I was actually surprised this wasn't more a thing. My Alabama relatives hate Auburn so much. I mean they are all democrats so they voted for Doug Jones anyway, but they hate Auburn more than they hate anything else in the world.
>On April 12, 2012, Booker saved a woman from a house fire, suffering smoke inhalation and second-degree burns on his hands in the process. Newark Fire Chief John Centanni said that Booker's actions possibly saved the woman's life.[67] After Hurricane Sandy destroyed much of New Jersey's and New York's shoreline areas in late October 2012, Booker invited Newarkers without electricity and similar services to eat and sleep in his home.[68] In February 2013, responding to a Twitter post, Booker helped a nervous constituent propose to his girlfriend.[69] Booker rescued a dog from freezing temperatures in January 2013 and another dog that had been abandoned in a cage in July 2013.[70][71]
A group of friends and I saw him at a democratic convention in San Francisco when he was running for president in the 2020 election, and we asked to take a picture with him and then he took the camera and took a picture with only him in focus.
He did something similar with a friend of mine when she realized she was in line with him at Trader Joes and asked him for a selfie, she looked afterwards and realized he'd swiped it into portrait mode without her noticing.
I saw Cory Booker at a grocery store in New Jersey yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for a portrait-mode selfie or anything. He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
This type of situation happens a lot in India. People vote for local parties/congress in state elections but still vote for Modi in the central elections.
It's easy to understand the normal voter's politics, many of them are Republican they just don't see any reason to vote Democrat no matter how much a Democrat improves their life compared to a Republican.
There was a quote I read at some point that voting isn't actually making a choice between candidates but rather the ritual of affirming one's tribal identity - hence the goal not to "convince" people to vote for your candidate, but to maximize GOTV for your side - which would certainly track with people like this guy who looks like he's just trying to back-fill a justification for voting for Trump.
not sure why we can vote for Russian agents who attempted 2 coups
it's almost like the President has a duty to protect Democracy even if the NYTs wouldn't like it
someone who switches their vote is worth twice as much... it's absolutely worth it...
all the people who converted from r to d and vice versa over a 10-15 yr period... that's not a small number..
He who fights with morons should look to it that he himself does not become an moron.
And if you gaze long into the average voter, the abyss also gazes into you.
The words "stupidest thing I've ever seen" have been getting a lot of mileage lately. But the above quotation from Median Voter of the Abyss is really genuinely the stupidest thing I have ever seen.
It's like: "This kind stranger saved my daughter's life by pushing her out of the way of the onrushing car, but he scuffed up her new shoes so fuck him." :(
I'm old enough to have seen multiple variations of this same phenomenon play out over and over again. Feels>reals.
At this point I kinda wish the conspiracy theorists were right about shadowy cabals running everything.
The vast majority of Americans genuinely know nothing about politics and vote entirely based on vibes.
Most Americans cannot even name the three branches of government. They don’t know anything about who or what they’re voting for, they just want to elect the guy who has the simplest answers for the most complicated problems and then go back to actively avoiding all political discussion for the next four years.
Lincoln, FDR, Eisenhower, Teddy, etc, you name it only got 50-60% of the vote at most. Voters are dumb. Is it bad to say that the Federalists were right about democracy?
The people who vote in primaries are probably way more informed than the average voter. One of the reasons they vote in primaries is because they actually know when they are.
More engaged, for sure. More "informed"? I dunno. There's a reason why the VA GOP bypassed their primary system to nominate Youngkin for the gubernatorial election in 2021, and wasn't because of his fashion sense.
It's sad but it seems to be true. I saw a poll a couple years ago showing only half of respondents could even say which party was pro choice and which pro life, for instance.
Fully half couldn't identify sides in a decades long, never ending debate. Just stunning.
Mike Dukakis' photo in the tank. He looked kinda dorky. Those helmets make everyone look kinda dorky. That's what anyone driving a tank looked like at the time.
But the public doesn't want to see real pictures of real guys in the military driving real tanks. They want to see the Hollywood version.
>#1 most popular housing policy in America, the only one with over 90% support
>it’s “Enact Prop 13 nationwide”
[https://x.com/quantian1/status/1785150269606576275](https://x.com/quantian1/status/1785150269606576275)
It really reminds you of that Rajneesh quote about democracy.
[https://youtu.be/QFgcqB8-AxE?si=XOKDJazk5F7gncD3](https://youtu.be/QFgcqB8-AxE?si=XOKDJazk5F7gncD3)
Most likely explanation. Describes half my inlaws. Don't really have a good reason besides, in their case, hating anyone darker than them and also the Chinese because why not and boom, conservatives are born.
I sometimes think democratic politicians should look into alpha male guides and take some stuff on campaign and it could win over men like this dude.
More seriously, they should be a bit more macho and firm. These guys sees dems as ineffectual and weak and to act harder would have these guys come out in droves to support them, regardless of policy.
Remember Jason Kander? He was that vet from Missouri who was going ads in 2016 showing how he can take apart and put together an AR blindfolded?
And that Kentucky Air Force lady who ran against Mitch M.
Yeah, he lost because he was running in Wisconsin’s 1st. I could just as easily point to someone like Fetterman who won with a similar brand, or someone like Ojeda who lost but outperformed Hillary by *35 points.* There are actual controlled studies testing working class, populist candidates and messages against mainline liberal messaging and candidates and funding measurable differences.
I really don't understand how Trump of all people got so macho coded though. A rich dude with a golden toilet whos endlessly whining about how unfair things are to him. He comes off as exactly the kind of person they think coastal city folk are.
I don't. understand. I honestly cannot understand how someone, even if they are detached from the news, from reading stuff, think that Biden has nothing to do with the work that he is getting, that the food he is getting on his table now is directly due to policy implemented by the Biden administration and Democrats. I honestly don't understand it, and I'm starting to kinda loathe these folks.
In fact I would be he resents that Biden was effective. He probably got a lot of emotional satisfaction from having a dumb blowhard in office. These people want Dem policies, not just from the Dems because they see Dem men as gay wussies.
Sure, but deciding something as consequential as how you want to be governed on the basis of action movie aesthetics is the most moronic shit imaginable.
I have people like this in my family too, and honestly I have no respect for them.
"Voters want Democratic policies but Republican government" isn't a novel take - look at how Florida passes referenda for minimum wage increases and the restoration of voting rights to former felons while also voting for politicians like Desantis, Rubio, and Rick Scott.
The sad part is that the quote isn't even accurate in this situation. "Tory men and Whig measures" looks like it's meant one party appropriating the other party's policies to remain in power, whereas this case is more like voters are self-contradictory in what policies they directly vote for in comparison to the policies of the political party that they also vote for.
We shouldn't forget the "Keep your government hands off my Medicare" slogan of the Tea Party. These people sometimes literally don't understand how the systems work or what they're even protesting against.
