I have been puzzling over this question since the Democratic National Convention.
Like most people, I didn’t know much about Kamala Harris when she became Vice President. Now that I have seen her speak, now that I saw her debate Trump, I feel very energized to support her campaign for the Presidency.
She is smart, well informed, experienced, committed to the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law. She is thoughtful and composed. She laughs, she smiles, she seems like a kind and thoughtful person. She is well prepared for the presidency, having won election as the District Attorney of San Francisco, as Attorney General of the State of California, as U.S. Senator from California, and as Vice-President of the United States since Joe Biden and she were elected in 2020.
Her opponent is a bundle of equal parts narcissism and hatred. He likes men. He likes white men. He likes to play tough guy. He looks on women as sex objects and feather heads. He doesn’t respect women.
He is crude, vulgar, without a shred of the dignity we expect from a president. The language he uses to ridicule and insult others is vile.
He is a racist, a misogynist, a xenophobe, and a Christian nationalist (without being a practicing Christian).
He is a sexual predator. He is known for not paying people to whom he owes money for services rendered. He has gone through six bankruptcies.
He is ignorant. His former aides say he has never read the Constitution. He is driven by his massive ego. He wants everyone to say he’s the best, the greatest, and there’s never been anyone as great as him.
He is a convicted felon, convicted on 34 counts of business fraud in New York. He was found guilty by a jury in New York of defaming E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of sexually assaulting her many years ago. He was ordered to pay her more than $90 million for continuing to defame her. That judgment is on appeal.
Other trials are pending.
When he lost the 2020 election, he refused to accept his defeat. He schemed to overturn the election by various ploys. He summoned a mob of his fans to Washington on January 6, 2021, the day that Congress gathered for the ceremonial certification of the election. Trump encouraged them to march on the U.S. Capitol, “peaceably….(but) fight like hell.” They did fight like hell. They battered their way into the Capitol, smashing windows and doors, beating law officers, vandalizing the building and its offices, while hunting for Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The outnumbered law officers held them off to protect the members of Congress. Many of them were brutally beaten. Some later died. What if the mob had reached the members of Congress? What if they had captured Pence and Pelosi?
It was the most shameful day of our national history. A President encouraging a mob to sack the Capitol and overturn the Constitution.
Ever since that disgraceful day, Trump has reiterated that the election was stolen from him, even though it wasn’t close. He has undermined faith in the electoral process, faith in the judiciary, faith in the law.
These are the two candidates: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Why is this election close?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am camping near Chattanooga. Beautiful lake (built in Norris’ TVA project). Nice and cool, relaxing.
My neighbor, who moves his suburban every five minutes, declared loudly to one of his compatriots that he was “a proud Republican.”
because he lives in Tennessee, his voice will be heard. Mine will not. This is the only reason the race is close.
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The odd thing is Kamala is doing better in most red states than any Democrat in recent history. She still has no chance at all of winning those states, but it is interesting that the percentage of red state voters who understand how unfit and dangerous Trump is has been growing. Perhaps that will carry some Dems to a surprise victory down the ballot.
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I sat in on a class at a major university last week, “The Weimar Republic and the Rise of the Nazism,” how could the home of a highly cultured and well educated nation support the Nazi Party platform and election Hitler? How can “almost” half of Americans support Trump?
The subtext of every election are race, gender and class.
Those of us who are Ravitch acolytes live in a bubble…
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Perhaps you are correct. Mark Twain cynically suggested “be good and you will be lonely” in a fit of typical pessimism. If good people exist only in small bubbles, we are lost.
But we are not lost. There are many good people for whom fear appeals arouse feelings within themselves that they do not recognize. Eventually, we will defeat fear with love and caring. Let us hope it occurs quickly.
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Yes. One candidate promises hate and retribution. The other promises to be President for all of us and to revive a politics of joy.
Which will win? Hate or joy? Divisiveness or unity?
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Peter,
I know. I try to create a bubble where reasonable people can discuss, exchange ideas, and learn. I learn all the time. The world should be like that. It’s not.
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Exactly my feeling too, how in the name of all that is decent and sane is this race even close. Harris should be leading by massive margins; but no, there are obviously millions of misguided people who think that Trump is an acceptable candidate.
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Joe Jersey,
There are many people who won’t vote for a woman, esp a woman of color. Furthermore, Trump has waged a disgustingly nasty ad campaign against her, presenting has as stupid, a prostitute, a Communist, a puppet for secret handlers, a DEI hire, etc. Those who see his ads and never see her appearances are brainwashed.
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Because the media landscape has so radically changed. There really isn’t a mainstream media any longer. It has been fractured along ideological lines and can be easily hijacked by Russia, Musk et al. Out with editorial boards verifying fact – in with billionaire media company owners controlling what and how the sheeple see.
