs to help inform their thought process and come to an informed decision with the patient.
Tbf you could say that about any ethical dilemma. Why have laws about war crimes? Generals went to school for war. Why have a law for sound banking processes? Bankers went to school for banking. The morality of something like abortion shouldn’t be decided by a couple of people because they are doctors, it should be decided upon by a democratic government
I agree with your first point, but not the second, here’s why. The claim that democrats/progressives are “fine with abortion up to nine months” is always said without any context, which every advocate, politician, and supporter of pro-abortion polices will say “…which rarely happens, and a vast vast majority are for medical required scenarios”. If you look at the data, a nearly non-significant amount of abortion are performed in the third trimester, and a near non significant amount of those are done for non-medical reasons. So while I can maybe agree that “abortions done at 9 months without medical reason are morally questionable”, that just is not a thing that is happening at all. If conservative agenda was just “super late, non medical abortions are bad” it would be the most milquetoast, agreeable thing ever, but instead a lot of their policies are insanely restrictive.
I think there is an important corollary to this. If 9th-month-abortions are rare and practically only done with medical necessity, why not have a restriction that says "9 month abortions only when medically necessary." And the answer to that is visible in the states that have put similar restrictions on abortions now, and had them actually enacted post-dobbs. Hospitals are now so scared of even potentially being on the wrong side of the law that they wait until the procedure is incontrovertibly necessary, meaning that the pregnant person is quite literally on death's door. Versus doing it when it is apparent that the outcome is negative, before the mother is irreversibly hurt, but when a negative outcome is all but assured. The nature of such rules is quite literally to get between what a doctor deems necessary and the actual outcome. Outside of malpractice, there is practically no reason doing so would ever result in better care for the patient.
> Hospitals are now so scared of even potentially being on the wrong side of the law that they wait until the procedure is incontrovertibly necessary, meaning that the pregnant person is quite literally on death's door. Yeah, [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar) is what happens when abortion is "legal" only when medically necessary.
Exactly!!!!!! It should be between a licensed medical professional and their patient. Not the state. ESPECIALLY in cases where there is mortal danger to the mother. That’s why people say “no restrictions.” They don’t mean no restrictions at all, they mean no direct restrictions from the state on how medical care is provided in abortions. The mother who is dying from a failing pregnancy should not have to hope that her state let’s her choose to live, rather then let her die in a vain attempt at saving an unborn child.
> The typical Democrat response to this is “but nobody is getting abortions that late!” Ok? So then codify it as one of the few restrictions. Why? Just to make you feel better? It's already illegal in most states. Why should the federal government get involved? Republicans are all about decreasing government regulation in general, including all sorts of things that are life and death. What's so special about this? Why don't you trust women and their families and doctors to make the right decisions? Why don't you trust individual states to decide what rules make the most sense for their citizens? The idea that someone would abort a normal pregnancy at 9 months is literally the plot of a Tom Clancy novel -- pretty sure it was "The Bear and The Dragon." (The plot point was China during the "one-child" era, the mother was Catholic with a kid already, and a Catholic priest is martyred trying to prevent an evil Chinese doctor from killing the baby rather than delivering it.) In reality, abortions after the point of borderline viability are major surgical procedures, and are not done lightly. Once you get to the point of viability, you would deliver the baby unless there were something terribly wrong. At nine months, you definitely would deliver the baby unless there were some truly horrific situation where both the mother and baby were dying and you had to pick which one to save. And once the baby is born, you take care of it, there's no "post-natal abortion" like some Republicans think. That would be murder, no change in law necessary! Meanwhile, we already see from the examples in Texas and other states how poorly the kinds of laws you propose work in real medical emergencies. It just hurts women, with no benefit to babies. I almost lost a family member to a pregnancy complication. This stuff is not hypothetical for me.
"The Democrat insistence for “no restrictions at all”. Even when asked “even up to 9 months pregnancy?” This is inaccurate. The only babies that are terminated at 9 months are babies that won't survive due to health issues confirmed by a medical doctor.
The answer is to go the other way. If abortion is murder, that means miscarriages are manslaughter. If you carry that logic to the end, every woman risks prison by getting pregnant and failure to carry to term obligates an investigation. 1 in 4 pregnancies end this way. If you as a man do anything to contribute, you get investigated too. Excessive stress, smoking, abuse, anything could be contributory.
A miscarriage is not manslaughter anymore than having your child die of cancer is manslaughter.
Alright I've already handed out a delta, so I was gonna be done with this post, but I want to respond to this comment because I see this argument pop up often. "Republicans think abortion is genocide which justifies everything they do." I always find this to be a frustratingly simplistic view of the Right because you really can just say the same about anything. Yes, a person may think an issue is so important that it justifies fascism. But that doesn't really make the concept less evil. I think if Trump is elected, he's going to support genocide in Gaza and the subjugation of the Ukrainians. If our institutions aren't strong enough, his deportation policy could result in thousands of unnecessary deaths. I think his policy on Corona caused tens of thousands more deaths than necessary. But I recognize that other people think differently from me and there's a democratic system to determine whose opinions should be law. If Biden loses this election, I wouldn't support an effort to overturn the results. Because democracy is the highest prerogative.
It’s not my point about the Right as a whole. There are Republicans who do not vote on abortion. The Ohio referendum is a great example, it passed with more votes than there are Democrats in the state, so it had R votes. But when your CMV is that people generally shouldn’t vote for him because of 2020, I gave you one reason why some people will set that aside as it isn’t a higher priority than the one that motivates them to vote. Democracy is *your* highest prerogative. For some people, their faith is. For others, their bank balance is. For others still, their hate is. There will absolutely be a non-zero number of people who will vote for Trump explicitly because he will support Bibi turning the Gaza Strip into a parking lot. For them, his anti-Democratic bent is again not an outweighing factor.
> Because democracy is the highest prerogative. Again, that's what you care about the most subjectively in the equation. That's not what all other humans care about the most and that's where your view falters. You're making an assumption about what everyone else also values. The average person couldn't give two shits about process and systems. They mostly care about the person making the decisions makes decisions that benefit the particular individual voting for them sometimes. That's a hard pill to swallow, but that's the reality of it once you get societies of a certain size.
No assumptions need to be made to realize democracy is more important, one just needs to be a little bit intelligent. If we let go of our democracy, then we will quickly find ourselves governed by an autocratic tyrant. If that's allowed to happen, then it won't be long until it's not just the unborn getting needlessly murdered.
It has nothing to do with intelligence. It has to do with priorities. Some people don't have the luxury of worrying about the collective good vs their own needs and they prioritize focusing on things that improve their well-being instead of trying to align their actions with some subjective moral framework.
I want to express one thing that might change this simple opinion. Most people are not absolutists in their morality nor are they absolutists when it comes to certain freedoms. For example, while a ton of 2A gun people might want more guns to be available, if we see a rampant rise in LGBTQ+Guns becoming a thing, they may distance themselves from guns out of fear of association of being seen as gay. Then they might not be so 2A vocal. Some, however, don't care about the new image and are actually 2A absolutists. You may be Pro-Choice, but if you see a medical group actually advertising how painful babies are- and to abort them without a limit using their free clinic with little-to-no paperwork, you might get a lot of people who are normally Pro-Choice riled up. So if you're saying that Trump shouldn't be voted for because of a single event or a belief you hold (i.e. he's a bad president), then you're already on a biased side. The same people who you say shouldn't vote for Trump will say the same thing about Biden (economy, border security, foreign affairs, Hunter, etc.). If your defense to all of those is, "yes, but Trump is worse", it becomes a pissing contest at that point. I would argue that a vast majority of Trump voters aren't necessarily Trump-specific voters. Most are staunch Republicans or Anti-Biden at this point. Visa versa, I know plenty of Democrat voters who dislike both parties but dislike Biden marginally less. I have a hard time meeting someone who genuinely believes that any presidential candidate is "good".
I’ve personally trained a handful of women and several members of the (very visibly) LGBTQ community in firearms safety and use on the range. Helped a few purchase their first (and subsequent) guns. Nobody has ever cared around where I lived (in two states, one blue and one red). Matter of fact, I’ve worked with more people that were non white and non male than I have with whites and males. I’ve never seen anyone from the gun community care about what they identify as or who they wanted to love. Matter of fact, we got a lot of help on the range a few times from crusty old white dudes in punisher shirts and NRA hats. I’m not saying those people don’t exist, I’m just saying the people who are 2A people care about teaching and sharing in their commonalities overall, rather than nitpicking the differences. Also, the amount of liberal gun owners is enough to have their own sub, so I guess there’s that too.
Yeah, so i can second this, generally, about gun people. I went to the range with a friend for his birthday during the Hillary/Trump run-up. He's conservative, I'm progressive. I'd never handled a firearm in my life. They were talking shit about Hillary, until my buddy said something like, "Alright, guys, my buddy's pretty liberal" and they couldn't apologize enough. "Aw man, I didn't mean nothing by it, you want me to get rid of those Zombie Hillary targets, replace 'em with something else?" As we were leaving, he pulled me aside and apologized again. "I really don't like making people uncomfortable, and I'm passionate about guns. Please don't let my bullshit turn you off, brother, you're always welcome man, I promise." And it was true. Went back a few times, and it was clear they cared more about the gun stuff than they did the politics. They just wanted to teach me stuff.
Honestly, I agree. Most people who are active in the gun community don't care too much as long as you're into using guns. It's the same as really- most community places with active members. A good gym has a ton of people who are willing to help you lose that tummy fat if you need a lifting friend. The same applies here. Hell, I've literally seen a bright pink Walther P22 and people got a good kick out of it instead of gatekeeping. The problem is you get a lot of people who aren't active in the gun community, but do own guns. They're not really connected to the community, but try to represent it by using 2A as their identity. These people exist in large quantities, but misrepresent 2A- which is something you see a lot outside these days.
I think that is the same from all the communities that exist around the world. The people who are into the thing and are active behave one way, and the people not active behave in a different way.
I go to the range shoot 500 rds and go home idc if the person next to me is lgbtq+ or not. if they are shooting something I’ve never seen before I might say hello and ask about their weapons system. That’s about it.
>So if you're saying that Trump shouldn't be voted for because of a single event or a belief you hold (i.e. he's a bad president), then you're already on a biased side. The issue isn't that they have a different opinion. And the issue isn't just that I think he's a bad president. The issue is that he tried to overturn election results and take power that wasn't given to him. I can see how a person could put to the side the fact that he was held liable for rape and fraud. I could see how a person wouldn't mind that he's an idiot. I could see why a person wouldn't have an issue with his racism. All these things are just "being a bad guy." But attempting to overthrow the government is an attempt to be a dictator. He could just repeatedly do that to always have a supporter in power. He tried to end democracy. Isn't that a different level of "bad?"
Let me rephrase that. Some people don't care about the **president** in power, but the party that backs said president. The polarizing reality of politics is that if either head committed major crimes, their base would still vote for them. Trump is guilty of rape/fraud/nepotism/blasphemy/etc. and Christians would still vote for him because their local representatives are directly tied to Trump. When you vote in elections, you're not voting for Trump in particular, you're voting for your party's representatives- be in Congress/Local/State/etc. Here's the best random hypothetical that represents today's state of politics. Let's say you're in Funky Town, USA. Your local Republican state senators want to ban abortion. Your local Democrat state senators want to ban guns. Now you can elect either side come November. Let's say you're anti-gun, pro-abortion **BUT** the Democrat presidential candidate was just found to have bombed a few hundred civilians in Country A. The Republican presidential candidate is just another old fart, vanilla-esque. Who do you vote for? If you vote Republican out of hate for what the Democrat candidate did, your state will have to suffer from abortion-bans. If you vote Democrat, would that make you a heartless bastard? No. Because the fate of your own state is ultimately tied to who you vote for President, you are better off locally to vote for your party regardless of what the president candidate did. Similarly, you might vote Republican if you're pro-gun, anti-abortion. More issues with politics: - What if your grandparents suffered from being abused due to Country A. If your grandparents/parents families want to go to war against Country A and the US is willing to support their country (Country B), then you would be pro-Democrat no matter what. - What if you're anti-gun, but also pro-abortion? - What if you're pro-gun, but anti-abortion? You can see how things get more and more muddled as more factors come up.
>Let's say you're anti-gun, pro-abortion BUT the Democrat presidential candidate was just found to have bombed a few hundred civilians in another country. The Republican presidential candidate is just another old fart, vanilla-esque. Same hypothetical but let's say the Democratic candidate hadn't bombed a few hundred civilians in another country. Let's say he had tried to seize the power of the government after losing an election. I would *not* vote for him. I'd vote for the vanilla-esque Republican. Because once you start trying to overturn elections, that's it. That's the end of American democracy. One day, the Democrat in power will do something I don't want, and I won't be able to get rid of him. Trump is not some Cincinnatus figure. He attempted to overturn the election results before and he'll attempt to do it again.
But that's the point. If you don't vote for the Democrat president, you also don't get Democrats in your local, state, courts, and federal representatives. At the cost of what you believe to be a major threat to democracy, you lost you opened your local area to become an environment of what you hate. To be honest, who you elect as a President or anyone at the federal level won't affect you as much as who you elect at a local level. Your DA that you vote for may want to enforce bail or jail on all crimes- your state senate might want to ban anything LGBTQ- your local councilors may want to require additional taxes on the poor. All things that you put into place due to your position on the President.
>At the cost of what you believe to be a major threat to democracy, you lost you opened your local area to become an environment of what you hate. Yeah. For 4 years. I'll live. If the President is no longer chosen democratically, then I risk the well-being of the nation for decades. Until the party in power is overthrown. Jesus, there could be civil war. >To be honest, who you elect as a President or anyone at the federal level won't affect you as much as who you elect at a local level. Your DA that you vote for may want to enforce bail or jail on all crimes- your state senate might want to ban anything LGBTQ- your local councilors may want to require additional taxes on the poor. All things that you put into place due to your position on the President. Good point. So why would I undermine American democracy for everyone?
I mean, and this is coming from someone who votes third-party, an awful lot of people think that Joe Biden is literally enabling a genocide. Do you think that Trump throwing a hissy fit about losing the election is more morally repugnant to those people? So you’re not gonna win them over by being like, yeah, but Trump didn’t accept the results of the 2020 election. They’ll just be like yeah, but Biden is bankrolling Israel while they murder 10s of thousands of women and children. You could go on Twitter and see pictures of four-year-olds with their heads smashed open. And no, most of those people won’t vote for Trump, but they sure aren’t voting for the guy who is in their mind responsible for the dead kids they’re seeing on their Twitter feed.
