2024 Presidential Election | ELECTION DAY 2024

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Speaking as a newly-minted member of the CONTIFA wing of the Democratic Party, is this pre-election freak out a normal thing among my brother and sister Dems? Good lord, people. NOTHING HAS CHANGED!!! Even with the recent WSJ poll that has some obvious methodological problems, Trump has STILL not hit even 47% on the 538 average. Kamala is working hard and has a great plan to keep working the people who need to be reached over the next 10 days.

It's like everyone who's been recognizing and calling out Trump's nonstop lies for the last nine years is suddenly believing them.
 
lawtig02 said:
Speaking as a newly-minted member of the CONTIFA wing of the Democratic Party, is this pre-election freak out a normal thing among my brother and sister Dems? Good lord, people. NOTHING HAS CHANGED!!! Even with the recent WSJ poll that has some obvious methodological problems, Trump has STILL not hit even 47% on the 538 average. Kamala is working hard and has a great plan to keep working the people who need to be reached over the next 10 days.

It's like everyone who's been recognizing and calling out Trump's nonstop lies for the last nine years is suddenly believing them.
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As the founding co-member of CONTIFA I heartily endorse this message.
 
lawtig02 said:
Speaking as a newly-minted member of the CONTIFA wing of the Democratic Party, is this pre-election freak out a normal thing among my brother and sister Dems? Good lord, people. NOTHING HAS CHANGED!!! Even with the recent WSJ poll that has some obvious methodological problems, Trump has STILL not hit even 47% on the 538 average. Kamala is working hard and has a great plan to keep working the people who need to be reached over the next 10 days.

It's like everyone who's been recognizing and calling out Trump's nonstop lies for the last nine years is suddenly believing them.
Click to expand...
Yeah this is pretty standard freak out dooming by us. I think 2016 just made us all so wary that he can win that we are sort of bracing for it now, just so we aren't knocked off balance if it does happen again.
 
The more I think about it, the more I realize that it would have never worked out in the long-term for me in the Republican Party. I’ve just got too much damn pride to allow myself to be treated like I am a slack jawed dumbfuck by all of the politicians in my party. It is pretty apparent that it takes a special kind of someone who lacks any self-respect whatsoever to gobble up all of the bullshit being tossed at them by Republican politicians.

Board Republicans, listen. Take it from me, a former dyed in the wool Republican: they fucking hate you! They think you are dumber than a pile of dog shit! They literally think you are too stupid to function. Quit proving them correct!
 
nycfan said:
Ted Cruz’s seat is possibly in play. Texas is not in play for the presidential election.
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That is very nice of Trump and Harris to go down there and help out their candidates. I think I'd be a little more selfish.
Paine said:
I agree that no one is changing their vote based on the endorsement.

I’m more concerned about the role that the press is supposed to play in promoting a free, open, and democratic society.

If your newspaper’s slogan is “Democracy Dies in Darkness” and you can’t even bring yourself to endorse the candidate running against a fascist then it’s clear they don’t really care about democracy.

Not a surprise to those of us who know that capital controls the major newspapers, but it’s still disheartening.
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I like the endorsements on the local and less well-known state candidates like the soil and water commissioner or the county commissioner of district 6 or whatever. I think for president it's probably not going to affect too many votes.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
That is very nice of Trump and Harris to go down there and help out their candidates. I think I'd be a little more selfish.


I like the endorsements on the local and less well-known state candidates like the soil and water commissioner or the county commissioner of district 6 or whatever. I think for president it's probably not going to affect too many votes.
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I think Harris is going down there to get in an appearance with Beyonce and in hopes of a resulting media bounce in coverage.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
That is very nice of Trump and Harris to go down there and help out their candidates. I think I'd be a little more selfish.


I like the endorsements on the local and less well-known state candidates like the soil and water commissioner or the county commissioner of district 6 or whatever. I think for president it's probably not going to affect too many votes.
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Harris isn't in Texas to help other candidates. I thought maybe that's why she was going, and I'm sure she'll do what she can while she's there, but she's made her intentions clear now. She's in Texas to highlight the state's barbaric abortion laws, which are actively causing the deaths of women and the needless suffering of nonviable infants. That seems well worth a quick trip to our second largest state to me.
 
lawtig02 said:
Speaking as a newly-minted member of the CONTIFA wing of the Democratic Party, is this pre-election freak out a normal thing among my brother and sister Dems? Good lord, people. NOTHING HAS CHANGED!!! Even with the recent WSJ poll that has some obvious methodological problems, Trump has STILL not hit even 47% on the 538 average. Kamala is working hard and has a great plan to keep working the people who need to be reached over the next 10 days.

