To think that Trump is not going to get re-elected?

[Anon778833]

There are still a few fringe types who think he’s going to get a landslide victory.

Personally I find this unlikely.

Any MNers from across the pond have a view more informed than myself?

He is absolutely 100% getting re elected.

About Venezuelans I know. Trump is the only one who has tried to help Venezuelans. What Obama and Biden ever did? In fact they have sided with people who has damaged Venezuela badly. It is not that simple.

Why are people saying 100% he will be when all the odds are against it? is it a sort of to look clever thing if he does get in?

There is a poster here who lives in Mexico and says Trump has a lot of support among Mexicans as his policies overall have been good for Mexico.
It makes little difference to them what Trump thinks of them, who gives a shit? They aren't saying they think he is great or smart or moral. It doesn't even matter much whether he wants to help them. It's just a matter of whether they think his policies will be better for them than Biden's.

And shockingly to a lot of American Democrats, there are a fair number of people in other countries who have found Trumps government is better for them than a lot of other American governments have been.

It makes little difference to them what Trump thinks of them, who gives a shit?

Exactly, besides Trump has said that immigrants are very welcome but not illegally so Mexicans know which Mexicans Trump is talking about it.

@user1471565182

Why are people saying 100% he will be when all the odds are against it? is it a sort of to look clever thing if he does get in?

The same people who say “believe me, there will never be a Covid vaccine” and “Mark my words, mass gatherings are gone forever”

He is absolutely 100% getting re elected.

And your reasoning for this statement?

@user1471565182

Goosefoot- Look at the voting preferences of young people now. Despite the cliche, its a total myth that peoples politics change with age.

Well, I think they do, often, just not always in the same direction.

But there are voting trends and it's not always easy to say which way they will go in a given cohort over time. Nor is it reasonable to assume that the children of people who are 20 now will vote similarly to them.

There's been a significant amount of political realignment going on in the west in the last 20 years and many look quite different already as far as the composition of their political options. Neither the US nor the UK has a real viable leftist party at all. And there are political tensions pulling in opposite directions.

In 100 years there may be no political parties in the US - I'd be willing to make a modest bet on it, if I could get the right odds.

the whole process of history is a moving towards the left or more particularly a sort of liberal left, the right is having to restructure endlessly, so they might still call it conservatism in 50 years but it wont be recognisable to use. Just look at the last 50 years-conservatives have had to drop the overt sexism, racism, homophobia. 50 years before that they had to drop their opposition to unions and welfare, before that it was universal suffrage and child labour and before that the french revolution.

On top of that as the education level goes up (as it generally does) people vote towards the left more.

*to us

The large queues to vote will definitely be in Trumps favour. Trump supporters love him and will be willing to queue. Biden voters don't particularly like him but prefer him to Trump so I can't see them waiting several hours to vote in person.

@bp300

The large queues to vote will definitely be in Trumps favour. Trump supporters love him and will be willing to queue. Biden voters don't particularly like him but prefer him to Trump so I can't see them waiting several hours to vote in person.

There are many reasons people queue to vote. Remember the ballots contain far more questions than just 'Who do you want to be president.'

People will queue to vote for/against Trump/Biden and they''ll queue to vote for all the other candidates and issues on the ticket.

In my state, they're voting on Susan Collins (AKA they're voting for control of the Senate), they're voting on their representative to Congress (control of the House), on their state representatives and senators, on their local town councils and school boards, on town/school budgets and bonds.

They're voting on rent control ordinances, minimum wage ordinances, AirBNB regulation rules, changes in zoning ordinances... They were going to vote on whether the electricity company is allowed to carve a huge swathe through the empty forests in the west of the state, but the question was taken off the ballot at the last minute.

People really REALLY hate the electricity company. They would've waited for days to vote against them, if they had to.

One year there was a vote on whether bear baiting should be made illegal.

Another year there was a referendum on gay marriage. (It passed btw. First state to make gay marriage legal via popular vote.)

When you see people in the US queueing to vote, they're voting for so many more things than just what you hear about in the national news.

A friend is volunteering in Orlando, supporting people who are waiting in line for hours to vote. She brings them drinks and food from the food trucks (which are donating everything for free). She gets them anything else they need. She thanks them for turning up to vote and if necessary she drives them home afterwards.

@user1471565182

the whole process of history is a moving towards the left or more particularly a sort of liberal left, the right is having to restructure endlessly, so they might still call it conservatism in 50 years but it wont be recognisable to use. Just look at the last 50 years-conservatives have had to drop the overt sexism, racism, homophobia. 50 years before that they had to drop their opposition to unions and welfare, before that it was universal suffrage and child labour and before that the french revolution.

On top of that as the education level goes up (as it generally does) people vote towards the left more.

Good Lord, where have you excavated this idea from?

There are currently no leftist parties in many of the western democracies, including the US. The Democrats are a right wing party with a neoliberal economic agenda.

Arguably conservatism is also no longer conservative and is also a neoliberal ideology, at least economically, but that's not leftist either.

I'd also be curious to know, what do you think it is that is propelling history inevitably in this leftist particular direction, so that you are so sure it won't change? Some sort of World Spirit?

I'm struck this time round by how hard people are working to make sure they get their ballots - whether they plan to vote absentee or in-person.

DD's boyfriend paid for FedEx Overnight shipping to get his application in on time for his absentee ballot. He'd hoped to use the online application system but it turned out he didn't qualify, and there was absolutely no way he was willing to lose his vote.

He votes in Pennsylvania where potentially every vote will count.

Mm-mm, "rounding the turn":

www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/coronavirus-map-shows-uncontrolled-spread-of-covid19-in-united-states/news-story/1bc07405e110f1ef65453b9703bcacd1

The large queues to vote will definitely be in Trumps favour.