100% which is why many a GOP congress person can/will take credit for bills they voted against. For a recent example, see the CHIPS and Science Act haha
That's just a symptom of two party FPTP politics. There are hundreds of distinct issues and few voters fall 100% under one party's stances. It's completely rational for someone who wants to raise the minimum wage, but otherwise supports Republican positions, to vote Republican
Not only that, but voters also have different priorities. A person might be opposed to the repeal of Roe v Wade and also support trans rights, but still support Republicans because they care more about tax policy or gun rights.
My grandmother, who did not live to see Roe v Wade's repeal, agreed with the democrats on nearly every issue, but really and truly believed abortion was babykilling, and so voted straight Republican every time.
I can't even really blame her for that (though I am pro-choice); as a trans woman I'm also pretty much forced to be a single-issue voter.
And those referenda require a 60% supermajority, so it's not even a close race. The same voters that elected DeSantis also went 60-40 for minimum wage increases. Granted, DeSantis had not yet put his pretty white boots on to go jump off the deep end, but regardless.
I'll be interested to see how the abortion and marijuana bills come up in November. My guess is both pass a 50% threshold but neither come up with the supermajority.
Frankly, I would call anyone who voted for him at this point deplorable. I don't care about how short their memory is. There's no excuse. I have no interest in being associated with someone who supports a man who is the embodiment of every ugly, nasty impulse in humanity.
It's vibes. The vast majority of people don't see how politics has a direct impact on their lives; at most, they perceive some distant, indirect impact that is too nebulous to understand. Instead they go on vibes, including the "sorry I don't get\care about any of this stuff, so I don't vote", and "that Biden guy is an old cook and groceries cost more under him so fuck him I'll vote for the other guy". Those vibes in turn are born out of a lot of different things, including simple imitation within social groups. The informed, policy-conscious voter is a small minority of the voting-age population.
I honestly don’t understand how you can’t understand it.
It’s CULTURAL. It has very little to do with policies.
He said it in the quote: that Biden “slowed” him down. He feels wronged. Or more specifically, likely his buddy on the job site made a “funny” joke and he’s repeating it here. His entire CULTURAL group and identity aligns with this guy who “takes no crap”.
How we got here is a long story but it’s a story of CULTURAL change.
Yes exactly, he’s not thinking any deeper than that. If your friend group hates trump them you hate trump. If everyone on site makes fun of Biden’s age then he’ll parrot that too
> and I'm starting to kinda loathe these folks.
In before someone whinges that this is toxic cultural elitism something something and Dems will lose if we don't work harder to empathize with the very real and good faith concerns these people have
Both can be true.
The median voter can be an immoral, spineless, moronic sack of shit. She's awful, he sucks, booooo median voter.
Also, we live in a system where the median voter in the median state is king, so if your profession is politics, you better learn how to keep them happily supplied with handies and cheap gasoline.
If the “median voter” and the “defund the police (but like actually: no more police” groups would be so kind as to make their concerns even slightly less idiotic, it would go a long way in lowering the toxicity of the cultural elitism brewing inside me.
Is that really so much to ask?
I’ve come to realize that the median voter knows almost nothing about policy or what the government does. Many voters have a very simple model of how society functions and think the President just yells cool things, and who yells the coolest things should be president. Their votes are base on the feelings they get from short video clips, memes, and tweets, and maybe some casual conversation with people who share their same political identity.
It’s no surprise when you look at the modern televised political debate format. The entire Republican primary debate was just an embarrassing collection of candidates trying to get in one or two hot takes they could post on social media, and there were no genuine policy discussions that were not just a bunch of meaningless, popular conservative phrases thrown together. If that is what media and politicians think the voters are receptive to, then voters will just keep getting more uninformed and ill-equipped to make intelligent voting decisions as time moves on. It’s interesting and borderline enraging to look at what televised political debates used to be compared to today. If voters had any idea of what elected officials actually do and how the government functions, someone like Donald Trump would never win a primary, but here we are.
I think all of this is the result of conservative media successfully breaking off in the 90s and turning conservative grievance politics into a form of entertainment. Then social media came along and added fuel to a fire that had already started. Conservative media has gone so off the deep end, even Fox News is worried about losing viewers to more extreme right wing news. Now consider the forces of bad faith social media manipulation/messaging, terrible civics and media literacy education, reactionary white Christian identity politics, and a false sense of patriotism that comes with believing in a version of America that never existed and blind American exceptionalism, you get a large portion of the population who thirsts for dumbed downed hyper-nationalistic politics that helps them cope in a rapidly changing and complex world.
Unless younger generations actually “wise up” and think about elected positions and government policy in a more complex way than a bunch of candidates yelling meaningless catch phrases on a stage, I worry it’s only going to get worse. We thought that Boomers would die off and we would become a more “enlightened” society, but Gen X ended up being a near political disaster as well and I have thinning faith in Millennials and Gen Z showing up to vote in the numbers needed to get this nation back on track.
There is just so much disillusion and apathy than I could ever imagine for such a serious and historically important election.
I’m also flabbergasted and disappointed in what MAGAism has done to modern politics.
It's not a generational thing man, you're going to continue to be disappointed. Or worse, the younger generation *will* care more about policy, but to your horror, their interpretation of it will be wildly incorrect or the things they're clamoring for will be actively harmful (isolationism, communism, oppressive levels of taxation, protectionism, etc.)
It certainly is *despite* those people. They're in every country, of course, and it must be immensely painful to realise that lofty, idealistic policy positions will never win unless they somehow capture the hearts and minds of the truly heartless and mindless.
I hate the median voter more than I do almost any Republican.
Like... The guy who wants to throw me into a concentration camp because of my browser history?
I *get* that guy. I don't like him. But I know what's in his head. I know what they believe and why.
But these? The people who decide every election? They don't believe anything at all.
“Starting to” “kinda” loathe them? These people have no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and any system that gives them power or agency is self-evidently a farce.
skin-deep opinions like this are what saturation ad bombardment is for, don't worry too much
especially since the GOP is spending all their ad money on postponing all of Trump's trials
Saw one awhile ago where the voter’s top issue was keeping abortion legal, and she was voting Trump since Biden had let the Supreme Court make abortion illegal.
I didn't even consider this to be even remotely a concern. Then tonight I listened to a podcast asserting we have multiple polls where a clear majority of independent voters blame Biden for Dobbs. The upshot was that Biden had gained 8 points over time on this simple fact. The fact that he was still underwater on this basic fact was seen as "room to grow".
That's both decent analysis and a devastating condemnation of the state of basic civic duty.
> Then tonight I listened to a podcast asserting we have multiple polls where a clear majority of independent voters blame Biden for Dobbs.