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Deep partisan polarization + algorithms working to sort us into political silos. We experience different realities.
There is no Fox.
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“There is no Fox.” Not sure what you mean.
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lol neither do I. That must have been a weird artifact of a draft. Ignore it.
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I will actually dream of it. Bring on the reality!
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I REFUSE to be part of any political silo anymore. I have EFS….election fatigue syndrome….and many others do, too! EVERY single political text I get, I “delete and report as spam,” every political email gets the same, and I refuse to answer phone calls and then block the #. If someone comes knocking at my door, I refuse to answer. I do not desire to have “people” tell me how to think when I am perfectly capable of doing that for myself. I do not wish to tell people how I intend to vote and I’m tired of the intrusion on my life. Our politicians NEED to understand that the policies that they vote for and enact affect a large number of people….not just their wealthy donors with a private agenda.
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As long as you are not undecided, Lisa. I have had recent “short” conversations with someone who also has EFS, but then went on to say she was undecided!
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I’ve answered this question many times but you just dismiss and mock me, which leads mean to believe you’re not actually interested in a good faith answer. You just want to paint all non-Harris toadies as ignorant, racist Trump-supporting Neanderthals. And it’s that very attitude that’s likely to cost Harris the election. Same attitude that cost Hillary.
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James Comey cost Hillary the election. She was leading by 8-10 points until he announced, ten days before the election, that the FBI was reopening its investigation of her emails. A few days later, he announced that the investigation turned up nothing. But the damage was done. She would have been one of the best-qualified Presidents ever.
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Oh, and here I thought it was Russia. Or BernieBros. Or Jill Stein. Or Susan Sarandon. Or literally anyone but the woman who promoted Trump in the first place and then couldn’t even be bothered to visit swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin after calling a third of the country “deplorables” and another third “superpredators”.
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You are wrong. Your sources are wrong. That’s why you embarrassed yourself with your support of Putin.
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What am I wrong about? You have literally blamed everyone but Hillary for Hillary’s loss, yet the fact remains that she ran an abominable campaign, as Harris is doing now. I don’t know what will happen next month, but I have strong suspicions based on the writing I’ve seen on the wall. And if I’m correct, you and your ilk are going to learn no more from that than you learned in 2016.
And if I’m wrong, then congrats, but that’s only the first step. Democrats will still have rising debt, homelessness, food insecurity and lack of healthcare to deal with at home and genocide and proxy war abroad. Governing is a lot harder than campaigning.
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Hillary was leading in the polls by 8-10 points until Comey announced that the FBI was reopening its investigation of her emails. Her polling advantage collapsed and never recovered.
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I rarely agree with dienne77 anymore, but she is absolutely correct with this comment. I’m having the feeling of deja vu November 2016. It wasn’t pretty then and it will be even uglier this time around with Agenda 47/Project 2025. The name calling and in-fighting with those that don’t 100% toe the blue party line may cost Harris the election and those participating in the shenanigans will want to point fingers….again.
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LisaM,
The only name-calling I have heard came from Trump and his allies. They insult Democrats, women, Blacks, Jews, LGBT, and they demonize transgender people.
I have not heard Harris or her allies insult or ridicule anyone. She called him a fascist, true, because his two top generals did.
He and his allies have called her a prostitute, a Communist, a radical leftist, a fascist, stupid, low Iq, etc, and accused her of supporting Defund the Police, riots, BLM, etc
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Actually Hillary Clinton cost Hillary the election by not campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan. Ask people in the Democratic Party in those states. Remember, she did win the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, Comey notwithstanding. She lost by small margins in states she and her team took for granted in their “blue wall” arrogance–knowing full well that Putin-puppet Jill Stein groupies and Hillary-hating idiots would be peeling away at her totals there. She didn’t do the work. It’s just sad–almost as sad as the fact that Saint Barack Obama pushed Joe Biden aside in his prime.
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You are projecting your own hate on Diane Ravitch, who speaks about other people with respect, even when she questions the very problematic values of people who listen to what Trump says – the words out of his mouth, the promises he, Vance and their ilk have made to “change” this country – and decide that what matters most of them is defeating the supposedly evil Democrats.
Either you are okay with empowering the hate and fascism we saw at yesterday’s MSG rally, or you aren’t.
But if you are okay with it because the idea of empowering the folks who promised to exact retribution on AOC, the squad, Bernie and people like Diane and most of us who don’t condone lies and hate doesn’t bother you, and you think Trump will win because more voters share the values of those who loved Trump’s MSG rally of hate (and you) than share Diane’s values, then it’s not up to Diane or Democrats to change your mind.