There are vast swathes of people who will crawl over broken glass, inhaling COVID, to vote Trump out.

Anyway, we will all soon see, right?

The large queues to vote will definitely be in Trumps favour.

And, of course, that’s not what the polls (much more sophisticated than in 2016) are indicating.

Don’t forget -

• Trump lost the popular vote in 2016
• the Dems took the House in 2018
• Trump has wiped out 225,000 (and counting) American lives and tanked the economy in 2020.

This update from Nate Cohn, the main polling analyst for the New York Times, is useful. It adjusts the current polls for both the polling discrepancies in 2016 (which famously underestimated the Republicans) and in 2012 (which underestimated the Democrats). Now I am going to go knock on wood and throw salt.

@blueangel19

I do not think the Hispanics are calling Biden a socialist. The Democrat party has changed and aligned much more to the left is what they feel. Take from me I have quite a lot of Latino friends who would not have voted Trump last time and are now. Many in Florida. There is a real concern Biden will step down to get Kamala in. We can pretend but even some Democrats openly discuss this. Once you have lived the nightmare of Cubans and Venezuelans in their countries there is not in hell they take the slightest chance.

That's the Democratic party.

(Sorry if that was a bit snide of me--"Democrat party" is a pet peeve of mine. Using Democrat as an adjective is used explicitly by a certain sector of Republicans as an epithet. There's a whole wikipedia page about it!)

I'm an American living in the UK and I find a lot of the opinions on here fascinating.

A few posters commented that they believe that the democrats are trying to suppress voters and belittle them - that could not be further from the truth. It is quite the opposite. A few examples being:

1. The Texas Governor making it so each county has only one ballot drop box. This means that Harris County, home to the entire city of Houston which is 1,777 square miles and also home to 4.7 MILLION people, only has one ballot drop box.
2. The numerous filings of State Republican Parties to change rules for when absentee and mail in ballots have to arrive (trying to say that they must arrive by election day). In a normal situation, this doesn't seem too bad, right? But consider that Trump appointed an entirely unqualified businessman named Louis DeJoy to essentially dismantle the USPS at a time when it is its most important. My little cousin is in Uni out of state and applied to vote absentee in Pennsylvania, where her parents live (arguably the most important swing state). Her ballot was mailed in the first week of October and still has not arrived. She has been disenfranchised.

Someone else commented that the Democrats' whole platform is that they are not Trump (implying that they are not running on actual policies). I would assert that this is also backwards. Just take a quick glimpse on their websites and you will see that I am correct. For example, Trump is trying to overturn the ACA (which is going to the Supreme Court imminently), thus stripping millions of health insurance during a global pandemic and also taking away coverage for pre-existing conditions. He has no plan to replace it. The GOP has had 10 years to come up with a health care plan to rival the ACA, and they have nothing. Biden, on the other hand, has a detailed health care plan on his website.

I am also a bit disheartened by some of the comments disparaging Americans as a whole. Trust me, I am just as disillusioned by what is going on as you are. There are, however, so many who oppose everything that Trump stands for. In fact, the majority does. The electoral college was designed in a manner that gives rural areas undue influence in national politics (a person from Wyoming has 3.6 times the amount of electoral power as a person from California). The issue is that those rural areas are the ones that resist change for the longest. Education also tends to be significantly worse in those areas, but that's a topic for another day.

My take is that Biden will win barring any malfeasance by the GOP. Granted, my circle in the US is northern, urban, and educated so it is certainly a biased sample size, but I have hope. Youth turnout is looking fantastic thus far, and Trump's support among the elderly has decreased considerably due to his Covid botching.

Didn’t most of them (people from central and South America) who support that abortions should be banned and they even criminalized mother who miscarried out of a assumption they had abortion? If so, I can see how they for Trump, they do seem a bit conservative anyhow. Social programs are not a bad thing but a narcissist leader is

@HoldMyLobster

I'm struck this time round by how hard people are working to make sure they get their ballots - whether they plan to vote absentee or in-person.

DD's boyfriend paid for FedEx Overnight shipping to get his application in on time for his absentee ballot. He'd hoped to use the online application system but it turned out he didn't qualify, and there was absolutely no way he was willing to lose his vote.

He votes in Pennsylvania where potentially every vote will count.

You are absolutely right!! The cousin in the above message is 21, it's her first national election, and she is desperate to vote. Yesterday, assuming her ballot would simply never arrive, she filled out a form to cancel and replace her ballot, scanned and sent it to her mother who then bought 2 USPS overnight envelopes (at $26 each). Her mom went to the county seat with the form printed out, handed them the overnight mailers, and she will now hopefully get her ballot (finally). But no one should have to spend $52 to vote when she applied to vote absentee and was approved in August and generally did everything right.

While that story scares me in some ways, it also gives me a lot of hope for younger generations. I think her generation may end up being the most politically aware that we have seen due to coming of age in the era of Trump.

While that story scares me in some ways, it also gives me a lot of hope for younger generations. I think her generation may end up being the most politically aware that we have seen due to coming of age in the era of Trump.

I agree. The early numbers voting from young people is insane. In Texas it's 7 times what it was in 2016. It makes sense: these are kids who lived not only through Trump but through the financial crash, major social shifts, and a serious spate of gun violence and training for gun violence in school. And a lot of them place a huge emphasis on the environment and they believe that climate change is real and manmade more than any other generation. Plus, they're spoken to and organize directly through social media like we've never seen before.

This article has a graph with some of the numbers on early voting--they're remarkable! www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2020/10/26/no-seriously-young-people-are-voting-490710

A few posters commented that they believe that the democrats are trying to suppress voters and belittle them - that could not be further from the truth

To be fair, every thinking person does know this.