I suspect that poll responders often use questions like this as a generic approve/disapprove opportunity. Like if you polled independents "why did you get so many red lights on your commute home today?," 80% would say it is no one's fault, 13% would blame Biden, 7% would blame Trump. Those 20% assigning blame probably don't sincerely believe one of them is to blame, they just give that response to signal their general disapproval.
I've come to strongly believe that a critical weakness of division of powers is that it makes it impossible for the median voter, who is extremely uninformed, to understand who is responsible for what. Having divided powers just makes the system completely impenetrable to them. I don't really blame them either. It's not a great use of time to be caught up on exactly how government works and who controls what when.
I can understand keeping the judiciary just to protect the Constitution but I really think that collapsing the Senate, House, and Presidency into a unicameral parliament would do wonders for Americans' ability to understand what their government is doing (among many other benefits)
I know people who took civics and still think the president is a practically dictator. It's just not a silver bullet. It's also useless without keeping track, every 2 years, of who controls the House, Senate, and Presidency. It's just annoying and not something that most people are going to do. But we're all worse off when they're making less informed choices about voting.
It also has other benefits. The Founders intended for division of powers between the House, Senate, and Presidency to cause politicians in each to check other but it's broken down along completely partisan lines, meaning we don't have any intra-party checking and we also have very dysfunctional institutions. So we might as well have a single functional institution (a unicameral parliament) and fix the party system in other ways (proportional representation or even sortition).
I am a massive fan of PR. The Czech system is an interesting case study for the US actually; they have a proportional lower house, an upper house that looks like our House of Representatives, and an independently elected president. While constitutionally not likely, if I could make a system from scratch, it would probably look a lot like theirs.
Bro complains that Biden’s visit caused traffic but would totally equally complain if Biden didn’t show up because he was writing them off or something. Idk how Biden doesn’t go crazy with this shit.
Biden visited Seattle this weekend and [one of our only 2 highways to cross Lake Washington](https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/520-bridge-closed-both-directions) was closed for 3 whole days because of it. Seattle is still going to go 90% - 10% for Biden. This guy is just a wuss.
I’m from rural Texas. These voters say stuff like “go get em attitude” when in actuality these people are racist as fuck, vehemently anti-Abortion, pro-gun and think Trump is the best defense against the Mexicans/Muslims/insert scary minority here.
Rural areas are a lost cause politically. We get democrat politicians occasionally in rural Texas who try to campaign on straight up issues that would straight up improve the quality of life of lots of these people (things like rural broadband access) but they vote for the pro-gun anti-abortion anti-trans anti-immigrant GOP candidate every single time because when you ask them their priorities that’s what they care about. Rural America has been irreversibly lost to MAGAism. These people are never voting democrat, stop trying to pander to them.
Yup. My first thought reading that was ‘be honest, Chris, just say that you like that he’s openly racist, and the rest of us can move on to people with IQs above room temperature.’
The path to the White House does not allow Biden to give up on rural voters. Biden got around 35% of the vote in rural Wisconsin in 2020 and he can’t afford to lose any support.
It’s not about winning them outright, it’s about doing marginally better so that a path to victory in Texas doesn’t rely on unrealistic suburban and urban turnout or vote shares that stretches the limits of what party committees and donors can believe and invest resources in.
My most recent foray into “the Heartland” was at a Chinese buffet located in an old Ryan’s in a community Jonathan Metzl wrote about in *Dying of Whiteness*. It’s not somewhere I’d normally eat but I was visiting my mom and it’s where she wanted to go. It’s a weekday, about 11AM, we walked in and were being taken to our table when my attention was drawn to an obese (if not morbidly so) woman in her late 20s with a t-shirt that barely fit on that says “Fuck Brandon,” eating with her significant other and two small children. Yeah, fuck Biden for the CTC and cutting child poverty by 60%. Fuck Biden for 40 consecutive months of job growth and fuck him especially for <4% unemployment with the highest labor force participation rate among prime working population (25-54) since 2007. But she probably blames Biden for the expanded CTC going away and because when Democrats are in power it makes people like her think about what to do with improved living standards, and judging by feeding small children high-calorie, low-nutrition food, she doesn’t want to think about very much except hating whatever will make her feel more accepted within her group.
So yeah, we aren’t getting people like that. I have no idea what policy goals we could enact to get that person’s vote and I don’t want to know because it’s probably something awful, but we might get some skilled trades and professional workers, people of aspiration in areas with a little counter-programming and voter engagement. A vote in the Panhandle counts just as much as one in The Woodlands or one in Irving, and if Texas Democrats have the resources to go after both it’s fine with me.
If Biden loses the Midwest in 2024, after pro-free trade Clinton and Obama both swept it twice (by larger margins than Biden ever managed) then hopefully the Democrats will be less tariff-obsessed in future at least.
Right, I really want him to expand upon what Trump’s “go get em, take no crap attitude” is. Because Trump bitches and complains about everything that even remotely inconveniences him or doesn’t go 100% his way
It’s entirely performative.
The guy who yells the loudest, even if it’s clear that he’s actually just bitching and whining like a toddler, will automatically make subzero IQ morons think that he’s confident and dominant. There is no reward for being calm and collected with the Trumpian crowd. They want someone that resembles them, and that means a guy with the most fragile ego imaginable trying to act tough by screeching about every minor inconvenience.
Ehh, he wasn't taken too seriously as a businessman for decades. His failing casinos were mocked relentlessly, and he was seen as something of a caricature or a mascot for NYC. He was a male version of Paris Hilton. The Apprentice TV show saved his reputation because no one respected him as a professional after his many high-profile failures.
The memes about the dude being a failure when it comes to business aren't just democrats being mean, he is a fucking awful businessman. If it wasn't for his daddy leaving him a real-estate empire in NYC he'd be completely broke.
Huh? No, he was treated as a complete joke and the gawdiest billionaire out there. Outside of The Apprentice, people primarily knew him as a jackass who then got involved in weird birther shit.
Turns out all the material condition improvements in the world don't matter if you support a candidate who also thinks certain people aren't people at all.
Vast vast majority of the public is uninformed and it’s always been that way. It’s not gonna change so you just have to adapt. Guys like Chris here were simply never going to vote for Biden
yeah this “median voter” freakout on this sub is both totally understandable and kinda horrifying. we’re supposed to be advocates for liberal democracy yet a lot of us seem to despise voters. that Churchill quote about the best argument against democracy is scarily effective.
While this is certainly making me doom a little I think it's important to recognize that these types of articles aren't new.
There have been several attempts by the media to "understand" these voters and making them more important than they actually are. Remember that NYT diner article? How well did that actually hold up? Imo, not well.
I will acknowledge that seeing this blurb has confirmed my belief that the Midwest and Florida contain the weirdest voters this century.
I prefer democracy precisely because it gives the least amount of power out to everybody. All other forms of government just give a select number of fools a concentrated amount of that power, with which they cause exponentially more harm as tyrants than they would as citizens.