It’s up to you to search your own heart and see what you have become. It’s long past time for you to see that your “protest vote to defeat the evil Democrats” didn’t help progressives or vulnerable people at all – it gave this country a radical right Supreme Court that has empowered voter disenfranchisement instead of voter rights and done much harm.
It’s long past time for you to see that your “protest vote to defeat the evil Democrats” in 2024 will empower those whose political goals will make it even worse for the Palestinians, just as your 2016 protest vote empowered the far right who made it much worse for the most vulnerable Americans you professed to care about.
The one thing all people who vote to empower Trump and defeat the Dems have in common is their lack of concern (or even their love) about Trump’s promise of hate and retribution for the “other”. First the came for the Democrats — and folks like you who are not bothered by Trump being president are positive they are safe because they aren’t Democrats.
Maybe you are safe. Germans who weren’t bothered by Hitler’s rise weren’t the ones whose families were annihilated. But history judged them as complicit with what happened because they were.
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“You just want to paint all non-Harris toadies as ignorant, racist Trump-supporting Neanderthals.”
….and your point is, dienne77? Let’s workshop this one: as last night’s “A Night at the Garden 2.0” clearly demonstrated, no one here needs to paint Trump supporters as ignorant, racist Neanderthals, they clearly do a good job of it all on their own without even so much as a token of assistance via spin or commenting from anything or anyone outside of that cabal. A priori.
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Believe not the polls, nor the coverage in legacy media. They’re the horse race that feeds the illusion.
Go read Heather Cox Richardson’s post of October 27, in which she analyzes Trump’s Madison Square Garden hate rally.
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Say It Again & Again. “ Believe NOT The Polls.”
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I knew what a detestable person tRump was before he was elected in 2016 and by 2017, I was telling people that he’s a dictator-wannabe. I’m not prescient, it was just soooo obvious to me. I will never understand how people can just ignore that, as well as his numerous faults, and not recognize how awful he is for this country and for humanity world-wide.
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It’s a “stick it to the man” attitude. People are tired of policy that stifles their way of life. Ordinary folks are tired of being told what to do and how to think. Regular, working class people are tired of politicians enacting policy that negatively affects their lives while pandering to a wealthy donor class. When people are frustrated, they lash out…and this is how some people choose to lash out.
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There is definitely some of this, I think. To some extent, Trump is a “meme candidate” like GameStop was a “meme stock.”
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I know plenty of “working class” Americans who are tired of politicians enacting policy that negatively affects their lives while pandering to billionaires, and they obviously are voting for Kamala because that is the rational thing for people who are tired of policy that “stifles their way of life” do.
The working class folks who are “tired of being told what to do and how to think” are voting for Kamala.
But white working class folks support Trump in very large percentages.
The working class, middle class, and billionaire class who want to tell the “other” what to do and how to think are drawn to Trump’s rhetoric of hate and retribution on the “other” (mostly non-white non-Christians).
The one thing all Trump voters have in common is that they aren’t bothered at all by the hate and racism and xenophobia Trump stands for. Whether Trump’s hate and racism is what draws them to Trump, or whether they are just fine with it because hate and racism directed at other people doesn’t bother them matters very little.
I would not vote for a president who spewed lies about how an evil Catholic person raped and murdered a young woman, or how an evil Catholic person gunned down children at school, or spoke frequently about how evil Catholic folks were kidnapping pets and eating them. I would not vote for any leader gratuitously garnering hate and violence against Catholics because they thought that spewing hate against Catholics would help them politically. I can’t imagine the arrogance of someone who wasn’t Catholic lecturing to Catholic Americans that people who vote for the guy promising retribution to Catholic Americans for doing such evil things aren’t anti-Catholic, because they are just voting to “stick it to the man”.
Exactly what “man” do you think voters who are voting for Trump are “sticking it to”?
It’s not a coincidence that many working class (and middle class and upper class) voters who are white are okay with Trump’s ugly rhetoric. But their condoning of Trump’s ugly vision of America can’t be normalized as “sticking it to the man” because condoning violent hateful racist lies and throwing vulnerable people under the bus and causing them great harm to “stick it to the man” is never okay. We used to know that. Now when politicians garner hate and violence against those groups, it’s okay – it’s excused as a great political tactic to get voters to “stick it to the man”.
I am so sad for this country.
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It truly shows a lack of empathy when one doesn’t listen to WHY other people feel differently about a certain subject (any subject…not just politics). Screeching at, name-calling, and demeaning those you disagree with will NEVER change their minds, and in fact, will cause them to cling to a false belief. Most everyone is capable of hearing, but LISTENING is an art that has been lost.
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Why are you so angry?
It is absolutely wrong for anyone to normalize a voter who supports a candidate spewing the vile, racist, neo-fascist rhetoric – the guy who ALREADY incited a violent insurrection and promises retribution against Americans who don’t support him – as merely a voter who just wants to “stick it to the man”.