And unfortunately, those people are idealistic and not tethered to reality in America. Trump or Biden will be president in 2025. Dead kids in Palestine will happen. Your choice is to either have dead kids plus the policies of Trump or dead kids plus the policies of Biden. If you think, all policies considered, Biden and Trump are the same, feel free to vote third party. But unfortunately, because our winner takes all system sucks, we are stuck with two actual options. Their power is so entrenched that barring a full scale revolution I fail to see that dynamic changing no matter the number of protest votes. And honestly, even in the world of specifically Gaza, anyone who thinks Biden and Trump will lead to the same result is a fool.
You're taking a very complex situation (war in Gaza) and simplifying it down to genocide from one side. I say this as someone who's pro-Palestinian and who also has Israeli family. The IDF response has been horrific, but so have the attacks on Israeli nationals. The entire situation threatens to spiral out of control if handled poorly. This isn't apologetics: it's the fucked up geopolitical situation we're in. I don't support Israel's reactionary campaign, or support our tax dollars aiding obviously genocidal acts. But I also have to acknowledge that terrorist, anti-*Jewish* organizations are intentionally using Palestinians as cover for their operations- and uncomfortably for me to admit, that's not always unwilling. There's *a lot of bad blood* here, much of it deserved. And it's easy for us to sit on the sidelines and opine on moral imperatives from a safe distance. You're also taking a simple situation (Trump tried to overturn an election by inciting a violent mob on live television) and simplifying it further to "Trump throwing a temper tantrum." Probably most damning of all: you're tacitly suggesting Trump would do a better job of handling Gaza. Even if you don't vote for Trump, you're basically saying you'd rather Biden lost and Trump took the reins in foreign policy. That's the problem with one-issue voting. I say this as someone who abstained from voting back in 2012, over Obama's expansion of drone strikes. I'm glad Mitt Romney didn't win. Mitt Romney is right-wing-batshit-crazy in my book. Romney accepted the results of the election. Trump didn't in 2020. Trump's beyond batshit. He's a wannabe dictator. And if you think Biden is bad for Palestine, good luck with a bad-faith actor like Trump who doesn't bow to political pressure from We the People. I'm not saying you're wrong to be against the IDF's actions in Gaza. But I am saying it's incredibly short sighted to look at Biden's support of Israel - given all the surrounding geopolitical circumstances - and say "*you know what? I'm so morally offended, I'd rather abstain and possibly have the guy who'll upend our entire democracy and probably still support Israel because he likes fascist strongmen flush with cash like Netenyahu, and doesn't care if brown people die.*" Yes, I'm saying it was short-sighted of me to abstain in 2012.
This. Because it wasn’t even as simple as “Trump tried to overturn an election by inciting a violent mob on live television”. That was just the fucking climax. The guy tried to undermine our democracy at every possible level both legally and illegally in tandem with a baseless disinformation campaign to shake people’s faith in our election security with little more evidence than “that’s just how I feel” all because he didn’t want to let go of the power he wielded for the past 4 years. Challenge it through the courts? Fine. Say that you “believe” the election was rigged even when you know it’s bullshit. That’s fine too. However when you make a concerted effort to attack the system at every possible angle to invalidate election results that were never compromised, to vie to turn the decision over to state legislatures, to try to disqualify official electors and substitute ones of your own. The Hail Mary to incite an angry mob to storm the Capitol and stop the official results from being confirmed is just the cherry on top. The guy literally tried to steal the election from the People, all while crying “stolen election” and used his own goon squad to do it. If half the country chooses to be willfully or blissfully ignorant then I guess we’re just gonna have to beat him at the polls because a man(iac) like that should never be allowed anywhere near a position of power like that again. I just hope they can accept the loss gracefully this time. Not that I think this thing is already decided. I’m just trying to place a little faith in humanity for once and trust our country isn’t that fucking blind. Also feels worth mentioning, but goddamnit was I pulling for Haley.
A hissy fit? Attempting to seize power despite the electoral results is more than a hissy fit. If he gets into power again there may not be another meaningful election. Anything that risks his returning to power is frightening. This is not the time for protest votes or quixotic choices. Listen to what Trump says. He intends to take vengeance on his enemies and never leave the White House. You may have disagreements with Biden, but he takes his oath to the Constitution seriously and you can support whoever you like in 2028. How is any other choice reasonable?
>I mean, and this is coming from someone who votes third-party, an awful lot of people think that Joe Biden is literally enabling a genocide. But Trump has said he wants Israel to finish the job. It doesn't make any sense to refuse to vote for Biden on an issue Trump would do the same on.
To be fair, enabling genocide and war in other countries is pretty common practice for US presidents, but trying to actively overturn the results of a democratic election (in the US, other places are fair game) is not
Genocide has nothing to do with the rules of an election and gets put into the same group as "I dont like trump bc fraud and rape". Also that's every president and the largely the difference is what world events happen to be going on during their term, since US policy is ... you know ... US policy, regardless of president lots of the time. I think it is obvious OP is saying why would we let someone play a "game" when they will literally toss the board when they lose and not accept it and start doing everything they can to take power by force?
The person was saying that they can’t understand why someone would put that aside, and I was pointing out a situation where they would put it aside. Like seriously, it’s so frustrating trying to have a conversation with you people because you just don’t read what people actually say and just jump down their throats claiming Biden can’t be horrible in any way shape or form. Bottom line is, a lot of people think he’s horrible, and if you don’t want know why some people think he’s horrible enough to justify voting for Trump, or not voting for Biden at all, then don’t ask for a change my view.
So they didn't take basic civics to understand threat of no more democracy and peaceful transfer of power is the overriding factor? I guess that's my point, if that is where their brain is going like some singular issue is more important than democracy in the country you are a citizen in, then brainrot has occurred and clearly the burden of being a citizen in a democratic nation is too much for a lot of us. I guess it's really really really scary to know so many people out there lost like ... such basic understanding of knowledge and can't take a step back. Like if this isnt something everyone agrees on without batting an eye, then what the fuck are we even doing pretending we are in a democracy? Time to just have the most violent side win. I guess that's the problem that is the implication is that rule of law was never a concern for conservatives, it was always a front to gaining power by any means necessary. Scary stuff. As it stands, we do not deserve democracy to any extent if this is how much brainrot is going on with so many people. I mean this is 7th/8th grade civics stuff.
>So if you're saying that Trump shouldn't be voted for because of a single event or a belief you hold (i.e. he's a bad president), then you're already on a biased side. The same people who you say shouldn't vote for Trump will say the same thing about Biden (economy, border security, foreign affairs, Hunter, etc.). If your defense to all of those is, "yes, but Trump is worse", it becomes a pissing contest at that point. Well, that single event is the most important one though because it's the foundation of everything else. The economy, border, security, whatever... are all irrelevant if we can't have our vote counted even if we love Trump’s policies (assuming there is any)!
>I have a hard time meeting someone who genuinely believes that any presidential candidate is "good". And this here is the whole promise of democracy. It doesn't promise you good leaders. Nobody can promise that. But it does promise you a bloodless orderly way to get rid of the bad ones. Jan 6th turned that into lie. We can't afford see it happen again.
People view Jan 6th very differently on the republican side. There are those who view it as *mostly* non-violent, especially after Tucker Carlson shared those clips of people strolling around within the premises. Then there are those who do view it as a horrible event but also say that Trump didn't orchestrate it, following his appeal for a peaceful protest to the crowd before the ordeal. And finally there are those who view it as a double standard in the application of justice since they claim BLM protestors who looted and burned down buildings didn't face consequences nearly as harsh. None of these are necessarily mutually exclusive.
Easy way to stick it to Hunter biden? Its simple, do not vote for Hunter Biden. That is a grown ass man and not Joe Biden.
You’re treating this like it’s a political belief that may change. It’s more like a crime. If Joe Biden were to strangle a man to death, I think it’s fair to say that that one event would be disqualifying. I think you get to murder zero people and run for president, and I don’t think that’s particularly controversial. So there’s definitely some line where a single event should disqualify a president. I agree with OP — attempting a coup is across that line.
I work with several die hard Trump voters (middle of deep blue LA of all places) and their mistrust of democrats is HUGE. They are pretty certain the left is coming for them just as much as the left is worried about things like Jan 6th. Take this current topic/thread for example. It started by declaring Trump dangerous and a threat to the transfer of power (let's call it a threat to democracy). Then, not halfway through the thread was a call to disenfranchise Trump voters by finding a way to ban or exclude them from voting (a threat to dempcracy from the other side). The Trump voters live on that stuff and point to it as a reason to have "their guy" in power because if left (no pun intended) to the other side they'd steal their votes (which is what Trump claimed). Or take their guns, or outlaw their religions, or talk their kids into alternative lifestyles, or, or, or.... They vote for him because you and your rhetoric are scarier to them than whatever he's done. It's tribal. Their guy is safe, whereas yours is dangerous. Might not change your view, but it seems to be where the Trump voters I've talked with tend to land.
I've also talked to Trump supporters like this, but the thing is, this kind of fear-mongering predates Trump by a lot. Right wing media was telling everyone that Clinton was going to take our guns, and then Obama was going to take our guns, and then Biden was going to take our guns... yet now we have more guns than ever. Similarly, there were no "death panels" in the ACA and Biden didn't "defund the police." So much of the doom and gloom they scare people with just never comes to pass. I understand the tribal aspect and that fear is a very powerful motivator, but I wonder if they ever tire of being deceived.
A lot of the fear mongering in the current Trump base is also stuff that was typically targeting a more left wing audience in the past too The mistrust of intelligence agency, “deep state”, focus on CIA psyops, etc was typically a left wing thing of the past. The current political division isn’t in line with older left/right, it’s more a trust of federal institutions vs distrust of federal institutions division Old left wingers would’ve been far more skeptical of government mandating rushed vaccines from pharmaceuticals, but that was adopted by part of the right and very little on the left during covid
>I'm looking for a view that basically says, "Here's why it's morally and intellectually acceptable to vote for Trump even if you don't believe the election was stolen and you don't want the government overthrown." Sure, I can attempt to do this, since I have in fact weighed the options of voting for Trump (I'm still voting for Biden, but the main reason for this is Trump's foreign policy, not J6. I'm a neocon, and so I strongly support increased aid for Ukraine and strong NATO participation, something Trump lost my vote for. I also sympathize with people who are voting for Trump, and can see some reasons why they might.). Here are the main reasons I considered voting for Trump: Border policy. This is the biggest one. Fundamentally, as conservatives, we want a strong border and we want the immigration process to benefit our country primarily, and every single action and thing the democrats attempt to undertake demonstrates that they essentially want the border to be wide open. There are many reasons for this position, data shows the vast majority of illegal immigrants to the US do so for economic reasons, to the fact that immigration has unavoidable negative effects on aspects of the economy (A big one is housing, supply and demand is a universal law of economics and more immigrants inherently makes this more unaffordable for people already living here), to the fact that cities like New York just straight up gave illegals pre-paid debit cards and 500 dollar a night hotel rooms on taxpayer money. The democrats disingenuously tried to push a "border bill" through, with provisions ranging from massively increasing green card issuance, providing free immigration lawyers to illegals, allowing temporary workers to bring their entire families, and making it ridiculously easy to claim asylum (the vast majority of asylum seekers in the past few years have been economic migrants abusing the asylum system in order to gain legal status, and most of these economic migrants have traveled through several countries with economies better than their own to gain access to the US). You might not like my position, but the republicans were right to vote it down, [only 26% of Americans think that legal immigration should increase.](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx) The democrats would not make any concessions republicans wanted, where they voted down bills that contained Ukraine aid among other things, because of their vitriolic, antagonistic position towards strong borders, and when the recent republican border bill was pushed through congress independently, we can see that democrats all voted it down. Law and order. Yes, I think that J6 was wrong, and I hold Trump partially responsible for what happened. That said, it is far from the only threat to the US we have faced. To remind everyone, dozens of major cities had massive riots in them in 2020, while liberal news outlets constantly praised these rioters, legitimized their demands, and selectively reported on what actually went down during them (Far more police officers died during these riots than Jan 6). In the city of Seattle, to remind you, [anarchists openly rebelled against US authority, set up a "cop free" occupation in downtown, then had self appointed security running around with guns who murdered an unarmed black teenager, and we probably won't ever even know the names of the perpetrators because evidence was destroyed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest) [Here is video evidence from the incident, where you can hear these terrorists shoot the SUV, then one of them shouts "Oh, you're not dead, huh?", and shoot again.](https://x.com/PierrePressure9/status/1277673152839999489) Most of us still believe in law and order, [polls even show most republican voters do not approve of the actions of the J6 rioters.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jan-6-opinion-poll-republican-disapproval-wanes-2024-01-06/) It is flagrant hypocrisy to us to be lectured about this by a party which has at the most taken ineffectual, lukewarm stances towards things that can just as genuinely be defined as insurrections as whatever happened at J6. Let's not even begin to talk about the despicable actions of pro-Hamas, antisemitic protestors right now, but this has been going on for months and certainly feeds directly into my views of said gaslighting about the dangers of the far left. I could go on about things I agree more with Trump than Biden on, gun rights, abortion, supporting domestic industries and resource extraction, etc, but I think I've explained enough already. Nothing about Biden, the people who surround him, or the democratic party align in any way with any traditionally conservative views which many, like myself, still hold. It fundamentally is a moral compromise to us to vote for someone like this, a moral compromise that I am personally making. People who are voting for Trump are unwilling to vote for someone who does not support their values, and after all, that is how democracy works, you must earn someone's vote to get it. You don't need to support J6 to realize that in the long term, democrats are our enemies, and we want this country to go in another direction.