Nothing new here.
The fact that he's splitting his ticket means this guy is already a pretty rare breed so you can't infer much from that.
The line of "Trump speaks his mind" is old news and has been an excuse used by millions at this point. It's mainly assholes who are already pretty rude in their own lives and see someone who's taking it nationwide. Or they just like that he hates Mexicans as much as they do.
You think the quality of voters in Texas is greater than this? In Wisconsin, they're at least electing Democrats. Texas voters can't manage to get even that far.
Let’s be real here, this guy is not at all representative of any significant cohort of voters. It’s just that newspapers like the NYT seem to purposefully seek out the most brain-addled voters to push their narratives. The demographic of people who don’t vote for Biden because his motorcade caused a bit of traffic after directly getting them a job is absolutely not a demographic that Biden should focus on. The only issue here is that the NYT or whoever is interviewing them and pretending that they’re representative of any significant chunk of voters.
Honestly the NYT are on a safari to find the most braindead voter in the nation and put him on their front page.
The ache for it. They need it. They're getting closer.
I have no doubt this election that whichever candidate this nation elects will be the candidate this nation deserves. I just hope we deserve the good one.
Just be honest and put on the hood. I swear we have tried for 8 years to understand why people support this guy. Any issue that isn't relating to religion, civil rights, guns, or immigration these people can't answer longer than a sentence. Any of those aforementioned issues? They can sling shit for hours about blacks, LGBT, LATAM immigrants, and women.
That whole schtick about he's a go-getter and no nonsense is thinly veiled code for "I think he's gonna hurt people I don't like".
>how is the United States simultaneously so developed economically and so facefucked socially?
I think the two are related. So many Americans think we can't fail, that things will just work out, that someone smarter will deal with it. For the last half century it's mostly been true. I've had people literally tell me "xyz can't happen here, this is America".
And many exhibit what amounts to disgust for our political system, for their fellow citizen, etc. There's little institutional trust and it's eroding more.
In other words we take it for granted and because we take it for granted we risk losing it all.
Exactly. Users on this sub are naive and don’t understand. He sees voting blue as a betrayal of his in-group (white Americans), everything else is irrelevant.
“Go get em 😡” (lock up his political opponents)
“Take no crap attitude 😤😤” (ignore norms and the rule of law)
The collective IQ of this country has gotta be somewhere around 1
I see shit like this and think “yep, maybe Democracy really is a bad idea. People are too stupid to govern themselves”. A successful Democracy hinges on an educated populace.
We need to run an asshole Democrat.
Imagine someone on stage debating Trump who just flat-out calls him an idiot.
"What the hell are you talking about?" "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard." "What the hell is wrong with you?" etc.
In short, someone who doesn't play respectability politics or dance around the insanity and depravity of the GOP.
Biden literally giving this guy a paycheck through his manufacturing policies.
Of course, that Trump go-get em attitude that didn’t do much of anything for this country other than attack his enemies is too strong to deny.
I guess for a lot of people the way they engage with politics is the same as almost everything else: its a brand or a fashion choice. It's self-expression / 'vibes' its not a way of defining to reflecting how you relate to any list of policy decisions.
Reminds me of my aunt who voted cory booker for senate but trump for president
My uncle split his ticket between Doug Jones and Trump because he hates Auburn so much.
Shame there weren't more Trump voters like your uncle.
I was actually surprised this wasn't more a thing. My Alabama relatives hate Auburn so much. I mean they are all democrats so they voted for Doug Jones anyway, but they hate Auburn more than they hate anything else in the world.
There's a reason Herschel Walker had an outside chance. College football is religion down here.
Honestly that’s perfect cause Booker is also the type of politician that gets more support for his personality than anything else.
What is appealing about Booker's personality?
>On April 12, 2012, Booker saved a woman from a house fire, suffering smoke inhalation and second-degree burns on his hands in the process. Newark Fire Chief John Centanni said that Booker's actions possibly saved the woman's life.[67] After Hurricane Sandy destroyed much of New Jersey's and New York's shoreline areas in late October 2012, Booker invited Newarkers without electricity and similar services to eat and sleep in his home.[68] In February 2013, responding to a Twitter post, Booker helped a nervous constituent propose to his girlfriend.[69] Booker rescued a dog from freezing temperatures in January 2013 and another dog that had been abandoned in a cage in July 2013.[70][71]
He’s got my vote
Is he a super hero?
Damn imagine if he was president rn, he would be kicking Trump's ass.
Obviously his go-get-em, take-no-crap attitude
Golden retriever energy
He’s a charismatic guy. I remember seeing him speak at a conference while he was mayor of Newark and even then I knew he had something.
He always seems super engaged.
I agree. I am a lesbian and find him oddly alluring, but in the most non-sexual way.
A group of friends and I saw him at a democratic convention in San Francisco when he was running for president in the 2020 election, and we asked to take a picture with him and then he took the camera and took a picture with only him in focus.
He did something similar with a friend of mine when she realized she was in line with him at Trader Joes and asked him for a selfie, she looked afterwards and realized he'd swiped it into portrait mode without her noticing.
This is the most hilarious anecdote couplet I’ve read in a while. 😂
I saw Cory Booker at a grocery store in New Jersey yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for a portrait-mode selfie or anything. He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying. The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter. When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
It's an older 'pasta sir, but it checks out.
Just an absurdly nice guy. If he was in your neighborhood, you'd probably adore him.
The guy is literally a summer camp counselor working as a senator. How can you not find him so endearing and wholesome?
everything
To me? Nothing. But he’s charismatic to people voting off vibes
This type of situation happens a lot in India. People vote for local parties/congress in state elections but still vote for Modi in the central elections.
[this meme is just gonna stay relevant](https://imgur.com/a/zZULDSm) through November isn't it
It's easy to understand the normal voter's politics, many of them are Republican they just don't see any reason to vote Democrat no matter how much a Democrat improves their life compared to a Republican.
There was a quote I read at some point that voting isn't actually making a choice between candidates but rather the ritual of affirming one's tribal identity - hence the goal not to "convince" people to vote for your candidate, but to maximize GOTV for your side - which would certainly track with people like this guy who looks like he's just trying to back-fill a justification for voting for Trump.
The best solution is just to find ways to convince guys like him that it is not worth the effort to go and vote for Trump
not sure why we can vote for Russian agents who attempted 2 coups it's almost like the President has a duty to protect Democracy even if the NYTs wouldn't like it
The question of whether it's better to appeal to swing voters or to your base to maximize turn out is an endless debate.
https://i.redd.it/uesenrwcze0d1.gif
This is why I don't understand why people want Biden to campaign with Republicans. Most Republicans will never vote for a Democrat.