What you mean is that these Trump voters are all people who condone hate and racism and the promise that other Americans will experience “retribution’ because that makes them feel like they are “sticking it to the man”. Which again I ask you, who is this “man” they are sticking it to when they vote to empower the man spewing racism and hate who promises retribution for Americans who don’t support him?
When David Duke ran against John Edwards for Lousiana Governor in 1991, David Duke supporters were never portrayed as good people who just wanted to “stick it to the man”.
David Duke voters were characterized as racists willing to vote for a neo-Nazi, white Supremacist Ku Klux Klanner.
Turns out that even in Lousiana, a quite significant percentage of white voters did not want to be perceived as a racist willing to vote for white supremacy.
If David Duke voters had been presented as good non-racist people who just wanted to “stick it to the man”, I have no doubt Duke would have won in a very conservative state. They would have been PROUD to vote for David Duke because even liberals know they just want to stick it to the man and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I wish folks would stop normalizing voters who vote for authoritarian white supremacist candidates fomenting hate and violence. Back when people knew better, even conservative Louisiana voters understood that it wasn’t okay.
Voting to “stick it” to an unidentified “man” by supporting the white supremacist candidate spewing vile racism and hate and violence is because “the man” you are trying to stick it to is the same “man” the candidate you support promises to stick it to.
Voters in Louisiana knew that, which is why they were embarrassed to support Duke, not proud because other people kept telling them it was perfectly fine.
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nycpsp– 1991 was a long time ago, and probably not an apt comparison. The Republican in the WH was a gentleman and a statesman. Newt Gingrich was only in his second year as Minority Whip, and hadn’t yet risen to the heights of fomenting polarization as in his stint as Speaker [for which he was slapped down by his own party in 1999]. It was well before Tea Party and Freedom Caucus. And let’s face it: Dukes was a well-known KKK leader. Even today he’d probably lose by a landslide.
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Both parties have largely pandered to special wealthy interests for years, although Democrats have offered a few token benefits to working families. In our post globalization society so many people have been left behind particularly those that work in manufacturing and low wage service jobs. The middle class has been shrinking ever since the late 1970s. The illusion of strength that the GOP projects resonates with these downtrodden groups. These people are not particularly well-informed and are easy targets for GOP messaging, particularly the white males that continue to struggle to get by. It is unfortunate that they continue to think they will get a better deal from the GOP who consistently votes against their interests as Trump policies will raise taxes on them, offer no pay for overtime work, undermine all social safety nets and public institutions including Social Security and Medicare. Robert Reich recently pointed out that unless people earn over $300,000, Americans will be paying more in taxes under Trump.
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Exactly where I’m coming from, rt. Social mobility (per stats) came to a dead halt by 1989 (and now appears to be running in reverse). WHGB managed to mop up a bit of the mess left by Reagan, but was not a game-changer. Dems had the chance to begin nudging the cruise ship back around under WJC, but were so traumatized by the outlier 12 yrs of Rep admins that they bought into “third way” neoliberalism, which was barely distinguishable from neoconservativism, and ended up feeling like more of the same, wallet-wise, for the middle class. Just as the worst effects of offshoring/ automation was spread across the Midwest. Small wonder Dems lost the working class.
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Because this election is not about Harris or Trump per se, but two antagonistic visions; political, economic, social and cultural values.
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To answer the question in your title–they aren’t. The “news media” are vested in each such contest being, in effect, a horse race. It is much more exciting to say “they are neck and neck coming down the home stretch” than to say one is way ahead of the other. Polls are sponsored. Why we publish the poll results sponsored by one side or the other, I do not know because they are always biased. Why we publish polls at all is also beyond me because they cannot possibly help any voter make up his/her mind about who to vote for. They provide no useful information.
Get rid of them, I say. Maybe allow them for internal uses in campaigns only but disallow their being published.
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You think polls are being manipulated to create a false illusion of a tight race?
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We will find out on election day. I think polls and poll results are boing falsely portrayed and I think none of them have information we need. In horse races such information is used to determine how to bet on a winner, nothing else. Do we want to vote for a president based upon the likelihood they will win, or on the policies and actions they support?
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I agree with Mr. Ruis on this: I think the polls are clickbait for advertisers. Imminent crises are huge moneymakers all around.
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The Republicans created several polls to skew the stats. The Washington Post and New York Times use only nonpartisan polls when they aggregate polls.
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Steve: My mother was an odd sort. She never divulged her vote. Ever. Back in 64, all my family was voting for Goldwater and I was 9. My mother was silent. Then it was 1992, and ye try another election saw my formerly Republican aunt with a Clinton Gore sign in her window. But my mother still would not tell me whom she voted for in 64.