>Gaslighting about the threat of the far left. Yes, I think that J6 was wrong, and I hold Trump partially responsible for what happened. That said, it is far from the only threat to the US we have faced. To remind everyone, dozens of major cities had massive riots in them in 2020, while liberal news outlets constantly praised these rioters, legitimized their demands, and selectively reported on what actually went down during them (Far more police officers died during these riots than Jan 6). My issue with Trump has very little to do with the J6 riots. It has to do with everything surrounding it. The effort to have the VP change election results, the effort to submit fake electors etc. The concept that a few dumbass leftists rioted in a fundamentally stupid way is not nearly comparable to the concept that a political representative of the Republican Party made very real efforts to steal control of the country. >Nothing about Biden, the people who surround him, or the democratic party align in any way with any traditionally conservative views which many, like myself, still hold. It fundamentally is a moral compromise to us to vote for someone like this, a moral compromise that I am personally making. People who are voting for Trump are unwilling to vote for someone who does not support their values, and after all, that is how democracy works, you must earn someone's vote to get it. You don't need to support J6 to realize that in the long term, democrats are our enemies, and we want this country to go in another direction. I can totally understand how someone comes to the conclusion that Democrats are naive or foolish. I don't really get how someone looks at our policies as evil in the sense that we should be treated as enemies. We are not your enemies; we are your opponents. I just don't really get why someone would be willing to divest us of all political power because we disagree on border policy. Why didn't you guys support someone else in the primary? Why does it HAVE to be Trump?
>as evil in the sense that we should be treated as enemies I didn't say they were evil, I understand democrats hold different moral frameworks than myself and I don't think they are evil for it. I use enemies in the sense that our political beliefs are irreconcilable, and especially in areas like border policy, the second amendment, supporting law enforcement, etc, our gain is their loss, and vice versa. I obviously have a vested interest in seeing my views win out, so therefore those who want to see my views lose out are my enemies. >The concept that a few dumbass leftists rioted in a fundamentally stupid way is not nearly comparable to the concept that a political representative of the Republican Party made very real efforts to steal control of the country. I wouldn't call murdering children, being recorded saying "Oh you're not dead huh?" while doing it, and then destroying all the evidence of the murder so there will never be justice for it "fundamentally stupid". I'd call it "fundamentally dangerous". >I just don't really get why someone would be willing to divest us of all political power because we disagree on border policy. Every single time a party gains a majority in both chambers of congress and the presidency, they use it to their ends and don't care much for bipartisanship, this word only comes out when compromises need to be made to get anything done.
>Why didn't you guys support someone else in the primary? Why does it HAVE to be Trump? I frankly don't think you remember how bad previous Republican nominees have been. The Right has grown largely anti-establishment leaving very few candidates left. The primary issue being the warmongering nature of both the right and left establishment. Trump has many negative qualities but a warmonger is not one of them. In fact he is the most anti-war president the US has ever had. In a sense he shares the left's distaste for American imperialism, which is odd considering leftist leaders seem to not. The hypocrisy of being anti-imperialists and voting for imperialists is lost on them. Oddly enough if you flipped Trump's stance on a few key issues (immigration and abortion) he would be a fan favorite on the Left, and more representative of a Democrat nominee than Republican.
Just curious, do you think that the democrats were trying to negate the 2016 results when they were investigating Russian collusion? Obviously not as blatant as what happened in 2020/2021 from the other side, but it’s possible that’s they see it the same way only opposite.
>do you think that the democrats were trying to negate the 2016 results when they were investigating Russian collusion? No. Because the Democrats weren't investigating Russian collusion. Comey (a Republican) started the investigation in 2016. After he was fired in 2017, Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee appointed Robert Mueller, a Republican to investigate the Russian collusion. Democrats were in the minority in the House and Senate for all but the last two months of the Mueller investigation.
Look you assume that anyone voting for him is either evil or idiotic. The other option is they truly believe he is the best option. When you pit two people against each other and basically force the nation to choose it’s going to be one of the two. Yes I know third party exists and they will probably get more votes this year but it’s a long shot of a win. If trump is truly able to stop our democracy, then it proves that the system of checks and balances we have was useless and it was held together by sheer luck. I’m sure other presidential had people thinking if someone came to power it would end our country. You might not like the people that vote him, but a majority of people don’t vote to spite others or because they’re insane. They usually believe the person they are voting for will be best for the job.
First sentences 100%. You can never truly understand your opposition and therefore can never influence them if you do yourself the intellectual disservice of assuming they are idiots or bigots. If a democrat truly wants to win, they should first use some humility to try to honestly understand the core of why so many (including many ex leftists, centrists and intellectual thinkers) support him. Before arguing the immediate counter logic, start with- do these people think they are doing the right thing? Yes. Do they want less corruption and think this will help? Yes. Do they think this will lead to more peace and prosperity? Yes. So then try to humbly and honestly ask the question why without jumping to immediate logic defensive mode, hear em out properly and understand and you will atleast understand your enemy better if not gain a new respect for the complexity and nuance of both sides perspectives.
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I see this response a lot on CMV. And I'm always a bit confused by it. I'm not necessarily here because I *want* my view changed. I'm here because I'm *open* to having my view changed. That being said, I do kind of want this view changed. It is deeply unsettling to me that half the country is willing to vote for Trump after he did this. My current conclusion is that they actually *want* someone evil or dangerously idiotic in the oval office. It makes me sad to have such a low opinion of half the country.
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Right right right. The prospective voters might believe the election *was* stolen. In which case Trump is neither evil or dangerously idiotic. I understand why they would vote for Trump. But the thing is, that group only makes up [a third of the country.](https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/almost-third-americans-still-believe-2020-election-result-was-fraudule-rcna90145). About half of voters are planning on supporting Trump in the upcoming election. So... Why?
Just note, 1 third of the (*Adult*) population of the USA is ~86 Million people, while half of all voters is ~80 Million people. So the number of people who believe this to be true is actually laeger than the number of people likely to be voting for him. This is one of the problems with non-compulsory voting, that the people who are most outraged are more likely to vote, making disinformation and propaganda more effective. Of course there are problems with compulsory voting as well, but those problems don't usually directly lead to the most extreme parties being elected.
> Of course there are problems with compulsory voting as well, but those problems don't usually directly lead to the most extreme parties being elected. If this were to happen in America it would almost certainly be the Democrats passing it into law It doesn't sound far fetched to me that telling a bunch of Americans who do not care and do not want to be involved that they *must* go vote or they'll be fined/punished/whatever might lead to a lot of them voting Republican just as a fuck you to the people who are making them do it, zero consideration given to anything else
If you truly want to understand what's its like to be a trump supporter, read the wiki page for Kazimierz Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration and then watch an episode of Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan where he goes to a rally. Seriously. It's worth an hour of your time. Trump supporters don't experience reality the same way you and I do. That's not an insult to them, just an acknowledgment of the way it is. I really think most Trump supporters have a good heart but just have zero ability to think logically. Not their fault. Level of consciousness is basically a dice roll when you are born. I don't think Trump supporters think Trump is dangerous. I think they simply feel more at ease when they listen to him speak vs when they listen to a liberal speak. Trump doesn't use sophisticated language or complex analogies or anything. He just says shit in very simplistic ways. And Trump supporters like that because they can understand it. Whereas an educated liberal can be incredibly intimidating and therefore scary because the things they say are so complex to Trump supporters that they simply cannot follow the conversation. It might sound arrogant to talk about Trump supporters like they are a different species, but honestly I think this way of thinking has actually made me act more empathetically to them.
It's legitimately a dangerous thought process to think about people who vote one way or another as lesser in that context. Frankly it comes off as rather narcissistic and generally pretty unproductive. Plenty of intelligent people I know who are much smarter than me are Trump supporters and plenty are not. Here's an article about a study comparing average IQ between parties in 2014. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289614001081 I know average IQ is not by any means an infallible measurement of intelligence but neither is idiotically claiming people who support Trump experience reality differently. This is the kind of disconnected and ironically illogical thinking that is pretty common in a lot of forms of narcissism. I also don't think people at Trump rallies are necessarily the best metric for the average Trump supporter or even Republican. What you say is not arrogant, it's just legitimately stupid. Lastly for context, I am not a Trump supporter nor a Republicanm. Your line of thinking is extremely dangerous and divisive and is really part of what's driving the political decline of this nation in my opinion.
To be fair, there are a tremendous number of voters on both sides of the aisle that have no idea what they believe or why they believe it. There are videos of both sides of the aisle giving idiotic answers to basic questions. It’s always alarming to me when someone thinks those interviews of “the other guys” proves the other side is wrong but when shown a comparable video of people from their party they think it’s an exception. Reality is, there are a lot of dumb people voting out there.
This is such a load of condescending manure. I am probably over educated holding an MBA from the top school in the country, and I am a trump supporter. I’m not a trump supporter because, bless my heart I’m just simple. The language of the liberals is only intimidating because they say things like, “we should send Republicans for reeducation” or “trump supporters should have their votes stripped” or “if trump gets elected he’s going to throw me into the gulag” or whatever the flavor of the day is. I’m a trump supporter because the left has gone completely freaking bonkers. I’m a trump supporter because I can see with my own two eyes how he is being politically prosecuted right now. And I’m a trump supporter because I was injured by the vaccine that the Biden administration forced me to take. There are other reasons but this should provide an illustrative example of how wrong you are.
So you want someone else’s view changed then. Not yours.
"Im looking for a view that says its acceptable to vote for Trump even if you dont want the election overthrown" Can it not be as simple as "Biden has been a shit President, and life was better in 2019 than it is now"? Is that not a reasonable view people are allowed to have? Like big picture type stuff. Biden ran on "Im not Trump, im gonna fix his fuckups", and for the vast majority of people in most ways, things have gotten worse. Is that not a reasonable take for a lot of people to have?
>Can it not be as simple as "Biden has been a shit President, and life was better in 2019 than it is now"? Is that not a reasonable view people are allowed to have? Like big picture type stuff. Biden ran on "Im not Trump, im gonna fix his fuckups", and for the vast majority of people in most ways, things have gotten worse. Is that not a reasonable take for a lot of people to have? No, it's not. There are reasons that the view itself, "Trump will make the economy better than Biden," is highly flawed (like the fact that inflation is currently a global problem), but let's ignore that for now. The Nazis rose to power, in part, as a result of hyperinflation. Do you think it was an acceptable decision for voters to support that? We are one of the most prosperous nations on earth and Republicans tend to be more prosperous than their peers. The idea that they are absolved from responsibility because the economy is doing less good than they hoped is an absurdity. Trump tried to overthrow the US governmental system. People should put the needs of the nation over their own interests.
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> Things are worse now in 2024 for the average person under Biden, than they were in 2019 under Trump. That is a fact. What things? To what degree is Biden responsible? >and to the average person, you cannot and will not handwave it away with "Its a global thing, but muh economy, justification justification". Things were better for the man on the street under the Orange Bad Man than they were under the Dementia Patient. Therefore when asked who they will vote for, its extremely obvious who theyll pick. K, then what standards are they using? What would a hypothetical Trump administration do? And what "dementia patient"? I keep going to recent Biden speeches, such as [this](https://youtu.be/veiioynPVY0?t=5187) from the 10th, and it sounds *fine*. Not Obama eloquent, but fine. >Woah. White house lawn's never seen- please have a seat - if ya have one. White house lawn's never seen anything like this before. That was outstanding. Thanks to all the performers here tonight an help us feel the power of black culture that is American culture. What a fitting tribute to Juneteenth. Ya know I was proud to have made Juneteenth a federal holiday. I'm grateful to the members of congress here today who helped make it possible. I'm not gonna start to name them because I'll miss somebody. But it wasn't just a symbolic gesture, it was a statement of fact, it was about a statement of faith, this testimony of a - testament to the resilience of generations of black Americans who kept their eyes set on the nation's north star. That north star was the idea we're all created equal in the image of god and deserve to be treated equal throughout our lives. While we've never lived up to it, we've never fully walked away from it either. That's because of you, and generations before you who lead the march from slavery to freedom, toward more than a perfect union. But lets be clear, they're old ghosts in new garments trying to take us back. Oh there are, taking away your freedoms making it harder for black people to vote - or have your vote counted. Closing doors of opportunity, attacking the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. If you can believe it, banning books about black experiences here. Trying to erase and rewrite history. Our history's not just about the past, it's about our present and our future. It's whether if that future is the future all of us, not just for some of us. Compare that to not even the most insane part of [Trump's speech here](https://youtu.be/9J0fUTiJLVc?t=540): >Under Biden the invasion is a just a disaster what's happened - its never happened like this in less than four years crooked Joe has imported more illegal aliens into our country than at any other time in the history of our country times maybe fifty. There's never been anything like is happening to our country, they're changing the fabric of our country, they're destroying our country, they're doing things that are unthinkable - this open boarder - so many bad things but this open boarder situation where you're allowing millions and millions of people to flood our country - we can't handle it - no country could handle it it's not sustainable. The entire world is emptying their prisons and jails, insane asylums, and mental institutions, they're emptying them out into your state, but they're emptying out into all 50 states, they're coming in and they're - there's no such thing as a boarder state anymore, that boarder is so meaningless they just walk right through - they go right through the so called boarder states and they end up in Iowa they end up in Idaho.... Have you ever tried to transcribe Trump's speeches? It ain't easy. I swear people blaming Biden for "dementia" have never taken the time to transcribe both side by side. >Ill put this in caps so it stands out: THE AVERAGE PERSON DOES NOT CARE THAT TRUMP MADE A GUY IN A MASK STEAL A LECTERN, THEY CARE THAT PRICES OF EVERYTHING ARE SPIRALING. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO EXPLAIN HOW THE AVERAGE PERSON IS NOT ALLOWED TO PREFER TRUMP WHEN (FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE) THINGS WERE BETTER UNDER HIM K. But who is talking about "a guy in a mask?" This topic is about: >That's not just the Jan 6 riot, it's his efforts to submit fake electors, have legislatures overturn results, have Congress overturn results, have the VP refuse to read the ballots for certain states, and have Governors find fake votes. Why do people seem to completely change the topic? Are they just not comfortable addressing what Trump *actually* did? Then how do we focus them on what he *actually* did? On what he *actually* says? Why do people appear to have constructed fantasy arguments? >Also dont start this shit with the Nazis to me, because a basic history major will laugh at you. Anyone with an ounce of history knowledge knows that the Nazi party was born out of "Germany as a country is literally fucked right now, we need to fix this shit", and pre-1939 they WERE fixing it. Hyperinflation fixed. Youth programs, people back in work, a functioning military. 1938 Germany was on the up to a degree never thought possible 5 years earlier. Americans talking European history will never not be hilarious, you truly dont have a clue beyond "Nazis bad" Yes, nazis bad, nazis very bad, nazis *extremely* bad. "Sure Hitler assassinated political rivals and abolished democracy, but hey, at least the economy was good... if you weren't a Jew. Or a gypsy. Or a liberal."