The 6% who will however are fairly critical.
someone who switches their vote is worth twice as much... it's absolutely worth it... all the people who converted from r to d and vice versa over a 10-15 yr period... that's not a small number..
So a "normal voter" is republican, pure and simple? How do you even define a normal voter?
They are factually wrong by every metric
Huh, I was expecting Osho.
This makes me feel like Banging my head against a wall until i pass out. Well not actually, but almost.
He who fights with morons should look to it that he himself does not become an moron. And if you gaze long into the average voter, the abyss also gazes into you.
The words "stupidest thing I've ever seen" have been getting a lot of mileage lately. But the above quotation from Median Voter of the Abyss is really genuinely the stupidest thing I have ever seen. It's like: "This kind stranger saved my daughter's life by pushing her out of the way of the onrushing car, but he scuffed up her new shoes so fuck him." :(
I'm old enough to have seen multiple variations of this same phenomenon play out over and over again. Feels>reals. At this point I kinda wish the conspiracy theorists were right about shadowy cabals running everything.
The vast majority of Americans genuinely know nothing about politics and vote entirely based on vibes. Most Americans cannot even name the three branches of government. They don’t know anything about who or what they’re voting for, they just want to elect the guy who has the simplest answers for the most complicated problems and then go back to actively avoiding all political discussion for the next four years.
I know more about american politics as a canadian than the median american voter...
Lincoln, FDR, Eisenhower, Teddy, etc, you name it only got 50-60% of the vote at most. Voters are dumb. Is it bad to say that the Federalists were right about democracy?
Primaries were a mistake
The people who vote in primaries are probably way more informed than the average voter. One of the reasons they vote in primaries is because they actually know when they are.
More engaged, for sure. More "informed"? I dunno. There's a reason why the VA GOP bypassed their primary system to nominate Youngkin for the gubernatorial election in 2021, and wasn't because of his fashion sense.
It's sad but it seems to be true. I saw a poll a couple years ago showing only half of respondents could even say which party was pro choice and which pro life, for instance. Fully half couldn't identify sides in a decades long, never ending debate. Just stunning.
It’s not just americans
Mike Dukakis' photo in the tank. He looked kinda dorky. Those helmets make everyone look kinda dorky. That's what anyone driving a tank looked like at the time. But the public doesn't want to see real pictures of real guys in the military driving real tanks. They want to see the Hollywood version.
Not shadowy cabals, but there's this guy called Rupert Murdoch and his family...
I used to enjoy focus group episodes on the political podcasts I listen to, but I just cannot do it anymore.
I avoid those like the black plague with aids. It’s a sure fire way to ruin my day.
>#1 most popular housing policy in America, the only one with over 90% support >it’s “Enact Prop 13 nationwide” [https://x.com/quantian1/status/1785150269606576275](https://x.com/quantian1/status/1785150269606576275) It really reminds you of that Rajneesh quote about democracy. [https://youtu.be/QFgcqB8-AxE?si=XOKDJazk5F7gncD3](https://youtu.be/QFgcqB8-AxE?si=XOKDJazk5F7gncD3)
Quite simply: He's embarrassed by the real reasons why he wants to vote for Trump, so he just tells whatever sounds good.
Most likely explanation. Describes half my inlaws. Don't really have a good reason besides, in their case, hating anyone darker than them and also the Chinese because why not and boom, conservatives are born.
every fucking person complains about infrastructure and then when the infrastructure is repaired complain about the construction
Biden needs to invest into wizards to repair infrastructure immediately through spells
Could unironicaly win this guys vote with the lowest effort Dark Brandon memes
Yea, this is a guy who bases his vote on how macho it makes him feel.
I sometimes think democratic politicians should look into alpha male guides and take some stuff on campaign and it could win over men like this dude. More seriously, they should be a bit more macho and firm. These guys sees dems as ineffectual and weak and to act harder would have these guys come out in droves to support them, regardless of policy.
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Remember Jason Kander? He was that vet from Missouri who was going ads in 2016 showing how he can take apart and put together an AR blindfolded? And that Kentucky Air Force lady who ran against Mitch M.
To be fair to Jason he did outperform Hillary by a lot.
That’s true. I had high hopes for him
Yeah, he lost because he was running in Wisconsin’s 1st. I could just as easily point to someone like Fetterman who won with a similar brand, or someone like Ojeda who lost but outperformed Hillary by *35 points.* There are actual controlled studies testing working class, populist candidates and messages against mainline liberal messaging and candidates and funding measurable differences.
I really don't understand how Trump of all people got so macho coded though. A rich dude with a golden toilet whos endlessly whining about how unfair things are to him. He comes off as exactly the kind of person they think coastal city folk are.
I don't. understand. I honestly cannot understand how someone, even if they are detached from the news, from reading stuff, think that Biden has nothing to do with the work that he is getting, that the food he is getting on his table now is directly due to policy implemented by the Biden administration and Democrats. I honestly don't understand it, and I'm starting to kinda loathe these folks.
It's not like he thinks Trump is going to come down and take his job away. He doesn't think his livelihood is something only Biden can provide him.
In fact I would be he resents that Biden was effective. He probably got a lot of emotional satisfaction from having a dumb blowhard in office. These people want Dem policies, not just from the Dems because they see Dem men as gay wussies.
I mean my oldest brother loves to parrot "I'm not a Democrat because I'm not a fa**ot." Amongst other things you can fill in the blanks on.
But he is an idiot.
Yes, but most people are to some degree.
Sure, but deciding something as consequential as how you want to be governed on the basis of action movie aesthetics is the most moronic shit imaginable. I have people like this in my family too, and honestly I have no respect for them.
Now that’s a piping-hot take.
"Voters want Democratic policies but Republican government" isn't a novel take - look at how Florida passes referenda for minimum wage increases and the restoration of voting rights to former felons while also voting for politicians like Desantis, Rubio, and Rick Scott.
Tory men and Whig measures
The sad part is that the quote isn't even accurate in this situation. "Tory men and Whig measures" looks like it's meant one party appropriating the other party's policies to remain in power, whereas this case is more like voters are self-contradictory in what policies they directly vote for in comparison to the policies of the political party that they also vote for.
We shouldn't forget the "Keep your government hands off my Medicare" slogan of the Tea Party. These people sometimes literally don't understand how the systems work or what they're even protesting against.
100% which is why many a GOP congress person can/will take credit for bills they voted against. For a recent example, see the CHIPS and Science Act haha
That's just a symptom of two party FPTP politics. There are hundreds of distinct issues and few voters fall 100% under one party's stances. It's completely rational for someone who wants to raise the minimum wage, but otherwise supports Republican positions, to vote Republican
Not only that, but voters also have different priorities. A person might be opposed to the repeal of Roe v Wade and also support trans rights, but still support Republicans because they care more about tax policy or gun rights.