She thought her vote was sacred. She would argue policy but not personality. Perhaps she thought of the role of personality in her life. After all, it was her generation, the group that went through the age of wonderful nonsense and then the Hitler years.
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It wasn’t that long ago that balloting wasn’t secret. You had to gather and raise your hand and be counted to vote. The secret vote should be secret for good reasons, your mother understood.
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Steve, I like your idea. But given the First Amendment, polls are here to stay. At least the exit polls have been eliminated. They depressed the vote.
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Ms Harris was not kind when she was DA She vastly mistreated families of color. She is very intelligent, well spoken, and obviously has a graduate degree. I would call her a right winger but not a Nazi sympathizer like Trump. In Cal we can vote third party against genocide because the Dems have enough electoral votes. I feel sorry for swing state voters
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Racism. The country is consumed by hate, the othering of people and fear as they believe there is not enough to go around. It started when Barack Obama became president and because he was black this is the backlash. A tragic moment for our country.
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Let’s not forget how the humanities including civics education (Social Studies) have been devalued in favor of science and math.
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bpollock42: Exactly that about a humanities and social sciences/history education–it almost went missing for around 30 years or more? at the service of STEM–but not STEM as such, but the absences that came with it.
By design or by ignorant happenstance, it fits right in with the Project 25 program and the idea of education as propaganda. CBK
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But it is young people who are more likely to see through Trump’s con.
It is those folks 50 or 65 who were educated before education reform who are the ones who vote in ignorance. Not the younger voters.
I am always concerned when people cite education, because Trumpies were often educated before ed reform, and the young people seemed to have learned how to think despite ed reform.
I am not crediting ed reform for why young people are often more thoughtful voters than much older ones.
But I would not be surprised if their spurning of the major media – not just Fox but the complicit both sides equally bad “liberal media” – has kept them from being propagandized to normalize what Republicans have done.
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I’m not sure I agree with the credit you are giving to young people over the older group. They tend to go along with whatever their parents are supporting. When women finally were allowed to vote the outcomes of elections weren’t affected. I think you have to keep in mind that when Hitler and the Nazis gained power they were able to convince the best educated country in the world at the time to go along with them. They did it by simplifying issues and repeating them over and over again. They would create a big lie, and though easily discredited they would repeat and repeat. Eventually, even the brightest PhD would fall in line. Trump and his people are doing exactly this. He is painting the poor migrants as criminals when the crime rate among them is almost zero but ignores the threat from his base which he used for a violent insurrection on Jan 6. The case against Trump and his sycophants is bipartisan as he has transformed the Republican Party into his.
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How many Jews voted for Hitler because they “went along”? I don’t believe many did.
One reason why history judged Germans so harshly instead of presenting them as good people who just wanted to make their country great again is because every one of those Germans who voted for Hitler did so DESPITE being well aware of his ugly, violent, hate-inducing rhetoric against Jews and others.
History used to judge those Germans as complicit, and it didn’t matter whether they actively took part in murdering Jewish families, or if they were just perfectly fine with voting for a candidate fomenting hate and violence toward Jews because fomenting hate and violence toward Jews was not a deal breaker for them. Everyone acknowledged that those German voters voted for the person who wanted to “stick it” to the very same people who those German voters wanted someone to “stick it” to.
I didn’t grow up being told that Germans who voted for the man demonizing Jews were good people who just wanted to stick it to “the man” – because obviously they were voting for the guy who promised to stick it to JEWS. That is a fact.
People who vote for Trump want Trump to stick it to the people Trump has promised with his vile rhetoric he will stick it to.
“I didn’t know Hitler would hurt the Jews, I just wanted Hitler to stick it to the “man” and I am so surprised that “the man” turned out to be the Jews JUST LIKE HITLER SAID IT WOULD.”
That’s not an excuse. It is an indictment of German voters in the 1930s and their antisemitism.
Everyone who votes for Trump knows exactly who Trump will “stick it” to. Trump told them with his vile racist, xenophobic, fascist white supremacist rhetoric. They vote for him because they like that Trump will stick it to the people who Trump told them they would stick it to.
I have no idea why some people here keep trying to make them into “good people” who do NOT want Trump to stick it to the people who Trump tells them every day he plans to punish.
If they didn’t want Trump to reign retribution on the folks Trump promises to reign retribution on (fyi, that’s not just the non-white non-Christians and LGBTQ folks that Trump has been demonizing, but also us and our families) then they would not be voting for Trump, like the many, many lifetime Republicans I know who are not voting for Trump even thought they know Kamala’s policies will not be what they want.
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bpollock42 @ 2:39pm– The propaganda methods you describe are as old as the hills, certainly older than Hitler’s rise, just part of the move to achieve autocracy. The first dictators were in Roman times, appointed to handle emergency situations & limited to 6 months’ rule. Eventually one dictator was allowed to extend his rule indefinitely, another one or two “for life.” So we can see it’s key to convince the public of a lasting emergency.