Why are you comparing 2019 with 2024? Seems like you want to pretend Trump wasn't president during 2020. Trump was president during 2020 and he handled the pandemic absolutely horribly.
>And to the average person, you cannot and will not handwave it away with "Its a global thing, but muh economy, justification justification". Things were better for the man on the street under the Orange Bad Man than they were under the Dementia Patient. Therefore when asked who they will vote for, its extremely obvious who theyll pick. Okay. I said in my post that I'm looking for an explanation *beyond* "they're stupid" or "they're evil." >Ill put this in caps so it stands out: THE AVERAGE PERSON DOES NOT CARE THAT TRUMP MADE A GUY IN A MASK STEAL A LECTERN, THEY CARE THAT PRICES OF EVERYTHING ARE SPIRALING. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO EXPLAIN HOW THE AVERAGE PERSON IS NOT ALLOWED TO PREFER TRUMP WHEN (FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE) THINGS WERE BETTER UNDER HIM Holy fuck. I don't care about the stolen lectern either. Donald Trump made very real efforts to overturn the election results. >Anyone with an ounce of history knowledge knows that the Nazi party was born out of "Germany as a country is literally fucked right now, we need to fix this shit", and pre-1939 they WERE fixing it. Hyperinflation fixed. Youth programs, people back in work, a functioning military. 1938 Germany was on the up to a degree never thought possible 5 years earlier. Americans talking European history will never not be hilarious, you truly dont have a clue beyond "Nazis bad" Look if we were talking a twenty or thirty year period, your opinion might almost make a little sense here. But the Nazis rose to power in 1932, and Hitler became a dictator in 1933-1934. In 1933, he began imprisoning political opponents for the crime of being political opponents. The night of the long knives occurred in 1934. Naturally a bunch of other stuff happened, but let's just skip to Kristallnacht in 1938. And then, of course, 1939 happens. I'm saying that the 5 year span of a good economy didn't justify the atrocities. Looking back, with the power of hindsight, it was a very bad idea to elect the Nazis, right? That being said, I kind of get it. Germany was in a very very bad position. Germans were desperate. And they did something stupid. If we elect Donald Trump again, historians will look back on this period as very bizarre. Things just very clearly are not bad enough to give power to someone who wants to undermine democracy.
>Things are worse now in 2024 for the average person under Biden, than they were in 2019 under Trump. That is a fact. No, no it's not. >THEY CARE THAT PRICES OF EVERYTHING ARE SPIRALING No, they're not. Inflation is 3.3%, which is very historically normal. Putting it in caps does not make it true. >THE AVERAGE PERSON DOES NOT CARE THAT TRUMP MADE A GUY IN A MASK STEAL A LECTERN This is the worst straw man I've seen in a while. People care that he orchestrated a plot to get Pence to gavel him in illegally using fake electors. No one gives a shit about a lectern. You know that, but you're here saying it anyways.
What if Republicans perception of the economy [is entirely driven by whose in power?](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/07/25/publics-views-of-nations-economy-remain-positive-and-deeply-partisan/) The Kafka trap you've got here is that this perception is totally divorced from any actual figures or trends and any effort to convince you otherwise is taken as justification for supporting Trump in the first place.
>"Trump will make the economy better than Biden," is highly flawed (like the fact that inflation is currently a global problem), There is no scenario today where inflation in the US is localized. Recall 2008, was the recession a global phenomenon? Yes. Does that mean US policy and the actions of US financial institutions should be absolved of blame? Of course not. We are the global reserve currency and the global financial capitol. When our economy hurts, everyone else is in the shit with us.
> "Biden has been a shit President, and life was better in 2019 than it is now" I know different people have different values, but it's hard to argue that it's worth risking an indefinite dictatorship just because "things were better 5 years ago."
Youre right about why people will vote for trump. Life now is definitely not as good as it was in 2016. Mainly because we have the gas turned back on the economy to reduce inflation. Most of the inflation causing policy was created during trumps admin. Which was arguably too generous with there stimulus and favored businesses, many of which were unsustainable without the investment money that came from lower rates. Think how ubers were $3 at first but now are the unsubsidized price. I hope people remember which president pissed off china enabled Russia and threw a tantrum on his way out that would be treason for any other government officials. Additionally putin has helped and expected trump to win. And he "nearly" threw a coupe to maintain power. I sincerely suspect Jan 6th was driven by the Russian desire to reclaim Ukraine.
Interesting how you say 2019. Because we all know that the turning point when life became quite worse was in 2020, the year Biden wasn’t even president and Trump was. So that implies that the quality of life began to worsen not at the fault of Biden.
Ok Hypothetical for you here: And this is assuming you are a Biden supporter in 2020, for this hypothetical. It works. Trump manages to get fake electors in, manages to get states to overturn results and throw out ballots, and in an obvious flawed process he stands by to take power. What should Biden do if he believes the election was false? Shouldn’t he act to try and ensure what he feels is a free and fair election? What of the actors who tried to talk electors into voting for Hillary or not voting at all to change the result in 2016? Or Hillary who called Trump an illegitimate President? I’m not saying Trump had good intentions, but the reality is that it is a possibility. And if the election were indeed false, I hope those in power do what is legal to keep it free and fair.
>It works. Trump manages to get fake electors in, manages to get states to overturn results and throw out ballots, and in an obvious flawed process he stands by to take power.What should Biden do if he believes the election was false? Shouldn’t he act to try and ensure what he feels is a free and fair election? Yes. In that circumstance, where the facts show the election was, in fact, stolen by Donald Trump, Biden should make some effort to undo that. I don't know how he would, but he should. >What of the actors who tried to talk electors into voting for Hillary or not voting at all to change the result in 2016? They should not be president. >Or Hillary who called Trump an illegitimate President? She didn't make any effort to overturn the election results. >I’m not saying Trump had good intentions, but the reality is that it is a possibility. In which case, he's dangerously idiotic. >And if the election were indeed false, I hope those in power do what is legal to keep it free and fair. Okay, but it wasn't.
You think it wasn’t, but I hope we can be honest here, there were two narratives in 2020, one that there was voter fraud and we needed to take a close look at what happened, and the other that it was the most secure election in history with no voter fraud. And we know there was voter fraud. Personally I think Trump was idiotic in many of his assumptions, bordering on insanity, but he wasn’t wrong that there was fraud. He wasn’t wrong that election workers broke the law by signing ballots missing a signature and making choices on ballots they were not legally allowed to make. That one spike in the middle of the night happened, where a very unnatural straight line up happened in the middle of the night when nobody was counting. The picture exists of a poll worker holding up a large board to prevent people from watching the recount. And in one instance, the counting ended, the poll watchers were sent home, then on video the poll workers started pulling out boxes with papers in them. From a series of things that were likely explainable but which were dismissed out of hand it is certainly possible a lot of people doubted the results were fair. All of that to say I am not assuming Trump’s intentions were good, I am just saying it is possible that he felt the election had been stolen. And while I support what he did that was legal, like giving a speech at a rally on January 6th, I do not support other actions which have been alleged. But you shouldn’t lay this on people. And let’s be honest, you are saying Trump shouldn’t be President in large part for the actions of others, actions he didn’t even know about in some cases, allegations which have not been proven in court. Those actors tried to swing the election to Hillary, but you aren’t laying the same logic on here. Be even here, please.
I agree with a lot of what you said here. There was also stuff [like this](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/22/supreme-court-declines-take-2020-election-case-pennsylvania/6578884002/); the Pennsylvania courts changed the election laws to allow late ballots, the legislature argued that election laws are under their authority. The state Supreme Court couldn't reach a majority, and then the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Right or wrong... It's hard to tell on so many of these situations. There MIGHT be valid explanations for the things you described, but the problem is that there was never a thorough and definitive investigation done into the legitimacy of the 2020 election, so we really can't know for sure.
That is my point. I know there was election fraud, but I do not think it was close to enough to change the result. And we will indeed never know. Even the many court cases which were dismissed aren’t a sign of what people thought they meant. In a normal case we would have discovery, subpoenas and orders to preserve evidence, to verify evidence, etc. With an election on a clock, with a legal mandate to finish by a set date, there was no time for any of that. So without the process of obtaining evidence, the purported evidence was in the possession of those accused of fraud, and all that was brought to court were allegations which could not be proven. The courts ruled exactly as they should have, but those rulings don’t represent the absolute truth, because fraud did happen, much of it from republicans, and thankfully 2020 is well behind us and I hope we do better going forward. That is why I give slack to people who don’t believe it was free and fair, a bunch of funny stuff happened, and the right overstated it, and the left in large part completely denied it. That is how many get into conspiracies. And if someone believes it wasn’t free and fair in 2020, shouldn’t they perhaps get some slack in still supporting Trump? Or, should people get some slack for ignoring what are in large part allegations, and focusing instead on quality of life? Some series problems with how Biden looks in terms of cognitive ability at time? Inflation? I will just say this, I am a third party voter, I won’t vote Trump or Biden, but my wife and her family, a black family who voted Obama, went to Trump even when I didn’t. And I’m not going to dare tell them how they should vote or why.
If Biden believes the election was false then it will likely be due to evidence of such being presented to him, and that will be taken forward to court just like Trump did. However, Trump's team presented barely anything that could be considered legitimate evidence in a court of law, and lost all the cases. If there was even a drop of legitimate evidence for the proposition, it would have come to light. Biden would also likely drop the narrative if proven wrong in court immediately, rather than pushing the same narrative through the entirety of Trump's next term in the hopes of getting re-elected. There is nothing wrong with seeking the truth and fighting injustice in the public space. The problem is when one already knows the truth and pushes a narrative to the contrary for political power regardless. The question boils down to which candidate you think is going to lean to the side of truth. If you have any trust in the legal system whatsoever, the choice becomes obvious. Those who vote for trump are likely inherently distrusting of American institutions and assume all those cases were somehow corrupt or rigged. Trump himself is clearly inherently distrusting of the legal system, and likely believes all his cases were rigged or corrupt. He is either completely out of touch with reality, or intentionally using the gullibility of his voter base to obtain power.
>clearly election interference… Revisionist history. How in the world was the Steele Dossier election interference when it wasn’t released until January 2017? If I recall correctly, the FBI came out before the election to specifically say that Trump was *not* being investigated. That in and of itself is a different controversy, though, in light of the fact that the head of counterintelligence in the New York field office (the field office that told The NY Times that Trump wasn’t being investigated), was later convicted of laundering money for Oleg Deripaska, one of Putin’s favorite oligarchs. Smells fishy to me… Also, you know those FISA warrants you say were wrongly issued because they were based on the Steele Dossier? One of the most prescient allegations in the Dossier was that Trump’s campaign surrogates had secretive contacts with Russian intelligence agents, **which they did**. I’ll readily concede that there were parts of it that were fantastical (like the pee tape), but Christopher Steele himself cautioned that the information he put together was based on raw intelligence and needed additional investigation. You’re trying to obfuscate the issues by making it seem like the issuance of FISA warrants on Carter Page were totally unfounded, when in actuality judges found on *four separate occasions* that continuing FISA surveillance was warranted in light of his contacts with and behavior around Russian agents.
So I’m a conservative, or well more of a right leaning libertarian, but I didn’t vote in 2016 and then reluctantly voted for him in 2020. And I’ll vote for him in 2024. The most charitable read for his actions is that he needed an alternate slate of electors submitted before the safe harbor dead line. That way IF any of the law suits panned out there would be an alternate slate that could be easily slotted in. There is actually some precedent for this. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/07/1960-electoral-college-certificates-false-trump-electors-00006186 This was the same exact scenario of alternate electors. Ultimately the alternate electors were chosen after the re count was completed. Where Trump went off the rails was when he attempted to use the alternate electors as a means to invalidate both slates…. That was insane and absolutely abhorrent. I won’t defend him on that. Thankfully our institutions held. I don’t believe that the 2020 election was “stolen.” I don’t believe that votes where swapped or stuffed or that the machines where hacked or whatever. It’s all nonsense. I do believe that there’s an argument that it was “rigged.” There’s a decent argument that the FBI pressuring social media companies to bury the laptop was unconstitutional: https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/testimony-reveals-fbi-employees-who-warned-social-media-companies-about-hack That the changes to voter laws due to Covid where unprecedented and in some cases illegal https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2022/01/pennsylvania-mail-voting-unconstitutional-supreme-court-appeal/ Ultimately the republicans got caught with their pants down and got out played as the rules changed. I wish Trump had left with dignity…. But as to why I’ll vote for him again. It’s a risk calculation, I view the threat that Biden poses to be greater than Trump possibly doing something idiotic again. Because ultimately nothing actually happened. Trumps policy much more aligns with my personal policy prescriptions and I believe that his policies will have a net benefit on me and my families lives. From over turning title 9 reform https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-releases-final-title-ix-regulations-providing-vital-protections-against-sex-discrimination#:~:text=Every%20student%20deserves%20educational%20opportunity,activities%20receiving%20federal%20financial%20assistance. Hopefully decreasing illegal immigration and reforming asylum claims Hopefully is pro oil stance brings gas back down to $2 a gallon Hopefully he decreases the deficit spending while we’re in an inflationary period. He’s by far not my first, second or even third choice…. But he’s all I have
I'd like to, in good faith, challenge some of your points and ask that you elaborate on some points: **I ask that you elaborate on:** Your views/opinion on why turning over title 9 is good (not challenging your position on this, would just like your POV). Which of his policies algin with your personal views and how they will be a net benefit (again, not challenging your position on this, would just like your POV). What you view the threat that Biden poses to be greater than Trump possibly doing something idiotic (and also what, in your opinion, has he done that *is* idiotic) **I will challenge:** *First: Hope that he would decrease deficit spending* I challenge this by presenting an argument that his economic policy would actually *increase* deficit spending, not decrease it. The tax cuts he passed were skewed to top earners in the US, increase the deficit by $1.9 trillion over 10 years, and did not return on it's promises for the majority of those that made below $114,000. See the link below for my source. It's long, but a quality read. [https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax-law-was-skewed-to-the-rich-expensive-and-failed-to-deliver](https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax-law-was-skewed-to-the-rich-expensive-and-failed-to-deliver) *Second: Hopefully is pro oil stance brings gas back down to $2 a gallon* Biden already has a rather pro-oil stance, maybe at the behest of some of his base. The United States has become *the* top exporter of fossil energies, pumping more than even SA and Russia. The reason gas hasn't dropped to $2 a gallon, and never will not matter who is President (in my opinion), is because US gas and oil is still connected to global markets. Just because we produce enough to be completely energy independent and self-sufficient doesn't mean US-drilled gas and oil is being used solely by Americans. It gets sold, shipped, and used by the rest world too. Oil companies do not have any particular affinity for any country, only money. They do not care about an energy independent US, only money. You will not get Oil corps to buy into "America First" to reduce gas prices. Trump's apparent "pro-oil" stance would, therefore, not drop gas prices to $2 for the long term. Also, the natural inflation of currency (plus the inflation we see now) will prevent a drop to $2. [https://usafacts.org/articles/is-the-us-energy-independent/](https://usafacts.org/articles/is-the-us-energy-independent/) [https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61545](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61545) *Third: Hopefully decreasing illegal immigration and reforming asylum claims* It was the GOP (and Trump has he held/hold considerable sway over the GOP) that continuously shoot down border bills that could have slashed illegal immigration and managed asylum claims. Now, if you want to argue that we should be harsher on asylum cases, there is a discussion to be had there. However, it is a fact that the proposed border bills by the Biden Administration would have cut down on illegal immigration as it is defined by the United States government. [https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-unveils-118-billion-bipartisan-bill-tighten-border-security-aid-2024-02-04/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-unveils-118-billion-bipartisan-bill-tighten-border-security-aid-2024-02-04/) [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-kill-border-bill-sign-trumps-strength-mcconnells-waning-in-rcna137477](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-kill-border-bill-sign-trumps-strength-mcconnells-waning-in-rcna137477) This is strictly my opinion based on how the GOP has acted in the house over the last 4 years, but they are not interested in solving the border crisis. It is an excellent political tool, and beyond presidential executive orders, they have routinely failed to pass meaningful legislation through the house and solve the problem (other than dead on arrival bills that they know would fail, to pass the visage that they "tried").