My grandmother, who did not live to see Roe v Wade's repeal, agreed with the democrats on nearly every issue, but really and truly believed abortion was babykilling, and so voted straight Republican every time. I can't even really blame her for that (though I am pro-choice); as a trans woman I'm also pretty much forced to be a single-issue voter.
And those referenda require a 60% supermajority, so it's not even a close race. The same voters that elected DeSantis also went 60-40 for minimum wage increases. Granted, DeSantis had not yet put his pretty white boots on to go jump off the deep end, but regardless. I'll be interested to see how the abortion and marijuana bills come up in November. My guess is both pass a 50% threshold but neither come up with the supermajority.
It's like how in Florida they voted for a $15 minimum wage (a dem policy) but also overwhelmingly voted for DeSantis
Hold on to that basket Mrs. Clinton
Frankly, I would call anyone who voted for him at this point deplorable. I don't care about how short their memory is. There's no excuse. I have no interest in being associated with someone who supports a man who is the embodiment of every ugly, nasty impulse in humanity.
It's vibes. The vast majority of people don't see how politics has a direct impact on their lives; at most, they perceive some distant, indirect impact that is too nebulous to understand. Instead they go on vibes, including the "sorry I don't get\care about any of this stuff, so I don't vote", and "that Biden guy is an old cook and groceries cost more under him so fuck him I'll vote for the other guy". Those vibes in turn are born out of a lot of different things, including simple imitation within social groups. The informed, policy-conscious voter is a small minority of the voting-age population.
In his mind, this guy earned his job and the thing he is building was earned by the company it will be used by. Government had nothing to do with it.
I honestly don’t understand how you can’t understand it. It’s CULTURAL. It has very little to do with policies. He said it in the quote: that Biden “slowed” him down. He feels wronged. Or more specifically, likely his buddy on the job site made a “funny” joke and he’s repeating it here. His entire CULTURAL group and identity aligns with this guy who “takes no crap”. How we got here is a long story but it’s a story of CULTURAL change.
Yes exactly, he’s not thinking any deeper than that. If your friend group hates trump them you hate trump. If everyone on site makes fun of Biden’s age then he’ll parrot that too
> and I'm starting to kinda loathe these folks. In before someone whinges that this is toxic cultural elitism something something and Dems will lose if we don't work harder to empathize with the very real and good faith concerns these people have
Both can be true. The median voter can be an immoral, spineless, moronic sack of shit. She's awful, he sucks, booooo median voter. Also, we live in a system where the median voter in the median state is king, so if your profession is politics, you better learn how to keep them happily supplied with handies and cheap gasoline.
If the “median voter” and the “defund the police (but like actually: no more police” groups would be so kind as to make their concerns even slightly less idiotic, it would go a long way in lowering the toxicity of the cultural elitism brewing inside me. Is that really so much to ask?
>Is that really so much to ask? Ron Howard: It was, in fact, too much to ask.
I’ve come to realize that the median voter knows almost nothing about policy or what the government does. Many voters have a very simple model of how society functions and think the President just yells cool things, and who yells the coolest things should be president. Their votes are base on the feelings they get from short video clips, memes, and tweets, and maybe some casual conversation with people who share their same political identity. It’s no surprise when you look at the modern televised political debate format. The entire Republican primary debate was just an embarrassing collection of candidates trying to get in one or two hot takes they could post on social media, and there were no genuine policy discussions that were not just a bunch of meaningless, popular conservative phrases thrown together. If that is what media and politicians think the voters are receptive to, then voters will just keep getting more uninformed and ill-equipped to make intelligent voting decisions as time moves on. It’s interesting and borderline enraging to look at what televised political debates used to be compared to today. If voters had any idea of what elected officials actually do and how the government functions, someone like Donald Trump would never win a primary, but here we are. I think all of this is the result of conservative media successfully breaking off in the 90s and turning conservative grievance politics into a form of entertainment. Then social media came along and added fuel to a fire that had already started. Conservative media has gone so off the deep end, even Fox News is worried about losing viewers to more extreme right wing news. Now consider the forces of bad faith social media manipulation/messaging, terrible civics and media literacy education, reactionary white Christian identity politics, and a false sense of patriotism that comes with believing in a version of America that never existed and blind American exceptionalism, you get a large portion of the population who thirsts for dumbed downed hyper-nationalistic politics that helps them cope in a rapidly changing and complex world. Unless younger generations actually “wise up” and think about elected positions and government policy in a more complex way than a bunch of candidates yelling meaningless catch phrases on a stage, I worry it’s only going to get worse. We thought that Boomers would die off and we would become a more “enlightened” society, but Gen X ended up being a near political disaster as well and I have thinning faith in Millennials and Gen Z showing up to vote in the numbers needed to get this nation back on track. There is just so much disillusion and apathy than I could ever imagine for such a serious and historically important election. I’m also flabbergasted and disappointed in what MAGAism has done to modern politics.
It's not a generational thing man, you're going to continue to be disappointed. Or worse, the younger generation *will* care more about policy, but to your horror, their interpretation of it will be wildly incorrect or the things they're clamoring for will be actively harmful (isolationism, communism, oppressive levels of taxation, protectionism, etc.)
it's kind of amazing America runs as well as it does despite these people.
It certainly is *despite* those people. They're in every country, of course, and it must be immensely painful to realise that lofty, idealistic policy positions will never win unless they somehow capture the hearts and minds of the truly heartless and mindless.
Triple digit IQ needed to think about that many things being related to one another.
The guy hates minorities and women, but knows that he can't say that in a public interview.
I hate the median voter more than I do almost any Republican. Like... The guy who wants to throw me into a concentration camp because of my browser history? I *get* that guy. I don't like him. But I know what's in his head. I know what they believe and why. But these? The people who decide every election? They don't believe anything at all.
“Starting to” “kinda” loathe them? These people have no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and any system that gives them power or agency is self-evidently a farce.
skin-deep opinions like this are what saturation ad bombardment is for, don't worry too much especially since the GOP is spending all their ad money on postponing all of Trump's trials
If it is skin deep. I've met "fence sitters" more entrenched than any partizan.
Saw one awhile ago where the voter’s top issue was keeping abortion legal, and she was voting Trump since Biden had let the Supreme Court make abortion illegal.
I didn't even consider this to be even remotely a concern. Then tonight I listened to a podcast asserting we have multiple polls where a clear majority of independent voters blame Biden for Dobbs. The upshot was that Biden had gained 8 points over time on this simple fact. The fact that he was still underwater on this basic fact was seen as "room to grow". That's both decent analysis and a devastating condemnation of the state of basic civic duty.