It's like everyone who's been recognizing and calling out Trump's nonstop lies for the last nine years is suddenly believing them.
Click to expand...
1. Kind of normal. I'm interested in the personality theory of politics -- namely, that people's political leanings are determined by the types of people they are. Well, according to that theory, there's an authoritarian personality, which is determined primarily by very low openness to experience. high conscientiousness (i.e. diligence in following rules), and very high on antagonism (which means low agreeableness). And the liberal personalities have their own types.

Well, educated liberals are generally high on neuroticism. That's what makes them successful. Lawyers are famously neurotic, as you surely know. Good ones, anyway. Professors are often neurotic. These are related to success because neurotic people can often channel their anxieties into productive pursuits. But they are still neurotic, meaning high anxiety.

2. But it's also a fear response. There's just so much at stake in this election. And I don't think you identify with it.

Let me offer my diagnosis of CONTIFA: it's not unflattering. Basically, you appreciate the dangers of Trump. You've come to understand why it's important, in our day and age, to be anti-MAGA. You've understood that being a good person is usually inconsistent with MAGA. That is to say, you've intellectualized your politics. As someone who intellectualizes almost everything, I am not offering this as a critique at all.

It's just different from how a lot of long-time liberals think. Sometimes you see people on the board, when feeling pessimistic, say things like, "it won't hurt me, so I guess I can soldier on," etc. That's a form of reassuring thinking. It's being phrased in a pro-social way, and it's a good sentiment, but it's not my sentiment. You'll almost never see that from me, because that makes me feel worse.

It hurts me even more to know that people like me will not be targeted but the vulnerable populations will. That is, I've tried to live my life, from the very beginning of my autonomy, to help people, especially vulnerable people. I'm not always that successful because reasons that don't need to be mentioned here, but anyway that's my ideal. It literally makes me sick to my stomach sometimes thinking about the communities ravaged by hurricanes or typhoons or droughts and wild fires and realizing that Trump's election will basically lock humanity into a warming cycle that will reproduce these things many times over. That there will be people who starve when the farmland gets pulled into the sea. I might or might not be around when the shit really hits the fan, but it makes me really upset anyway.

All of that is to say that people like me really *feel* the impending doom of Trump. It's not intellectualized. And again, that's weird for me to type because in 99 out of 100 cases, I'm the one who intellectualizes more than my interlocutors. But it seems, not here. And so this is naturally going to make me on edge.

Now, because I intellectualize, I'm pretty good at burying my anxieties beneath analysis. That's why I'm not freaking out here. But I suspect that there are a lot of people who *feel* the same way I do, but don't intellectualize as much as my weird ass does, and that's the recipe for the freakouts.
 
lawtig02 said:
Speaking as a newly-minted member of the CONTIFA wing of the Democratic Party, is this pre-election freak out a normal thing among my brother and sister Dems? Good lord, people. NOTHING HAS CHANGED!!! Even with the recent WSJ poll that has some obvious methodological problems, Trump has STILL not hit even 47% on the 538 average. Kamala is working hard and has a great plan to keep working the people who need to be reached over the next 10 days.

It's like everyone who's been recognizing and calling out Trump's nonstop lies for the last nine years is suddenly believing them.
Click to expand...
I'm not really sure I follow your last sentence. No one here believes Trump's BS. The objective reality is that the election is very close and will be decided by thin margins. At best, that means we're about to go through two more months of "stop the steal" BS, and conspiracy theories, and lawsuits, and who knows what else. Being concerned about Trump winning the election, which is a very real possibility, and/or about what will happen if we don't know an official result for days, which is also a very real possibility, does not correlate at all with believing Trump's BS.

I guess my complete response would be, how are you NOT freaking out? How is, like, a 40-50% possibility of a Trump win (likely coming along with control of both the House and the Senate) not raising a huge knot of stress in the pit of your stomach? I sure as hell hope it doesn't happen. There's still a good chance it doesn't happen. But I find it hard to understand an "everything is good" mentality at this point. Many of us had that mentality in October 2016, when Clinton was blowing Trump out and we were laughing at Pubs all the way to the finish line. After that debacle, how anyone could ever again go into a Trump election - knowing the stakes and consequences if he does win - with calmness and confidence is beyond me.
 
lawtig02 said:
Harris isn't in Texas to help other candidates. I thought maybe that's why she was going, and I'm sure she'll do what she can while she's there, but she's made her intentions clear now. She's in Texas to highlight the state's barbaric abortion laws, which are actively causing the deaths of women and the needless suffering of nonviable infants. That seems well worth a quick trip to our second largest state to me.
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Oops. Didn't mean to post that part. But I think this is her second or third trip to Texas in the last week or two.