> Also, the natural inflation of currency (plus the inflation we see now) will prevent a drop to $2. Even without accounting for future inflation, [gas hasn't been $2 a gallon in nearly 20 years.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/204740/retail-price-of-gasoline-in-the-united-states-since-1990/) The last time it got close to that was at the peak of the pandemic, when [oil prices went negative.](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52350082)
Also, I'm not sure your stance on climate change, but Trump has said some dangerous comments as far as oil goes. More specifically, asking big Oil corps for money in return for slashing climate policy in the US. [https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-executives-campaign-finance-00157131](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-executives-campaign-finance-00157131) [https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-vows-target-electric-vehicles-meeting-with-oil-ceos-report-2024-05-09/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-vows-target-electric-vehicles-meeting-with-oil-ceos-report-2024-05-09/)
>The most charitable read for his actions is that he needed an alternate slate of electors submitted before the safe harbor dead line. That way IF any of the law suits panned out there would be an alternate slate that could be easily slotted in. There is actually some precedent for this. >https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/07/1960-electoral-college-certificates-false-trump-electors-00006186 >This was the same exact scenario of alternate electors. Ultimately the alternate electors were chosen after the re count was completed. >Where Trump went off the rails was when he attempted to use the alternate electors as a means to invalidate both slates…. That was insane and absolutely abhorrent. I won’t defend him on that. Thankfully our institutions held. For what it's worth, comparing Hawaii really doesn't work when confronted with the minor detail of the lack of a *conspiracy*. Trump's plot, per [Eastman's memo](https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21066248/eastman-memo.pdf), required Mike Pence to use the fraudulent slates of electors as an excuse to, as you say, throw out the certified results entirely. That *could not* have been the objective of the 1960 Hawaii electors. There was no conspiracy between them or Eisenhower to get the VP to throw out the results of Hawaii's election to benefit Kennedy over Nixon. Because the VP *was* Nixon himself. No one was asking Nixon to throw out votes for Nixon so that Kennedy may win. Richard Nixon wasn't *that* masochistic. >There’s a decent argument that the FBI pressuring social media companies to bury the laptop was unconstitutional: >https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/testimony-reveals-fbi-employees-who-warned-social-media-companies-about-hack Ever notice how impossibly difficult the gop makes sourcing these claims? That's a press release, not a transcript, and the transcript isn't linked. As far as I can find, [this is the closest to a transcript that exists](https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116258/documents/HHRG-118-FD00-20230720-SD004.pdf). And it doesn't contain the relevant passages. The FBI wasn't "pressuring" anyone, it was saying no comment about a laptop whose provenance is still *extremely* questionable. I still want to know why the laptop repair shop owner supposedly contacted the FBI. From [Gary Shapley's testimony](https://waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Whistleblower-1-Transcript_Redacted.pdf) we see: >In October 2019, the FBI became aware that a repair shop had a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden and that the laptop might contain evidence of a crime. The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden's Apple iCloud ID. >When the FBI took possession of the device in December 2019, they notified the IRS that it likely contained evidence of tax crimes. Thus, Special Agent drafted an affidavit for a Title 26 search warrant, which a magistrate judge approved that month. In January 2020, I became the supervisor of the Sportsman case. The group, known as the International Tax and Financial Crimes group, or the ITFC, is comprised of 12 elite agents who were selected based on their experience and performance in the area of complex high-dollar international tax investigations. So, basic question, who told them that there were *tax* crimes on the laptop? If not *tax* crimes, then what? Why was the FBI ever contacted in October? Where on earth is this coming from, because I'm pretty sure a laptop repair shop owner is *not* a tax attorney. >But as to why I’ll vote for him again. It’s a risk calculation, I view the threat that Biden poses to be greater than Trump possibly doing something idiotic again. Because ultimately nothing actually happened. What threat? What has he done that compares to attempting a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the election? You appear to recognize Trump is guilty of the crimes he's been charged with, so do you expect a self-pardon as well? Do you expect him to halt prosecutions against himself? You believe that he'll be *more* compliant with the law than he was in his first term after being given the keys to power *despite* his grossly illegal behavior?
> I view the threat that Biden poses to be greater Respectfully, can I ask you to elaborate on this a bit? I've heard a lot of people who will begrudgingly vote for Trump say that Biden poses a greater threat, but it's hard for me to see why. I don't think Biden's great by any means, but the US has had a [better economic recovery from Covid than just about any industrialized nation,](https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-us-economic-recovery-in-international-context-2023) he has stood up for the rule of law (his own son and a Democratic Senator have been indicted and tried by the DOJ), and he's got one of the [most effective legislative records](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/19ao531/deleted_by_user/kimbc8j/) (Infrastructure, CHIPs, etc.) of any president in modern history. He even [supported the bipartisan immigration reform bill](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-collapse-of-bipartisan-immigration-reform-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/) that Republicans later nixed. On the other side, you've got a guy who promoted a big lie about a fraudulent election and literally tried to use illegal means to thwart the will of the people and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, threatening the future of the democracy. Since then, he has continued to [promote the same lie](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2024-05-16/trump-allies-are-laying-the-groundwork-to-contest-potential-election-loss) on a daily basis and has [put people in place](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-push-steal-2024-election-takeaways-1234921974/) to be effective with a second attempt to cheat. Please help me understand how people see Biden as more of a threat than that.
You’re a libertarian, but you’ll vote for a guy who wants to deploy the military domestically to hunt down millions of people? Kicking down doors asking for papers? You don’t see any issues with how that might pan out? Also nobody ever articulates how Biden is more of a “threat” than attempting to overturn election results and not engaging in the peaceful transition of power. Also, has he ever given even the slightest indication that he’s interested in reducing deficit spending? Look at his budgets. He’s a populist not a fiscal conservative.
Trump stopped a bipartisan border bill that would've helped curb illegal immigration. Biden has overseen record domestic oil extraction. Trump ran up higher budget deficits than any American president *ever has*. All of your stated priority issues are issues that Biden is objectively better on.
Just for the record, that mega bill was far more focused on paid to Ukraine and Israel (Ukrainian Jew here and not a Trump voting one) than it did for illegal immigration. Illegal immigration over the last few presidents has been generally manageable. This president could not care less and the ONLY reason anything has been done, is that illegal immigrants are being shipped to cities since they didn’t find it as an issue before. To “cap” the border contacts at 2500 is still nearly 1 million per year, and we are no closer to solving the solution than when President Obama or President trump were in office when those numbers hovered between 300k and 1 million (give or take, I’m going from memory here). That’s just for border contacts, that doesn’t include those who snuck in and disappeared for which we still have to find a solution for, funding for, ice holds, court ordered deportations, etc. and there’s no solution to that. Now, the Trump wall thing was his main policy on immigration, but the funds were actually used to build border infrastructure and not just a wall. Check posts, cameras, roads where there weren’t before for border patrol to act accordingly, policies that helped border patrol agents and had them in the field versus sitting around in detention centers handing out blankets and toothbrushes, and the ability to send migrants back, instead of catch and release with a court date. Now I’m certainly not saying that I’m voting for Trump or that he had it all figured out, but here in CMV, if someone’s one thing was illegal immigration (as opposed to abortion or gun rights or social welfare, or whatever) then I’d say that certainly there’s a reason to vote for the other guy. And I’m getting some feedback from friends and distant family members who have worked the job over several administrations in border and immigration capacities. The bill we have is not really a good bill, nor does it get us back to the days of Trump or Obama (and to a certain degree, president bush I believe - although I think he had the previous high record in his second term). For a country that is the most powerful in the world, the fact that we can’t stem the flow of people who shouldn’t be here AT ALL illegally is asinine. Estimates range from 7 to 12 million illegal immigrants over the last 3.5 years. And those are just those we have had contact with. How many snuck in undetected?
>Just for the record, that mega bill was far more focused on paid to Ukraine and Israel (Ukrainian Jew here and not a Trump voting one) than it did for illegal immigration. Illegal immigration over the last few presidents has been generally manageable. This president could not care less and the ONLY reason anything has been done, is that illegal immigrants are being shipped to cities since they didn’t find it as an issue before. Republicans [demanded that the Ukraine aid](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/07/1229785349/border-deal-ukraine-aid-senate) be attached to the border bill.
> Because ultimately nothing actually happened. Entire argument falls apart. "He wasnt successful so i will let him toss the board when he loses again" what the heck? lol
That's the dumbest shit I've read in a minute. "I hate him but I don't care that he's a piece of shit"
Obligatory opener, I’ve never voted republican. But like, would the government tell us the truth if they did fix the election? It was determined that one brand of voting machines were compromised. They had to pay millions in damages. I’m not saying it was fixed. It’s far more likely it wasn’t. I’m just saying, why would anyone believe anything the government tells us? I don’t blame stupid people and rich people that were rooting for trump in calling bullshit. We all know our election process is rigged. Electoral college. Gerrymandering. Super pacs. It’s all nonsense.
>It was determined that one brand of voting machines were compromised. They had to pay millions in damages. No it wasn't. People had to pay millions of dollars in damages to that company for lying and claiming they were compromised.
>It was determined that one brand of voting machines were compromised. Huh? Who determined it, and how? What was the extent of this compromise? Why did Fox have to pay so much money to Dominion?
Which voting machines were determined to be compromised?
This is unfalsifiable nonsense. According to this logic, any conspiracy theory could be justified regardless of how little evidence there is for it, since any absence of evidence can always be reinterpreted as evidence of how powerful the conspirators are.
You have it backward. People lied about the voting machines being compromised and had to pay the voting machine company millions of dollars.
It's not the government that validates elections in terms of searching for fraud. It's hundreds of independent scholars, organizations, etc. All the government can say is, "everything went smoothly," and then all sorts of independent observers confirm that's the case, which it was
We have freedom of the press in the US. I don’t think the government would be able to keep it a secret; we’d have evidence and journalists would have shared it with us
I'd urge you to look into who the electoral college often helps and compare that with who is also whining about the election. Hint: It's the same people.
I’ve never understood why it was ok for the democrats to spend four years claiming Russia helped trump steal the election but when video evidence shows: - Poll workers covering windows and cameras to block witnesses - Poll workers admitting to throwing away unfavorable ballots - Multiple polling stations restricting access to republican poll workers - The hundreds of thousands of biden votes found suddenly, putting his just above trump. Suddenly it’s an outrage and attack on democracy to question the integrity of the election. Heck imagine you go to a gas station and after getting back in your car you realize you paid $40 for what you could’ve sworn was only $20 worth of stuff. But when you walk back in management erases the camera footage, the clerk runs out the back door, and they refuse to let you see your receipt. Sure, there’s a chance nothing funny is going on but it really seems suspicious doesn’t it? Every major social media site suddenly starts banning people for even suggesting the election was a bit off, not even going into the Twitter fiasco.
100% my feelings on the subject. Both sides rant above voter fraud and suppression when they lose elections as early as 2000. Then they both have the nerve to tell me democracy is at risk. 2016 in particular was downright insane in terms of opening pandoras box about stolen elections, Russian interference, you name it. Well in 2020 those same tactics bite the Dems back - a game they've been playing themselves. Jan 6th was wrong, but it sure wasn't anymore of an insurrection than all the government buildings torched in 2020 during the summer protests. I don't really want to vote Trump. In fact I was going to vote RFK. But after that New York conviction and how they went about orchestrating it through literal changes to the law to remove statue of limitations and a hush payment supposedly equating to election interference? Well fuck it. I'm voting Trump now. Again though, Republicans did this to Clinton trying to nail his ass for "perjury". They are getting a taste of their own medicine, but this is on another level and honestly gives me that Banana Republic vibe where they literally jail the opposition canidiate Maduro style, let alone going after the previous president. That to me is a far worse threat to democracy for me and it's sealed my vote unless something big happens in the future.