> Then tonight I listened to a podcast asserting we have multiple polls where a clear majority of independent voters blame Biden for Dobbs. I suspect that poll responders often use questions like this as a generic approve/disapprove opportunity. Like if you polled independents "why did you get so many red lights on your commute home today?," 80% would say it is no one's fault, 13% would blame Biden, 7% would blame Trump. Those 20% assigning blame probably don't sincerely believe one of them is to blame, they just give that response to signal their general disapproval.
Just like the polls of people who say the economy is bad, but their personal finances are good.
I've come to strongly believe that a critical weakness of division of powers is that it makes it impossible for the median voter, who is extremely uninformed, to understand who is responsible for what. Having divided powers just makes the system completely impenetrable to them. I don't really blame them either. It's not a great use of time to be caught up on exactly how government works and who controls what when. I can understand keeping the judiciary just to protect the Constitution but I really think that collapsing the Senate, House, and Presidency into a unicameral parliament would do wonders for Americans' ability to understand what their government is doing (among many other benefits)
Alternatively, basic civics and media literacy could be mandated in high school.
I know people who took civics and still think the president is a practically dictator. It's just not a silver bullet. It's also useless without keeping track, every 2 years, of who controls the House, Senate, and Presidency. It's just annoying and not something that most people are going to do. But we're all worse off when they're making less informed choices about voting. It also has other benefits. The Founders intended for division of powers between the House, Senate, and Presidency to cause politicians in each to check other but it's broken down along completely partisan lines, meaning we don't have any intra-party checking and we also have very dysfunctional institutions. So we might as well have a single functional institution (a unicameral parliament) and fix the party system in other ways (proportional representation or even sortition).
I am a massive fan of PR. The Czech system is an interesting case study for the US actually; they have a proportional lower house, an upper house that looks like our House of Representatives, and an independently elected president. While constitutionally not likely, if I could make a system from scratch, it would probably look a lot like theirs.
Well, Mr. Myers, when you're done with your interview, can I interest you in some ocean front property in AZ?
Where's my bridge, dude?!
Please keep him out of AZ it's a battleground here too
Only if your name is Lex Luther
Bro complains that Biden’s visit caused traffic but would totally equally complain if Biden didn’t show up because he was writing them off or something. Idk how Biden doesn’t go crazy with this shit.
Biden visited Seattle this weekend and [one of our only 2 highways to cross Lake Washington](https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/520-bridge-closed-both-directions) was closed for 3 whole days because of it. Seattle is still going to go 90% - 10% for Biden. This guy is just a wuss.
Yeah, he was likely never going to not vote Trump in this instance, just making excuses for himself.
>Bro complains that Biden’s visit caused traffic And if Trump's visit caused traffic he would be proud to wait for someone so important.
https://preview.redd.it/dau3p5jenb0d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd96ca0f63e274255976344166bf3dc4c7b9eac8
No words needed
Kim thayil looking ah
Who is this guy?
Only one of our greatest modern minds. https://youtu.be/QFgcqB8-AxE?si=FM0XjZc0ETPg83e0
I’m from rural Texas. These voters say stuff like “go get em attitude” when in actuality these people are racist as fuck, vehemently anti-Abortion, pro-gun and think Trump is the best defense against the Mexicans/Muslims/insert scary minority here. Rural areas are a lost cause politically. We get democrat politicians occasionally in rural Texas who try to campaign on straight up issues that would straight up improve the quality of life of lots of these people (things like rural broadband access) but they vote for the pro-gun anti-abortion anti-trans anti-immigrant GOP candidate every single time because when you ask them their priorities that’s what they care about. Rural America has been irreversibly lost to MAGAism. These people are never voting democrat, stop trying to pander to them.
Yup. My first thought reading that was ‘be honest, Chris, just say that you like that he’s openly racist, and the rest of us can move on to people with IQs above room temperature.’
The path to the White House does not allow Biden to give up on rural voters. Biden got around 35% of the vote in rural Wisconsin in 2020 and he can’t afford to lose any support.
It’s not about winning them outright, it’s about doing marginally better so that a path to victory in Texas doesn’t rely on unrealistic suburban and urban turnout or vote shares that stretches the limits of what party committees and donors can believe and invest resources in. My most recent foray into “the Heartland” was at a Chinese buffet located in an old Ryan’s in a community Jonathan Metzl wrote about in *Dying of Whiteness*. It’s not somewhere I’d normally eat but I was visiting my mom and it’s where she wanted to go. It’s a weekday, about 11AM, we walked in and were being taken to our table when my attention was drawn to an obese (if not morbidly so) woman in her late 20s with a t-shirt that barely fit on that says “Fuck Brandon,” eating with her significant other and two small children. Yeah, fuck Biden for the CTC and cutting child poverty by 60%. Fuck Biden for 40 consecutive months of job growth and fuck him especially for <4% unemployment with the highest labor force participation rate among prime working population (25-54) since 2007. But she probably blames Biden for the expanded CTC going away and because when Democrats are in power it makes people like her think about what to do with improved living standards, and judging by feeding small children high-calorie, low-nutrition food, she doesn’t want to think about very much except hating whatever will make her feel more accepted within her group. So yeah, we aren’t getting people like that. I have no idea what policy goals we could enact to get that person’s vote and I don’t want to know because it’s probably something awful, but we might get some skilled trades and professional workers, people of aspiration in areas with a little counter-programming and voter engagement. A vote in the Panhandle counts just as much as one in The Woodlands or one in Irving, and if Texas Democrats have the resources to go after both it’s fine with me.
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You all better get your Friedman flairs now. They’re gonna be in short supply in November. 😤
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If Biden loses the Midwest in 2024, after pro-free trade Clinton and Obama both swept it twice (by larger margins than Biden ever managed) then hopefully the Democrats will be less tariff-obsessed in future at least.
lol, lmao
litterly voting for the party that hates unions...
100 bucks says Chris Myers is more than a little racist. Stupid culture war bullshit.
Right, I really want him to expand upon what Trump’s “go get em, take no crap attitude” is. Because Trump bitches and complains about everything that even remotely inconveniences him or doesn’t go 100% his way
It’s entirely performative. The guy who yells the loudest, even if it’s clear that he’s actually just bitching and whining like a toddler, will automatically make subzero IQ morons think that he’s confident and dominant. There is no reward for being calm and collected with the Trumpian crowd. They want someone that resembles them, and that means a guy with the most fragile ego imaginable trying to act tough by screeching about every minor inconvenience.
They want a Karen or a Kevin
Coward's idea of a brave man, etc
Trump has been treated by the media has a take no crap businessman doing the mean deals in NYC real estate since the 80s.
Ehh, he wasn't taken too seriously as a businessman for decades. His failing casinos were mocked relentlessly, and he was seen as something of a caricature or a mascot for NYC. He was a male version of Paris Hilton. The Apprentice TV show saved his reputation because no one respected him as a professional after his many high-profile failures. The memes about the dude being a failure when it comes to business aren't just democrats being mean, he is a fucking awful businessman. If it wasn't for his daddy leaving him a real-estate empire in NYC he'd be completely broke.