By 1929/ Depression onset, the German people was ready to be (if not aleady) convinced their country was in a prolonged emergency. It started with WWI defeat, the humiliating Treaty of Versailles (they lost 13% of territory, their colonies, were heavily indebted with war reparations)– immediately a 2-yr revolution that replaced empire with a republic/ dysfunctional Bundestag. They couldn’t pay reparations– Belgium & France occupied their Ruhr valley, seeking to grab industries and collect. Brief reprieve for a few yrs thanks to loans from US. Then depression hit: fiscal austerity, hyperinflation, 30% unemployment, and a population that linked Depression to Treaty of Versailles woes, and even the ‘backstab conspiracy,’ blaming Jews, Bolsheviks and ‘cultural Marxists’ for the 1918-19 revolution that brought them the corrupt and dysfunctional Weimar Republic.
Until Depression, Nazis were a small party on the far right that garnered only 2.6-3% representation (despite Hitler’s fiery rhetoric). Within a yr, they had the largest bloc (approaching 40%); Bundestag hadn’t any group large enough to get parliamentary majority — so Hindenberg gave Hitler the Chancellorship in Jan ’33 [by which time Hitler was shouting the “backstab” conspiracy from the rooftops]. The rest is history. Hitler wrapped up dictatorship by March.
All this just to say: the key to understanding the Trump movement is the conviction of such a large portion of electorate we are in a prolonged emergency situation requiring a strongman leader willing to undermine/ cast aside democratic institutions designed to prevent autocracy.
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About the economy: The cover of The Economist says of the U.S. economy: “The Envy of the World”
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Diane– I know, right??
The contrast between Depression-era Germany and today’s situation in the US couldn’t be greater. They had only become one nation 50 yrs prior, and the Weimar Republic was their first democratic experiment. — no longtime democratic institutions to undermine; this one collapsed easily under extreme economic pressures, which tend to multiply splinter and extremist groups anywhere (and some of these groups had their own private armies!). Their new parliamentary system was a constant haggling within and among parties, so couldn’t create large-enough coalitions.
And as you point out, The Economist tells us “America’s economy is bigger and better than ever.” We are not dealing with an economic emergency, that’s for sure.
The only real parallel I can come up with is the shared sense of exceptionalism. The “emergency” Trumpers perceive is a decades-long decline [“we’re no longer the greatest”]. Trump brings this home every time he casts us in doomful terms as a failed country [which he alone can save].
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Ginny,
Calling the U.S. a nation in decline is nuts. Sure, we have lots of problems, like growing inequality, and a few hundred billionaires who dominate, but this is still a great country.
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I liked Roy’s answer about the Suburban.
I watched one of those interviews at the Trump rally. The reporter was talking a large black man circa in his 40’s wearing a MAGA hat.
The reporter asked him why he was there from Trump. He responded (paraphrased) that he’d heard all those bad things Democrats were saying about Trump and then listened to Trump and couldn’t hear anything like what they were saying about him.
I would have gotten in his face and asked him if he knew that, if Trump wins, this man will be mistaken for a Haitian and be promptly jailed or deported, but that’s just me.
It’s a braid of many threads, but one of the thicker one’s is political ignorance coupled with the naivete that thinks everyone speaks like Walter Cronkite, with the honesty and integrity that this man probably has and is used to being around.
Someone didn’t get to him about raising questions . . . and how, yes, a celebrity politician can spout lies like volcanoes spout fire. CBK
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What you saw is typical of the media – including the NYT.
Find a voter who supports Trump and spews false right wing talking points and present that voter as having a voice that is very important to listen to (implying that he is correct).
How many times has the media interviewed a regular voter who says something bad about Republicans that demonizes Republicans and presented that voter as having a voice that is very important to listen to (implying the voter is correct)? Never?
Imagine if the network you watched had interviewed a white middle aged voter who said that they weren’t voting for Trump because Trump plans to get rid of social security and medicaid and Trump’s plan is to raise taxes for middle class Americans while giving billionaires a huge tax cut? Imagine if every day the media wrote a story featuring all the white voters who “must be listened to because their voices are very important” and those voters were always quoted explaining that they were voting for Kamala to stop Trump and the evil Republicans from taking away their parents’ and grandparents’ social security and medicare and bankrupting all senior citizens who aren’t rich by telling them to eat dog food and pay for their own doctors and medicine.
The media would never allow it. The only misinformed voters who the media features regularly because they supposedly have important truths to tell that everyone needs to hear are Trump voters.