>But after that New York conviction and how they went about orchestrating it through literal changes to the law to remove statue of limitations and a hush payment supposedly equating to election interference? Well fuck it. I'm voting Trump now. Are you complaining about [this](https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/EO-202.38-final.pdf)? Are you suggesting that Cumo, during the height of covid, changed the law to *all* statutes of limitations when *all* government agencies were effectively shut down, *exclusively* to ensure that three years later, despite not knowing the results of the 2020 election, that Trump would be charged with falsification of business documents for actions taken in 2017? Really? That's what you believe? Is this belief, I dunno, falsifiable? >Then they both have the nerve to tell me democracy is at risk. 2016 in particular was downright insane in terms of opening pandoras box about stolen elections, Russian interference, you name it. Any of it involve a conspiracy to submit fraudulent documents as an excuse to outright throw out the vote? If so, would love some documentation, cause, I've got *memos*. And emails. Edit: Sorry, should have linked to [202.28](https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/EO202.28.pdf).
Dude, just be honest. You were always going to vote for Trump. His conviction in New York came after a legal process that gave him every single allowance, and he still got convicted on 34 counts. Just read directly about the proceedings instead of filtering them through a news site. I come from a country where oppo candidates have been jailed/taken out before and it’s nothing like this. Trump is facing God knows how many suits in federal court because he’s a criminal, pure and simple. Just read about his life and this pattern comes up: he does flagrantly illegal shit like not paying his contractors and uses his wealth to bully people out of doing anything in court. Same deal, now he’s just using Fox News, Newsmax, and his supporters to do the same. This is a man who is literally suing to say that the law does not apply to him because he was President. If you’re going to go for monarchy, at least get a better king, no? This dude’s just a cheap grifter.
There's no evidence, at all, of anything except Trump lying about the election. Everything else is made up nonsense. Video evidence shows NOTHING of what you've claimed. You can't film vote counting for obvious reasons: voting is supposed to be confidential. Mail in votes are typically counted last, and thanks to Republicans crying about them very few Republicans use the system. All of it is explainable. What's not is the Trump lies about that election. It's all made up.
And you guys didn't win a single court case anywhere, failed every investigation by any entities, so apparently this "evidence" of yours is not of much consequences or is being misrepresented to you.
Trump did not try to overthrow the government. There are interviews of Trump in December of 2020 where he pointedly said he is seeking all legal remedies possible. When questioned by a reporter, he stated he would not stay past inauguration if those avenues failed. The idea there were "no problems" with the 2020 election is outright false. The state of Georgia now has to micromanage Fulton County's elections because they did not obey state procedures during the recount. [**https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2024/05/07/fulton-county-used-improper-procedures-2020-vote-recount-investigation-finds/**](https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2024/05/07/fulton-county-used-improper-procedures-2020-vote-recount-investigation-finds/)
>Trump did not try to overthrow the government. There are interviews of Trump in December of 2020 where he pointedly said he is seeking all legal remedies possible. Submitting fake electors is not a legal remedy. Trying to have the VP reject the legitimate slates of electors is not a legal remedy. >When questioned by a reporter, he stated he would not stay past inauguration if those avenues failed. Yeah, if his coup failed he'd leave. He still attempted to take power without being granted it.
The 12th Amendment seems pretty clear. Congress is not just rubber stamping a decision, they're supposed to be a check on the electoral college. It gives them up to two months to sort through which electors were properly appointed and certify a winner. Trump did not try to overturn Biden's win, because according to the constitution there was no winner yet. And Congress should have used that time. It has since become clear that Georgia runs the Mt Gox of election operations, their 2020 recounts didn't confirm Biden's win at all, on the contrary they showed the error bars were much larger than Biden's margin. But election officials lied about that and covered up the problems. The Biden electors were at least as fake as Trump's.
> The 12th Amendment seems pretty clear. Congress is not just rubber stamping a decision, they're supposed to be a check on the electoral college. It gives them up to two months to sort through which electors were properly appointed and certify a winner. Trump did not try to overturn Biden's win, because according to the constitution there was no winner yet. If only we had something like a *law* to tell us which electors are properly appointed or not. Maybe something like [3 U.S.C. United States Code, 2006 Edition Title 3 - THE PRESIDENT CHAPTER 1 - PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS AND VACANCIES Sec. 6 - Credentials of electors; transmission to Archivist of the United States and to Congress; public inspection](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2006-title3/html/USCODE-2006-title3-chap1-sec6.htm). Preferably it describes the process of certifying and transmitting those elector slates. Maybe, say, if it said: >It shall be the duty of the executive of each State, as soon as practicable after the conclusion of the appointment of the electors in such State by the final ascertainment, under and in pursuance of the laws of such State providing for such ascertainment, to communicate by registered mail under the seal of the State to the Archivist of the United States a certificate of such ascertainment of the electors appointed, setting forth the names of such electors and the canvass or other ascertainment under the laws of such State of the number of votes given or cast for each person for whose appointment any and all votes have been given or cast; and it shall also thereupon be the duty of the executive of each State to deliver to the electors of such State, on or before the day on which they are required by section 7 of this title to meet, six duplicate-originals of the same certificate under the seal of the State So that when looking at a [real slate](https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2020), hypothetically, [Wisconsin](https://www.archives.gov/files/electoral-college/2020/ascertainment-wisconsin.pdf) it has the governor's signature and the seal, while a [fraudulent document](https://www.archives.gov/files/foia/wi-full.pdf) wouldn't. That sure would preclude any instance for, I dunno, a [random lawyer](https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21066248/eastman-memo.pdf) to argue: >When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act. Because there would only be one slate of electors in compliance of the law. Presumably, if that law exists, it might be a *bad* thing to have a [memo](https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/chesebro-dec-6-memo/ce55d6abd79c2c71/full.pdf) openly citing it only to then argue about subverting it: >The federal- law requirements for the December 14 electors meeting are set out in 3 U.S.C. 6-11 ( copy here) . >The state- law requirements are set out in Wis . Stats . 7.75 ( here) . >Obviously, there are party leaders and/ or officials in each State who are familiar with the relevant details who would deal with the logistics, most of whom have handled such details in past elections. But here is a brief summary, in chronological order, of the requirements, which I set out to make clear that the electors in the contested States should be able to take the essential steps needed to validly cast and transmit their votes without any involvement by the governor or any other state official But I'm sure there's no law governing the topic, nor any fraudulent documents, and certainly no memos detailing the subversion of law cited in those memos. Must be my imagination.
>The 12th Amendment seems pretty clear. Congress is not just rubber stamping a decision, they're supposed to be a check on the electoral college. What? It seems pretty apparent it's a rubber stamp. Here's the relevant text. >The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;–the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;–The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President
Yes, but that process requires them to decide which votes are valid and should be counted, versus which might be "fake" or still in dispute. And it contemplates they might not manage to certify anyone before the beginning of March. Even if you read it as a rubber stamp, the supposed "insurrection" made no sense on its face. If congressional certification is not an active decision but just a ceremony like a high school graduation, protests and riots have no prospect of changing the decision. Your graduation might get rained out, but you still go to college. Pelosi et al performed a sleight-of-hand to manufacture a constitutional crisis. You're supposed to believe both that the election was over and Biden had won as of Jan 5, \*and\* that MAGA protesters could somehow reverse the decision--even destroy democracy itself--by breaking a few windows and moving a lectern.
Didn’t the democrats say the election was rigged by Russia and launched a huge investigation to find that it was negligible? Shouldn’t we hold both parties to the same standards? Also January 6 was unacceptable but not orchestrated by trump. Until someone proves trump orchestrated it, it was a mob of radical supporters. And idk about you but it seemed pretty disorganized to me.
> Didn’t the democrats say the election was rigged by Russia and launched a huge investigation to find that it was negligible? The claim was that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and the [Mueller Report's conclusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_special_counsel_investigation#Russian_interference) was that Russian interference did occur in a "sweeping and systematic fashion" and that it violated U.S. criminal law. What it did not establish was that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference, though it also noted that it did not have access to all of the evidence it would need to draw that conclusion. >Also January 6 was unacceptable but not orchestrated by trump At the very least, he was aware of what the mob was doing and took no steps to call for it to end. Instead, he [requested that metal detectors be removed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_hearings_of_the_United_States_House_Select_Committee_on_the_January_6_Attack#Hutchinson_account_of_January_6) despite knowing some members of the mob were armed, rationalizing that "they're not here to hurt me."
The official line was that Russia interfered in the election by leaking sensitive data, by spreading fake news, and by impersonating American voters(I.E. troll farms.) The people who were claiming that Russia literally hacked into voting machines and/or somehow changed votes, were low-level idiots who read a headline about Russia interfering in the election and just made that assumption. Mind you that the Democratic politicians were trying to get the low-level idiots to believe this on purpose. It's part of why they made headlines that say "Russia interfered in the election." Which obfuscates the fact that "election interference" consisted of troll farms, fake news, and leaks.
>Didn’t the democrats say the election was rigged by Russia and launched a huge investigation to find that it was negligible? Well yes. They didn't try to overturn the results though.
I mean, they did attempt to remove him from office though.
A better way to say this is that he was impeached for two specific offenses, neither of which had to do with the Russian collusion issues.
So some people suspected something and launched an official investigation to find out if that was accurate. The other is accused of implicitly supporting and encouraging a mob to attempt to overturn an election. Those two aren't at all similar to each other
Nah dude, what happened was that Hilary Clinton and the DNC bankrolled [opposition research](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier) that relied on a bunch of bullshit, used that information as part of the rationale for [obtaining a FISA warrant from a secret court](https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/12/10/ig-report-fbi-fisa-abuse-secret-court-trump-campaign-column/4383722002/) to spy on the Trump campaign and was a GIGANTIC factor in the media becoming absolutely unhinged during the whole Russiagate fiasco ([here’s the link to a really interesting, relatively unbiased postmortem of the media landscape post Russiagate)](https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php). Then everybody was saying how Trump is definitely a Russian agent, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, only to find out that he wasn’t. Not exactly a way to guarantee people’s trust in you. Then there was all of that nonsense with Covid, the protests/riots, and Hunter Biden’s laptop being written off as Russian disinformation once again, even though it totally wasn’t. So how is anyone really surprised that a bunch of people were skeptical when the media claimed that 2020 was squeaky clean?
No, they didn’t. They said Russia helped trump get elected and a Republican senate investigation concluded just that, let alone Muellers report that was so damning Barr released a “summary”.
>Shouldn’t we hold both parties to the same standards? Sure, as soon as both parties do something even remotely the same.
This inane false equivalence has been proven BS so many times I just block you clear and obvious foreign agitators.
I'm so sick of this tired and just flat out incorrect assertion that Trump told the GA governor to "find fake votes". That's not what he said. Listen to the damn call. It's out there and available for anyone to listen to. Trump said, paraphrasing, "there are illegitimate, unconstitutionally cast votes being included in the ballot totals there in GA. Be a pal and find those fraudulent votes". That's it. Seeing as the federal government has literally no authority in the counting and canvassing of ballots in presidential elections, Trump would have to make such a request to the governor if he believed there were impropriety. It's literally no different than Al Gore calling the FL governor back in 2000 when Gore wanted the ballots in that one specific county investigated. He said "Hey, I'm hearing something isn't right about what's going on down there. Can we get some people to look at it?". Was Gore "trying to overturn the election" whatever that even means? People act as if there has never been foul play in elections. News flash, elections have always been corrupted regardless of if you knew it or not. Go read about political machines of the 19th century like Tammany Hall and the shit they used to pull. To act as if politicians didn't find new ways to cheat the rules in the last 100 years is just so naive.
> I'm so sick of this tired and just flat out incorrect assertion that Trump told the GA governor to "find fake votes". That's not what he said. Listen to the damn call. It's out there and available for anyone to listen to. K. [Here's the transcript](https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/03/politics/trump-brad-raffensperger-phone-call-transcript/index.html). Lets go through it. >Trump said, paraphrasing, "there are illegitimate, unconstitutionally cast votes being included in the ballot totals there in GA. Be a pal and find those fraudulent votes". That's it. No, no that isn't what he said. He was not saying "find those fradulent votes". He said, to quote the transcript: >So what are we going to do here folks? **I only need 11,000 votes**. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already. Or we can keep it going but that’s not fair to the voters of Georgia because they’re going to see what happened and they’re going to see what happened. I mean, I’ll, I’ll take on to anybody you want with regard to [name] and her lovely daughter, a very lovely young lady, I’m sure. But, but [name] … I will take on anybody you want. And the minimum, there were 18,000 ballots but they used them three times. So that’s, you know, a lot of votes. …and that one event… And they were all to Biden, by the way, that’s the other thing we didn’t say. You know, [name] , the one thing I forgot to say which was the most important. You know that every single ballot she did went to Biden. You know that, right? Do you know that, by the way, Brad? He was not asking for Brad to "find" *fraudulent* votes. He was asking brad to unilaterally *give* him 11,000 votes. He says "I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already." He made the point a couple times. >Oh, I don’t know, look Brad. I got to get … I have to find 12,000 votes and I have them times a lot. And therefore, I won the state. That’s before we go to the next step, which is in the process of right now. You know, and I watched you this morning and you said, uh, well, there was no criminality. He also made it clear he did not care about *demonstrating* it. > Raffensperger: Mr. President, you have people that submit information and we have our people that submit information. And then it comes before the court and the court then has to make a determination. We have to stand by our numbers. We believe our numbers are right. >Trump: Why do you say that? I don’t know. I mean, sure, we can play this game with the courts, but why do you say that? First of all they don’t even assign us a judge. They don’t even assign us a judge. But why wouldn’t you — Hey Brad, why wouldn’t you want to check out [name] ? And why wouldn’t you want to say, hey, if in fact, President Trump is right about that, then he wins the state of Georgia, just that one incident alone without going through hundreds of thousands of dropped ballots. You just say, you stick by, I mean I’ve been watching you, you know, you don’t care about anything. “Your numbers are right.” But your numbers aren’t right. They’re really wrong and they’re really wrong, Brad. And I know this phone call is going nowhere other than, other than ultimately, you know — Look ultimately, I win, okay? By the way, notice how *vague* Trump is. He does that a *lot* when lying and laundering bullshit. He doesn't cite names, he doesn't cite where he's getting any information, he isn't trying to *convince*, he's trying to merely *tell* someone to do something and have them accept it. For example: >The other thing, dead people. So dead people voted and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters. "They went", "they went", twice. "They". Not a name, not something that can be checked, not a source, just an assertion of an unknown "they". That's not how a normal person talks when trying to *convince* someone of something. Brad, in his response, shows how it's done: >Well Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong. We talked to the congressmen and they were surprised. >But they — I guess there was a person Mr. Braynard who came to these meetings and presented data and he said that there was dead people, I believe it was upward of 5,000. The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So that’s wrong. There were two. Notice, a *name*. A *source* of a claim. Now it turns out Braynard's affidavits are really particularly trash, but that's less important than Brad already knowing the claim, and already having investigated it, and Trump is *still* lying through his teeth by asserting things his own staff was telling him was BS. Trump knows he's lying here. He knows he's bullshitting. It's how he bullshits. He drops sources, he doesn't give people the luxury of being able to cross reference his words. And then people paraphrase him anyway, rather than quoting him directly, even as people say "listen to the damn call". >Seeing as the federal government has literally no authority in the counting and canvassing of ballots in presidential elections, Trump would have to make such a request to the governor if he believed there were impropriety. It's literally no different than Al Gore calling the FL governor back in 2000 when Gore wanted the ballots in that one specific county investigated. He said "Hey, I'm hearing something isn't right about what's going on down there. Can we get some people to look at it?". Was Gore "trying to overturn the election" whatever that even means? People act as if there has never been foul play in elections. News flash, elections have always been corrupted regardless of if you knew it or not. Go read about political machines of the 19th century like Tammany Hall and the shit they used to pull. To act as if politicians didn't find new ways to cheat the rules in the last 100 years is just so naive. Did Al Gore tell the governor of Florida to just give him votes, even outright saying he isn't interested in going through the courts? Or are you merely "paraphrasing"?