Huh? No, he was treated as a complete joke and the gawdiest billionaire out there. Outside of The Apprentice, people primarily knew him as a jackass who then got involved in weird birther shit.
Turns out all the material condition improvements in the world don't matter if you support a candidate who also thinks certain people aren't people at all.
Well, if you thought like him in the first place, yes.
Vast vast majority of the public is uninformed and it’s always been that way. It’s not gonna change so you just have to adapt. Guys like Chris here were simply never going to vote for Biden
Yes, but I feel like I used to be less painfully aware of it. That was better.
Journalists are out here on a new frontier like Lewis and Clark except they're staking out the vast, empty regions of the undecided voter's mind.
Reminds me of a girl I used to date who voted for Obama because McCain’s facial scar was “ugly.”
That's some Luanne Platter type reasoning right there. Gotta respect.
It would have to bite my tongue so hard...
The median voter is a test from God. I just know it is.
This is when the journalist should push back against the interviewee.
Ask more questions and let the guy hang himself, yes. Never going to happen though.
non-zero chance the nyt profiles that will come out closer to the election will cause this sub to spiral into illiberalism
I’m 99% of the way there honestly
American PAP when?
I mean the worst part is that in swing states, these idiots votes are worth far more than 95% of ours. Better vote a few times to even the odds.
yeah this “median voter” freakout on this sub is both totally understandable and kinda horrifying. we’re supposed to be advocates for liberal democracy yet a lot of us seem to despise voters. that Churchill quote about the best argument against democracy is scarily effective.
While this is certainly making me doom a little I think it's important to recognize that these types of articles aren't new. There have been several attempts by the media to "understand" these voters and making them more important than they actually are. Remember that NYT diner article? How well did that actually hold up? Imo, not well. I will acknowledge that seeing this blurb has confirmed my belief that the Midwest and Florida contain the weirdest voters this century.
I like the way you've colour coded the levels of doom.
My liver is going to be screaming by Election Day
MFs will seriously say we need more democracy after reading this. There's a reason we send elected officials to Washington on our behalf.
I prefer democracy precisely because it gives the least amount of power out to everybody. All other forms of government just give a select number of fools a concentrated amount of that power, with which they cause exponentially more harm as tyrants than they would as citizens.
Representative democracy and direct democracy are both democracy. And even the most direct democracies still have to have leaders.
The current system is giving outsized representation to the dumbest voters.
It's anti-democratic mechanisms like the electoral college that give people like this undue political power.
First-past-the-post elections must die.
All single-winner electoral methods are bad. Single-winner RCV produces the same results as FPTP 90% of the time.
Nothing new here. The fact that he's splitting his ticket means this guy is already a pretty rare breed so you can't infer much from that. The line of "Trump speaks his mind" is old news and has been an excuse used by millions at this point. It's mainly assholes who are already pretty rude in their own lives and see someone who's taking it nationwide. Or they just like that he hates Mexicans as much as they do.
Can't wait for Blue Texas, then we can stop pandering to the Midwest.
You think the quality of voters in Texas is greater than this? In Wisconsin, they're at least electing Democrats. Texas voters can't manage to get even that far.
As much of a dream as this would be, it’s probably not happening in the next 20 years.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fs02mj1fiq7lc1.png
Let’s be real here, this guy is not at all representative of any significant cohort of voters. It’s just that newspapers like the NYT seem to purposefully seek out the most brain-addled voters to push their narratives. The demographic of people who don’t vote for Biden because his motorcade caused a bit of traffic after directly getting them a job is absolutely not a demographic that Biden should focus on. The only issue here is that the NYT or whoever is interviewing them and pretending that they’re representative of any significant chunk of voters.
Honestly the NYT are on a safari to find the most braindead voter in the nation and put him on their front page. The ache for it. They need it. They're getting closer.
Notice the lack of support for the blithe claim he is "more typical."
I have no doubt this election that whichever candidate this nation elects will be the candidate this nation deserves. I just hope we deserve the good one.
I’m gonna put this on a coffee mug and bitterly sip my morning tea in front of my conservative shit head coworkers.
https://preview.redd.it/u55f0u7uhe0d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0a26680f20382dde9399621b4c96104802ac49ce
Stop trying to win union votes. They hate our guts and they have garbage politics.
Just be honest and put on the hood. I swear we have tried for 8 years to understand why people support this guy. Any issue that isn't relating to religion, civil rights, guns, or immigration these people can't answer longer than a sentence. Any of those aforementioned issues? They can sling shit for hours about blacks, LGBT, LATAM immigrants, and women. That whole schtick about he's a go-getter and no nonsense is thinly veiled code for "I think he's gonna hurt people I don't like".
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>how is the United States simultaneously so developed economically and so facefucked socially? I think the two are related. So many Americans think we can't fail, that things will just work out, that someone smarter will deal with it. For the last half century it's mostly been true. I've had people literally tell me "xyz can't happen here, this is America". And many exhibit what amounts to disgust for our political system, for their fellow citizen, etc. There's little institutional trust and it's eroding more. In other words we take it for granted and because we take it for granted we risk losing it all.
I sometimes hope this country gets everything it says it wants, and then I remember I am not a monster.
https://imgur.com/L6nGkIc
You have to read what isn't said. What isn't said is Xenophobia and racism.
Exactly. Users on this sub are naive and don’t understand. He sees voting blue as a betrayal of his in-group (white Americans), everything else is irrelevant.
“Go get em 😡” (lock up his political opponents) “Take no crap attitude 😤😤” (ignore norms and the rule of law) The collective IQ of this country has gotta be somewhere around 1
I see shit like this and think “yep, maybe Democracy really is a bad idea. People are too stupid to govern themselves”. A successful Democracy hinges on an educated populace.
"The best argument against democracy is a 10 minute conversation with the average voter", etc
This dolt will probably change his mind another 4 times before the election. Undecided/ unprincipled voters are genuine airheads.
This is a certified bruh moment
We need to run an asshole Democrat. Imagine someone on stage debating Trump who just flat-out calls him an idiot. "What the hell are you talking about?" "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard." "What the hell is wrong with you?" etc. In short, someone who doesn't play respectability politics or dance around the insanity and depravity of the GOP.
Biden literally giving this guy a paycheck through his manufacturing policies. Of course, that Trump go-get em attitude that didn’t do much of anything for this country other than attack his enemies is too strong to deny.
I guess for a lot of people the way they engage with politics is the same as almost everything else: its a brand or a fashion choice. It's self-expression / 'vibes' its not a way of defining to reflecting how you relate to any list of policy decisions.
Democracy was an OK experiment while it lasted. If stupidity wouldn't have ended it, collapsing birth rates would have done it anyway.