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NYC public school parent: I hate to tell you this, but the network (I don’t remember which one it was) actually did interview Harris supporters and some who had a good handle on Trump the Idiot Liar. He was at the Trump rally, however.
But I get what you are saying anyway. I know from experience enough about Trump et al to expect the worst and to cringe every time I hear anyone say stuff like, “well, I just don’t know. blah blah blah, but what about . . . ” followed by nit-picking and double standard stuff.
I’ve said this over and over again here on this site–it’s about one’s long-term political education, which is a NECESSARY thing if the “we” of democracy are going to “keep it.” Trump is responsible, along with Murdoch and all those monster personalities who crony-up to him; but in fact and by definition, in a democracy “the people” share in it. CBK
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“Her opponent is a bundle of equal parts narcissism and hatred.”
Diane, if I may…
Her opponent is a bundle of one hundred percent narcissism, one hundred percent hatred, and one hundred percent vileness of every other sort imaginable.
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Ed, so right.
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I know one reason.
My Mom, who died in 2017, never voted for a Democrat in her entire 88 years. She was a highly-respected professor (thirty years) in our state’s most prestigious university. She was intelligent, generous, kind, knowledgeable, informed. She grew up (until marriage at age sixteen) in a poor but loving family in a tiny Kansas town—acknowledged as the town beauty. She moved to a big city in another state. After having four children by the age of 23, she “went to college” still being a terrific wife and mom, and started her career in academia. In almost all ways she was a progressive, liberal thinker.
In 2008, at age 79, and for the very first time, she did NOT cast a vote in a presidential election. She was shocked when an admirable man in the Republican Party chose as a running mate a wholly-inappropriate person, Sarah Palin. Because of his apparent lack of judgement, she found herself sadly unable to give him her vote. An admirable man in the Democratic Party was running, and she would liked to have voted for him, but she was sadly absolutely unable to do so. Why? She learned as a child that voting Republican was godly; to vote Democratic was a sin.
She also learned as a child that “going to college” was sinful—unless it was a Bible college—because advanced education tended to turn one away from evangelical beliefs. She did not enroll at university until both her parents had died, not wanting to disappoint them. As she progressed through her college classes she did turn away from her early beliefs; when her children were ages 12, 10, 8, and 6 we left our highly restrictive and non-accepting-of-differences fundamentalist congregation and joined a downtown Methodist “high church” with progressive beliefs. Mom was also progressive, and she knew, of course, that considering a particular vote to be evil was ridiculous…but that one little childhood stinging prohibition couldn’t allow her to pull a lever in the wrong direction. Thus, no vote at all.
P.S. Mom encouraged her children to “go to college”, even though she was the only one in her extended family to do so. She was happy that among the four of us are the following: 4 bachelor’s degrees, 4 master’s degrees, two PhDs, one MD. None of us has returned to Christian nationalist beliefs or actions. Only the youngest of us occasionally votes Republican, and we still love him. However, we have several cousins who keep us aware that many Americans are ill-informed and easily-influenced, and who believe that however “bad” Trump appears to be, he was–by being the candidate of the Republican Party–chosen by God, who works in mysterious ways.
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Trump was all of those vile things in 2016, and, although he lost the We the People vote, he squeaked into the White House because of the Electoral College system.
Trump lost the We the People vote by such a wide margin in 2020 that not even the Electoral College system could help him.
The results of both of those elections show that Trump’s MAGA Minions have never constituted a majority of We the People — and THAT’S why Trump and his operatives in state governments are so actively engaged in vote suppression: The more people who vote, the less likely that the Electoral College system can put Trump in the White House.
As for the polls, people who will vote against Trump are far less likely to agree to a pollster interview because they don’t want to take even the most remote risk that they could in any way be identified as opposing Trump; after all, they don’t really know the identity of the pollster, and they fear that somehow the MAGAMOUTH bullies in their families or among their friends and co-workers might find out their opposition to Trump.
On the other hand, when pollsters contact a MAGAMOUTH, the MAGAMOUTH is only too happy to be able to spout support for Trump, skewing the polls toward a false statistic of support for Trump.
It is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that every eligible voter who opposes Trump be supported to cast their vote by making certain that they know that their ballot is THEIR SECRET SUPERPOWER to silence the MAGAMOUTH bullies because no one will ever know how they voted.
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I recently downloaded and read the transcripts of Donald Trump’s rambling Gish Gallop full of lies and hate on January 6, 2021, before his traitorous mob, loyal only to Donald Trump, attacked the capital.
On that day I think Donald Trump became Traitor Trump.
When Trump said, “fight like hell,” that wasn’t the only time the traitor used the word FIGHT in that Gish Gallop full of hate and lies. The convicted rapist, fraud and felon, said FIGHT almost 20x.
And at one point, if you watch the televised live recording (it’s mentioned as a side note in the printed transcripts), you will hear the mob changing “FIGHT for Trump!”