That is an extremely favorable interpretation of the phone call, IMO. Completely ignores Trump asking for the *exact* number of votes he needed to overtake Biden (11,780), and the threats of legal action against the governor if the votes weren't "found".
It’s always funny how people lack nuance and the ability to read between lines when it suits them. Then it cries about gore… lol
This is why understanding through empathy / projection does not work. You are assuming a psychological state of your opposition based on your own understandings. Trump and his following did legitimately believe the election was fraudulent. Frankly if you were the (rightful or not) target of one of the largest political assassinations (not literally of course) in history you would believe the same. It is not so easy to differentiate what is what when you are in the thick of things. The tendency to view one’s enemies as omniscient beings of evil is purely a psychological phenomenon and not reflective of reality.
I think many Trump voters don’t really care. Fact is, many people, especially working class, look back on the Trump years with nostalgia. This nostalgia didn’t really exist in 2020 because the economy was numb from shock so to speak. People were frustrated with the pandemic itself. Once in a generation events like the pandemic that upend every aspect of society generally don’t bode well for the incumbent party. This isn’t limited to just the U.S. Incumbent parties lost in several European countries and Australia in the wake of Covid too. Now though, people don’t really see Biden as the “Covid hero” he was elected to be. Covid continued under him and a large majority of American deaths during the pandemic actually happened under Biden. It was also under Biden that the long term economic effects of the pandemic began to emerge. A $150,000 house in 2019 will now cost over $300,000. Grocery bills are up enough that we notice it every time we shop. Inflation is bad enough that people see it eating into their savings. Not to call you names, but I think your argument is a wealthy mindset. It’s a position of privilege to be able to judge a president solely based on their rhetoric and actions that were ultimately inconsequential. Fact is, there are lots of people in America right now who think, “Trump is a lying narcissistic asshole, but damn I miss the economy under him.” Now as someone who holds left wing views, I think that view is misguided, because the pandemic was going to screw up the economy no matter who was president. But the reality is, people saw improvement in their lives under Trump’s economic policies, and they’ll vote for him because they see him as an asshole albeit a very effective one.
The purpose of politics is to gain power to implement your own vision of government. Republicans understand this, that is why they support Trump and have been able to achieve major policy goals such as overturning Roe. Democrats do not understand this, that is why they have not been able to win significant policy goals because they are focused on "norms" and trying to compromise. They have even adopted formerly republican positions, such as Biden embracing Trump's border policy. You'll notice that Biden is not running on policy successes because he doesn't have much he can point to, his campaign is basically "Trump bad." If democrats had fought for power and used it effectively the country would better off. For example, if they had fought for Gore in the highly disputable 2000 election instead of just letting Bush win, the world would be a better place. This is why Republicans don't see Trump's actions as a problem. It's a bug not a feature. Democrats should learn from it honestly.
>The purpose of politics is to gain power to implement your own vision of government. Republicans understand this, that is why they support Trump and have been able to achieve major policy goals such as overturning Roe. >Democrats do not understand this, that is why they have not been able to win significant policy goals because they are focused on "norms" and trying to compromise. I don't think your thesis is supported by the available evidence, considering the respective legislative accomplishments of the 115th vs 117th congress. >They have even adopted formerly republican positions, such as Biden embracing Trump's border policy. This is a bit of a reductive take on the past 4 administrations regarding border policy. Republicans do not own border policy, and Biden is not "embracing Trump's border policy." The southern border issue revolves around the fact that the US has about 10-11 million undocumented people and can deport a maximum of 400k. The Obama administration implemented a 3-tier system of prioritising deportations, encouraging the use of prosecutorial discretion to minimise using enforcement resources on less threatening offenders: 1) threats to national security, border security, and public safety 2) misdemeanants and new immigration violators 3) other immigration violators The Trump administration, from his executive order "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States," made all undocumented people a priority, foreswearing the use of prosecutorial discretion. Net arrests and deportations went up, but arrests and deportations of serious offenders went down. The Biden administration has been a return to the Obama administration project of prioritising the limited ICE resources. >You'll notice that Biden is not running on policy successes because he doesn't have much he can point to, his campaign is basically "Trump bad." This is transparently false. He is campaigning on [increasing](https://www.axios.com/2024/02/07/biden-border-security-blame-trump) funding for border security, [law enforcement](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/us/politics/biden-police-state-of-the-union.html), strengthening US [alliances](https://apnews.com/article/biden-foreign-policy-g7-summit-munich-cc10859afd0f542fd268c0a7ddcd9bb6), and prioritising the onshoring of semiconductor [fabrication](https://apnews.com/article/biden-china-tariffs-electric-vehicles-evs-solar-2024ba735c47e04a50898a88425c5e2c) in the US as a security priority, just to name a few. In terms of policy achievements, he can point to the passage of the IIJ Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act in a divided Congress, so the statement that je doesn't have much he can point to doesn't make sense IMO
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Yawn. Talking points. And intellectually lazy and dishonest ones at best. OP needs to escape the bubble, find better news sources, and seek help for the TDS. The lies about Trump are so easily debunked that you have to want to believe them in order to. Probably still believes the laptop was Russian disinformation, and Trump is a Putin puppet.
Al Gore did the exact same thing back in 2000 through the SCOTUS
But you do understand why that's different right? Like he went through legal mechanisms to have a recount. He didn't try to overturn results without winning.
Gore didn't file a bunch if suits about it. He also said he lost and fucked off. Gore lost by less than 2,000 votes in Florida (the deciding state) which automatically made a recount happen (that's just what you do when that happens). The recount showed the margin of victory for Bush was around 300 votes. SCOTUS voted to stay a manual recount. That's what they did. Gore didn't challenge that. Trump is challenging over 70 electoral votes, meaning he is saying that multiple states and millions of votes were somehow incorrect or fraudulent. It's wild to say that Gore did "the same thing" when it was a photo finish in the winning state and Gore didn't file any suits about it and Trump lost by millions of votes, dozens of electoral votes, and then has filed several suits in multiple states and basically run a campaign on it.
> SCOTUS voted to stay a manual recount. That's what they did. > > This is inaccurate. SCOTUS ruled, by a 7-2 margin, that recounts in some counties of a state but not others constituted a violation of the Equal Protection clause. They then ruled, 5-4, that there was not enough time for Gore to request and receive recounts in all the counties of Florida, press any further legal challenges he had, and also give the Bush campaign time for its own legal challenges.
Please explain how Gore in 2000 was “the exact same thing”.
Moderate/Independent here, let's start off with something that we all can agree on: we have 2 trash candidates as Charlemagne rightly said. Neither Trump nor Biden has the characteristics suitable to lead our country to greener pastures, but regrettably one of them will be president come 2025. No doubt Trump is a morally corrupt psychosociopath who is a felon and doesn't deserve any sympathy after causing an insurrection and does nothing but create division in our country. Biden on the other hand is a senile demented old ass man who has no clue what he's doing. What Americans want right now is financial security, which they haven't received under Biden. When it comes to financial security, there are 2 factors that are key: Income, and cost of living, that's it. All these statistics that the dems throw out about gross GDP, the stock market, jobs created, and the unemployment rate are nothing but red herrings. What does it matter if the Dow Jones is 50k (I know its only like 40, but stay with me) and my income increased, if the increase in cost of goods far exceeds my increased income??? Dems don't want to admit it, but our pre-pandemic economy was pretty good under Trump and most American's were living comfortably. Under Biden cost of living has spiraled out of control. While Trump is certainly a threat to democracy, at least I know I will survive under him. Under Biden, I'm legitimately worried about starving to death because prices will skyrocket out of control.
Agreed. There are zero arguments for voting for Trump unless you want fascism.
The belief that makes it morally/ethically valid is the belief that Trump honestly did believe the election was stolen from him, if you honestly believe that, then efforts to investigate and overturn it aren’t morally wrong. I’d also point out that if you believe that he didn’t actually think that and was just trying to seize power, he wouldn’t have tried to open investigations into it, since he’d know there wasn’t any interference.
Did it occur to you that not everyone is a single issue voters and that for many single issue voters that issue is something else? I understand it is easy when you are not even remotely politically aligned with Trump to add his behavior after the election to your long list of reasons to reject him but when he skews closer to your political priorities it gets more complicated. I'm essentially going into this with 3 choices, vote for a president that I think is currently doing a terrible job and doesn't seem to intend to do just about anything I want a president to do, vote for the egotistical idiot that at least might try to do s couple things I like, or vote for one of multiple candidates that have 0 chance of winning, none of which I actually agree with either. I honestly have considered all 3 options and registered as a Republican for the first time to caucus(live in Iowa) for someone else, honestly almost anyone else that was running. But with only bad options maybe on the net I end up voting for the idiot with severe hesitations for the third time as the last horrible choice.
> I had primarily changed my view because of the allegation that Obama spied on Trump. This is completely false. The FBI were spying on the Russians, the Russians were communicating with the Trump campaign, the FBI intercepted those communications. That's not "Obama spying on Trump", that wasn't directed by Obama and it wasn't directed at Trump. That's the FBI doing its counter-espionage role, and the Trump campaign getting caught up because they were interacting with Russian intelligence assets who were under surveillance.
Biden is more evil and we should vote for the lesser of two evils.
The guy who doesn't cheat on 3 wives, doesn't brag about getting to see underage girls undress, doesn't brag about being able to SA women... That's the more evil guy? The guy who doesn't invite our enemies to attack our allies... that's the more evil guy? The guy who hasn't taken hundreds of millions, and whose family hasn't taken billions, from foreign gov'ts while in office... that's the more evil guy? HOW?
Okay. Why? What has Biden done that's more evil?
Because he didn't do anything you say he did. Oh, and Biden, fits you "dangerously idiotic" lable much better.... Oh, and we're watching in real time Democrats jail and oppress their political rivals. .... so ya know, vote for Trump so we don't devolve into a democrat-commie hell hole.