Edit: never mind. Faulty memory. Looks like they were talking about this trip.
 
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rodoheel said:
I guess my complete response would be, how are you NOT freaking out? How is, like, a 40-50% possibility of a Trump win (likely coming along with control of both the House and the Senate) not raising a huge knot of stress in the pit of your stomach?
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How long have you been a liberal? I think that's a lot of it. See my post above.
 
superrific said:
1. Kind of normal. I'm interested in the personality theory of politics -- namely, that people's political leanings are determined by the types of people they are. Well, according to that theory, there's an authoritarian personality, which is determined primarily by very low openness to experience. high conscientiousness (i.e. diligence in following rules), and very high on antagonism (which means low agreeableness). And the liberal personalities have their own types.

Well, educated liberals are generally high on neuroticism. That's what makes them successful. Lawyers are famously neurotic, as you surely know. Good ones, anyway. Professors are often neurotic. These are related to success because neurotic people can often channel their anxieties into productive pursuits. But they are still neurotic, meaning high anxiety.

2. But it's also a fear response. There's just so much at stake in this election. And I don't think you identify with it.

Let me offer my diagnosis of CONTIFA: it's not unflattering. Basically, you appreciate the dangers of Trump. You've come to understand why it's important, in our day and age, to be anti-MAGA. You've understood that being a good person is usually inconsistent with MAGA. That is to say, you've intellectualized your politics. As someone who intellectualizes almost everything, I am not offering this as a critique at all.

It's just different from how a lot of long-time liberals think. Sometimes you see people on the board, when feeling pessimistic, say things like, "it won't hurt me, so I guess I can soldier on," etc. That's a form of reassuring thinking. It's being phrased in a pro-social way, and it's a good sentiment, but it's not my sentiment. You'll almost never see that from me, because that makes me feel worse.

It hurts me even more to know that people like me will not be targeted but the vulnerable populations will. That is, I've tried to live my life, from the very beginning of my autonomy, to help people, especially vulnerable people. I'm not always that successful because reasons that don't need to be mentioned here, but anyway that's my ideal. It literally makes me sick to my stomach sometimes thinking about the communities ravaged by hurricanes or typhoons or droughts and wild fires and realizing that Trump's election will basically lock humanity into a warming cycle that will reproduce these things many times over. That there will be people who starve when the farmland gets pulled into the sea. I might or might not be around when the shit really hits the fan, but it makes me really upset anyway.

All of that is to say that people like me really *feel* the impending doom of Trump. It's not intellectualized. And again, that's weird for me to type because in 99 out of 100 cases, I'm the one who intellectualizes more than my interlocutors. But it seems, not here. And so this is naturally going to make me on edge.

Now, because I intellectualize, I'm pretty good at burying my anxieties beneath analysis. That's why I'm not freaking out here. But I suspect that there are a lot of people who *feel* the same way I do, but don't intellectualize as much as my weird ass does, and that's the recipe for the freakouts.
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That all makes sense, and while you're right I don't think much like a long-term liberal, I think I may be intellectualizing this a little differently than you're suggesting. If Trump wins, I'll be devastated for the people who will be most impacted by his presidency (recognizing I'm probably not in any of those groups personally). I just don't think Trump is going to win. The polling, and especially changes in the polling within the margins of error, seems meaningless to me at this point in the race. All of the "momentum" talk is just noise from Trump's camp. I don't think this race has materially changed since Kamala took over and showed the country she has what it takes to be president of the United States, and nothing that happens in the next ten days is likely to change anything either. I'm not saying it's impossible for Trump to win. I just think his odds of doing so are somewhere in the 10% range.
 
Her closing argument is focusing on 1/6. That’s out of touch.

I think Harris would be a good president but she’s a lousy campaigner. Running on the fact she’s not Trump won’t win because most Americans are numb to how dangerous he is. They can’t be shocked enough anymore. She should have (and should now) talk about the fact that she’ll be tougher on the border to protect jobs, expand Obamacare, provide tax relief for those making less than (choose a number). Don’t say I will tax the rich. Talk about helping those under and certain level. People feel that. Mention nothing about trans rights. It’s not that I don’t care but that’s not going to win and she has to win. If she loses this, and the trend appears to be she will, then I pray the Democrats huddle with politicians like Bernie and Warren and talk about how they get back to focusing on middle America. Concerts with Beyoncé and Springsteen is not it. No one cares.
 
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