Transcript Of Trump’s Speech At Rally Before Capitol Riot : NPR
Traitor Trump said the word “peacefully” once early in his almost 11,000-word Gish Gallup full of hate and lies.
Here is the full sentence where “fight like hell” appears.
“We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said.
Now, the full sentence where he used the word “peacefully” one time during his entire speech.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching to the Capital budling to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Traitor Trump did not tell them to be peaceful like he said to “fight like hell”.
Here are some of the times Traitor Trump used the word fight (not all of the times, just a few):
“I’d fight. So I’d fight, they’d fight, I’d fight, they’d fight. Pop pop.”
“But our fight against the big donors, big media, big teach, and others is just getting started.”
“And you have to get your people to fight. And if they don’t fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight.”
“Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. … And we’re going to have to fight much harder.”
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In real life, besides using his big mouth to fight with words on a daily (or hourly) basis, I think the only time that supposed “strongman” ever did the fighting himself was in rigged wrestling matches, because deep down he knows that he has a bad track record and only wins when he cheats (like with golf, where caddies nicknamed him “Pele” because he kicks the ball so often when he thinks no one is looking). Usually, he’s paid lawyers and such to do the fighting for him.
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I don’t speak for all Trump voters but here are my reasons for voting for Donald Trump. Kamala Harris has been a major part of these problems for the last 3 1/2 years and there is no reason to believe they won’t continue under her administration. There are real reasons people are voting for Trump and screaming Trump is Hitler does not address the real issues that many Americans are concerned about.
Inflation – the price of almost everything from food to car insurance as gone up drastically. We are adding $1 Trillion dollars of debt every 100 days.
Ending the forever wars. This goes back to the Bush’s through the Biden Admin.
Closing the Border. At least 7 million illegal immigrants have flooded our country. All the negative consequences are clearly there to see.
Protecting girls in sports and in school. I have 2 daughters and this directly impacts them. This Admin attempted to change Title 9 and promotes boys entering girls spaces
Cleaning up our food supply. The FDA has for too long allowed harmful ingredients in our foods.
Censorship. Free Speech should not be allowed to be curbed and censored
Forcing clean Energy on the economy before its ready to support it.
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Even if half of what you said was true (it is the Republicans who censor and excommunicate members of their own party for simply speaking the truth), that doesn’t address that Trump voters like you are voting for an unfit leader spewing lies, embracing white supremacists, a guy who incited an insurrection, who pressured an election official to “find me the votes” with threatening language, who held up legally mandated foreign aid because a foreign leader refused his extortion attempts to lie about Biden to help Trump’s election chances, a guy who holds himself above the law and promises to reign punishment on Americans who oppose those actions.
Hitler had economic policies that some people liked. So what? If your point is that means that the Germans who voted for Hitler DESPITE knowing Hitler was an authoritarian spewing antisemitic lies to foment hate and violence against Jews are “good people” because they liked one of his economic plans, then thank you for accurate describing the character of Trump voters.
How low will you go? You confirmed you would vote for Trump despite his ugly rhetoric, his inciting a violent insurrection with blatant lies, his promise to exact retribution on the Americans who don’t do exactly what he wants. Would you vote for Trump if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue? Trump himself has said that his supporters would.
Trump knows exactly what the character of his supporters is and your post confirms it.
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The only ugly rhetoric I hear is coming from you and the Democratic party. You can’t debate the issues so you spew insults. I feel sorry that you have been so brainwashed by the MSM as to believe all the nonsense about Trump. Is he perfect? Of course not. Is he the Orange demon you have dreamed up in your head? Of course not. The reality is that every Republican presidential candidate has been called “Hitler” since George Bush Jr. including Romney and McCain. This is the same fear mongering that the Democrats have ginned up for decades just on steroids. I pray that God softens your heart and helps you overcome the bitterness in your life.
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I pray that God opens your eyes to see clearly that Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election because he lost. Do you think that a physical assault on the U.S. Capitol is of no importance?
Do you think the Dobbs decision is of no importance? I’m a woman, and I disagree?
Do you think that it didn’t matter when the Supreme Court ruled that the President has absolute immunity from any crimes he commits while in office?
These are not insults. They are facts.
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We currently have an Administration that is importing millions of illegal immigrants in order to irreversibly change the makeup of the US electorate. Spare me the pearl clutching on free and fair elections. I go back to debating the issues. If we continue on the fiscal path we are on now all other issues become irrelevant if families cant put food on the table. I also believe it is more important to protect women and girls from men pretending to be female than killing unborn children. We will disagree on this issue hence why the power to regulate abortions has been sent back to the states. This is a deeply personal issue for people and should be decided at a local level not by the Federal government.
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