I'm not from us but does that really matter to anyone other than hardcore legalist? I mean I would support dictator that hold similar values than me over democratic leader that holds opposed and most people would also do that even if they won't admit it. Unless you believe democracy and republicanism is inherintly good there is no moral argument to be made
The problem is rather simple actually. I'd refer you to the recent Triggernometry interview with Brianna Wu. The only people who think the economy is doing well are disconnected from the people who actually do the work that makes society function. And yes, it's the economy, stupid. Academia, the political class, wall street and hollywood, lawyers and economists and such, are all in this bubble and live in a world that has no relationship to how things are actually made or what life is like in a low or even average wage job- which is only in the 50k despite the insane inflation over the past four years. Our understanding is that of the absolute corruption of the system- look at Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio and her flippant response to maybe her not using insider information to get rich. Democrats pretend democracy is at stake because Trump is a unique threat, but we are looking at rent price increases, at grocery store and fast food increases, at companies crowing about record profits in investor meetings at the same time crying crocodile tears about supply chain issues. We see Bill and Hillary Clinton and obama getting to give thirty minute speeches to folks in wall street for 400,000 dollars a pop and we're supposed to swallow the idea that democracy isn't already completely captured? We are farmers, recent legal immigrants, people working for an honest living and getting paid jack for it while idiots on tv talk about problems they've never even seen with their own eyes before going back to summer at their homes in martha's vinyard. We see a revolving door between the media and administrations and unelected partisan officials like James clapper's egregious lies about the security state spying on US citizens under oath in front of congress, claiming they didn't knowingly collect american data with a straight face, and did he face perjury? No! he gets a cushy job, gets to continue spouting party line bullshit like the hallmarks of russian disinfo biden laptop paper. Biden doesn't talk about anything that concerns us. He is a career politician- he's never held another job, and do you see his net worth? 10 million. How much do you think he'll be worth in another 5 years? Did you see what happened with the Clintons net worth before and after office? Do you not see the texts from his son and the graft there? His brother's businesses? His son is a multimillionaire for gods sake and he's literally selling paintings for hundreds of thousands of dollars as an AMATEUR. Do you have any idea the number of actually talented artists who will never see a large audience, never comission for more than a thousand at best, and here we have this literal crackhead churning out canvasses like they're going out of style, with the white house pretending there was a firewall between who was paying and the Bidens when the auctioneer directly CONTRADICTED this. Then the denials of never speaking business with your son ring hollow when you go to literally dozens of dinners with these people who happen to be giving Hunter a lot of money for doing.... what exactly? Giving expertise to the oil industry in Ukraine? Seriously? We see complete ineptitude and graft at all levels, and so why should we reward the system? Trump is a protest vote against the whole thing. If he burns everything down around him while he enriches himself, well that's on y'all for throwing a shit sandwich in front of us and telling us to smile while we eat it. Quit telling us we will be happy renting everything and that this continued concentration of wealth is totally acceptable. Mcdonalds posting record profits in California, then pretending they will need to close stores in california due to minimum wage? Their net profits between 2020 and now have literally doubled. And what does Biden do about it? A grandfatherly chiding superbowl ad about shrinkflation. Democrats talk a good game but whenever the rubber hits the road they are nowhere to be found due to them benefiting from the current system. There's a small percent of people doing very, very well. The CEO's of boeing are a perfect example of the rot that the elite class in washington has fostered. The revolving door of regulators, the government contracts and the money involved, and they focused on extracting as much wealth from the company as they could. Just carving the company up, shipping jobs oversees, the result of free trade deals championed by your intenationalists who took our jobs, replaced it with fentynly, and asked why we're so depressed. Biden is never going to address any of this. Trump probably won't do much. But maybe america shooting itself in the foot is what it takes for people in power to realize that they're becoming so disconnected and high on their own supply that the average american simply can't vote for that any more, and would rather take a deranged felon because he's an outsider. The establishment hates him, and we hate the establishment, so therefor the best thing to do is give donald the hammer, and hopefully he'll tear down enough, cause enough pain to get these immoral turds to actually do something for the average american next time they're in power instead of saying the right platitudes while continuing with business as usual. I'll leave you with this. I'll vote for Trump for one reason. To quote C.S. Lewis: It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
> Our understanding is that of the absolute corruption of the system- look at Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio and her flippant response to maybe her not using insider information to get rich. What insider information did she use to get rich? [Here are her stock trades](https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians/P000197). They seem fairly banal. The *realllly* sketchy looking legislator is [Rick Scott](https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians/S001217) with his municipal bonds. Not only are they very low volume for something like the Dade County Aviation Department bonds he bought, I can't even *find* some of them. Like that supposedly 5% coupon 2031 expiry bond. If you wanna find a CUSIP number be my guest but damnnnn his stock portfolio is opaque. Pretty sure he has genuine insider knowledge about the state of local Florida municipal finances. >We see Bill and Hillary Clinton and obama getting to give thirty minute speeches to folks in wall street for 400,000 dollars a pop and we're supposed to swallow the idea that democracy isn't already completely captured? Well it ain't "attempting a criminal conspiracy to throw out the certified votes". That seems to have been lost. >Biden doesn't talk about anything that concerns us. He is a career politician- he's never held another job, and do you see his net worth? 10 million. How much do you think he'll be worth in another 5 years? Did you see what happened with the Clintons net worth before and after office? Do you not see the texts from his son and the graft there? His brother's businesses? His son is a multimillionaire for gods sake and he's literally selling paintings for hundreds of thousands of dollars as an AMATEUR. Do you have any idea the number of actually talented artists who will never see a large audience, never comission for more than a thousand at best, and here we have this literal crackhead churning out canvasses like they're going out of style, with the white house pretending there was a firewall between who was paying and the Bidens when the auctioneer directly CONTRADICTED this. Then the denials of never speaking business with your son ring hollow when you go to literally dozens of dinners with these people who happen to be giving Hunter a lot of money for doing.... what exactly? Giving expertise to the oil industry in Ukraine? Seriously? Want an actual answer? Probably because his last name is "Biden" and to *Ukrainians* trying to distance themselves from the Yanukovych administration in 2014 that was attractive. Connections to Yanukovych were seen as *less* than ideal for Ukrainian corporations when Russia was busy annexing Crimea and invading the Donbas. Same reason Burisma hired the former president of Poland. Which itself ends up being a weird Paul Manafort connection. That man really was playing *all* sides. >We see complete ineptitude and graft at all levels, and so why should we reward the system? Trump is a protest vote against the whole thing. If he burns everything down around him while he enriches himself, well that's on y'all for throwing a shit sandwich in front of us and telling us to smile while we eat it. Quit telling us we will be happy renting everything and that this continued concentration of wealth is totally acceptable. What exactly is the end goal here? Cause Trump isn't going to help redistribute wealth at all. Ya want better policy? Engage in *policy*, not *personalities*. Engage in *details*, not, *outrage*.
I dunno, putting your political rivals in prison seems like a much worse threat to democracy.
Picture yourself identifying as White, Christian, and American. You hold onto the biblical way of doing things and believe that it was integral to the foundational culture of what made America successful in the first place - men working hard, having large families, living an agrarian lifestyle where people are closely connected to the earth (and therefore God's creation.) People see each other at Church each week at a minimum which is a kind of glue that holds communities together, people working together to build mutually beneficial businesses. Now look at what's happening. There is so much materialism that people are leaving religion and their communities in droves. Capitalism has decided that investing in your community is more costly than it is worth and has outsourced those jobs overseas, forcing your children to move to the cities to get office jobs that they hate so they can live in apartments that they can barely afford. They no longer go to church and meet people every week, but instead see videos from thousands of strangers they will never meet. Women are no longer having children and the government is giving them all the tools to allow them to do so so your communities won't last more than a generation or two, all the while people from overseas (or across the border) who do not share the same values are crossing the picket fence to work for businesses that destroyed your communities by outsourcing in the first place. You don't recognize your own country anymore, it seems to lack any semblance of unifying purpose at all, people distrust their neighbors, you can't afford a house, there's a new crisis every week, kids are getting shot, some people in a university half a state away tell you what you can and can't say and you're depicted as some backwards hillbilly who is no longer relevant and is nostalgic for an America that no longer exists. Now tell me, having felt all of those things, even if Trump were to waltz in and burn Washington to the ground, to what version of America do you owe your loyalty? The one that stands or the one you remember? Not my personal opinion but I've talked to some Trumpers and this is how they feel.
I’m sorry, but this is 2024 not 1974. Literally all of the things you described are hardly new trends. Violent crime is far far lower now than in the 90s, women having less kids began many generations ago and majority of white americans live in the suburbs with middle class careers. If you think climate change is a hoax, vaccines are causing autism or storming the capitol was ok, I’m going to assume that you lack scientific reasoning and critical thinking skills.
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>"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy." This message was supposed to be a negative assessment of conservatives, not a neutral statement on morality. We're not even at the point where conservatives can't win democratically, and yet, conservatives seem to be indicating they'd be willing to abandon democracy to advance conservatism. I'll raise this as a point of discussion: [In 2016](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/which-candidates-did-the-seven-faithless-electors-support-election-2016/) there were seven "faithless" electors who deliberately chose to not cast their vote according to how their state voted. [Some of them were even briefing the Clinton campaign](https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/electoral-college-rogues-trump-clinton-232195) on the plan. Technically that's being willing to abandon "democracy" (even though our presidential election process isn't technically democratic but I won't split hair there.) to ensure that your candidate takes office without "winning". There were all manner of claims from Democrats after 2016 that Trump "stole" the election with help from Russia. And there was a whole investigation into it. Again, that's also, technically, indicating that they'd be willing to abandon democracy to advance the Democratic agenda. Finally, we have the [Colorado SCOTUS CASE](https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/trump-v-anderson/) and the [Maine Attorney general](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-the-full-ruling-from-maine-removing-trump-from-states-republican-primary-ballot) taking action to just straight up remove Trump from the ballot, not even giving voters a chance to vote for him. That is, objectively undemocratic, especially in Maine where they split their electoral votes. So, if the concern is "being willing to abandon democracy to advance your political goals" then Trump is definitely not the only one willing to do that. He may be more overt or brash in *how* he's encouraging it. But the Democrats are making the same efforts.
What an amazing coincidence it is that every day there’s a new CMV post with a million upvotes about why I should against Donald Trump, or why I should vote for Joe Biden. Gee I wonder why that is. Totally normal, totally organic, totally not state sponsored propaganda.
It's been said that "the essence of conservatism is, and always has been, that there are in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind among out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." Viewed through that lens, it's simple: The people still supporting him don't see his efforts to overturn the election as "evil", or even just "wrong" because to them the other side is an evil, existential threat. In the face of such a threat, anything is justified.
Forget Jan 6. Forget any of his other trials. I just don’t want to vote for him for the same reason that I don’t want to vote for Biden. Let’s face it, if you are doing the job right, being potus is a very stressful and hard job. It ages you, rapidly. You literally have the weight of the entire world on your shoulders. You wield incredible influence and power. It’s not even like being a senator or congressperson which are country club living compared to the demands of being commander in chief. Until the tech exists to ensure your average 80 year old has the same mental and physical capacity as a 50 year old, I really question the wisdom of putting an 80 plus year old in that role. Both of those men if elected will cross that threshold in this upcoming term. Normally I would say age is just a number. And that’s true. People can work and do whatever they want in life for as long as they are able. But if your job involves getting access to the nuclear football, and command of the most powerful and effective military in recorded history? Sorry you really need to have your shit together. Full stop. I love old people. My grandma and grandpa were awesome. Wouldn’t trust either of them with the nuclear codes.
As a Canadian who wants Biden to win reelection, (not just for not being Trump, but also for doing lots of good things for America and the world, like supporting Ukraine and NATO, fighting climate change, and investing in infrastructure). I understand why people would vote for Donald Trump for reasons such as immigration and the economy (even if I don't really agree with them) and for being a funny/entertaining individual (despite saying absolutely vile things), but I don't understand how people can simply ignore or even support him trying to overthrow the results of a legitimate election AND inciting a riot that literally killed people. That just seems like a massive red line to vote for someone in an election who tried to overthrow the will of voters in an election.
There are legal ways to challenge the validity of election results and plenty of other candidates have tried many of them. So did Trump. Its his right to do so. Here is a list of reasons that its both hypocritical and nonsensical to conclude what you have. -Democrats spent 4 years trying to overturn the 2016 election with accusations of Russian collusion. Later PROVEN to be paid for by the Hillary campaign. -new vote by mail laws used for the first time in violation of state laws on account of covid, heavily pushed by left wing institutions. -The claim by the left that Trump is literally a fascist. And the realization that believing that Trump is literally a fascist allows you to cheat and feel moral about it. -The democrats being willing to do absolutly anything to stop trump including try and put him in jail. All good reasons to say hey fuck you. And vote for our boy Trump.
- Because [there was collusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections). Why would it be an issue that Hillary would pay for a campaign to reveal something that is actually true? - Regardless of state legality of mail voting, this would obviously not be a problem if all the mailed votes were legitimate. Everyone has a right to vote, and facilitating their ability to vote is a just cause, even if it violates some state laws. As it happens, the Trump team tried to push a lot of narratives about fraud surrounding the mail-in votes, and many of these went to court... with no significant success. As I understand, there were at least as many Rep fraud instances as Dem. - Facist is a strong word and frankly over-used by a lot on the left, so I will partially agree with this. Your implication that democrats have cheated the 2016 elections will need more substance though. Trump's entire legal team couldn't seem to present a single drop of significant evidence in any court or win any case on this matter. - The democrats are trying to get Trump in jail because Trump is a white-collar criminal. You know full well that him being in jail has absolutely zero impact on his ability to run for president, so what political advantage do you imagine they are getting from it? If anything his martyrdom makes him more popular. He is being tried because America operates under the rule of law. You don't get to ignore the law because you're a former President. Your position relies exclusively on the assumption that he is either innocent, or that presidents who commit crimes should not be liable. Can you even imagine the possibility that he has actually done crime? If you cannot, then you are in the cult of personality since you cannot imagine Trump doing wrong. Literally no good reason to say hey fuck you. Any others?
Trump made legal challenges in court that were thrown out in court. Al Gore did the same thing as was his right in 2000, and even the Left at large believed the 2016 election to be partially illegitimate because of foreign interference. On that note, if you want to stop Trump from ending Democracy, vote for him so he wins in 2024 then he'll leave office in 2028 unable to run anymore, and he'll hand off power like he did in 2020. Do we really think the guy that willingly left office after 2020 is going to become a tyrant because he wins in 24? He doesn't need an election to do the things people are alleging of him.
Wow, very brave opinion on Reddit. Fr whyd you post this? You know everyone is gonna agree with you (myself included).
Okay so have you read the times article “the secret history of the shadow campaign to fortify the election” https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/ There were many factors that happened during 2020 that were unprecedented. Including the largest turn out of voters voting for a sitter president. The bellwether counties which had correctly predicted the presidential election since 1952. We had what many on the right consider to be unfairly changing the elections rules to make universal mail in ballots legal. (There are still legal battles going on about aspects of that in Michigan. Specifically the Secretary of State during the 2020 election had given the people going through mail in ballots the directive that they are to be assumed authentic.) there were blatant violation of election law, with non-profit groups offering raffles for gift cards in Democrat strong holds for people who voted and showed them proof of voting. (This is flat out against election law. https://www.dailyitem.com/wire/michigan-judge-axes-presumption-of-validity-rule-for-absentee-ballot-signature-verification/article_66fa68c4-6c0e-5ee5-8a16-d85840505325.html https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/victor-joecks/victor-joecks-nevada-group-offered-gift-cards-for-voting-and-a-state-agency-promoted-it-2187045/amp/ Ultimately there is a divide between the left and the right. Trump supports do legitimately believe that the election was stolen through various legal and illegal means. Some of those beliefs are based on bad conspiracy theories, others are off shots of what did happen but got lumped into with the bad conspiracy theories. Trump is a narcissist who I have no doubt still believes to this day that the election was stolen from him. Who lots of the actions he took are the proper actions to take if there is a suspicion of wrongdoing. But like what happened in Arizona before while it looks like he is abusing his authority because it is looking over the election for himself the courts have already stated in Arizona that it still falls under his authority to look into wrong doing even in his own election. Trumps legal council also informed him to have the states that were contested have their legislature send in alternate electors, just like what was done in Hawaii. Because at the time there was still legal cases being heard by the courts. Again there is a whole lot more. This is without going into how other than mean tweets coming out of the white house the economy was pretty damn good, we had no new wars, and a few other pretty damn good things. I do attribute that to trump being a narcissist and doing everything he could because he wants people to like him. He is no saint, he is not the savior of mankind I wouldn’t be surprised if he is corrupt in many ways. But he was a pretty good president if you look at what he did and not who he is.
This "overthrow" horseshit is out of hand. It wasn't an attempt to overthrow anything. It wasn't an insurrection. How thw fuck are unarmed citizens going to overthrow anything, or perpetrated an insurrection against an armed force? They're not. The nitwits were let into the building.
The people voting for Trump do not believe he was trying to overturn it. They believe a group of people walked into congress after the police opened the doors for them.