2020 US election results

[Pies4shaw]

So, Biden presently leads the total vote count by more than 6,000,000 votes.

There's a few ways one could look at that figure. One could, for example, say that Biden's vote lead is more than the population of at least 32 of the states. Or one could say that it's 20% more than the total number of reported active cases of Covid-19 in the entire US, as of now. Perhaps, after all, that's the most appropriate way to see the election outcome - Trump has presided over - and now received - a COVID-19-level 2020 shellacking.

Anyway, however one wants to look at it, it's enough for even Trump's biggest media enablers to start moving away from him on the bench: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/nov/24/fox-news-laura-ingraham-tucker-carlson-rush-limbaugh-trump .

Ultimately, he has demonstrated his uniqueness in the presidential role - the first US President to fail to win re-election, get impeached and lose the popular vote two elections running: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-24/trump-joins-one-term-us-president-club/12868382

Now that he looks like being tossed out on his arse actually - as well as figuratively (he is still whingeing about the result and pretending that there has been fraud), the Democrats need to deal with the thing that enabled him in the first place - the absence of any proper left in the US. They've got 4 years to work out how to manage a transition to a candidate who will actively address the economic needs of the poor and dispossessed (as distinct from giving them the racist equivalent of bread and circuses and otherwise leaving them to suffer their allotted fate). If they don't, they can look forward to another Nazi-enabler in the White House in 4 years time. Virtue-signaling by handing the baton to a conservative who happens to be black and a woman won't cut the mustard.

[David]

^ Well said on the last part in particular, P4S. But I suspect the Democratic Party has no interest or desire to bring in the left, who they basically seem to treat as an existential threat. The pressure will have to come from either outside the party or on its left flank and coalesce around a candidate who can lead an insurgency in the next primaries (someone like Ocasio-Cortez). The Democrat leadership will fight against that all the way, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.

[Tannin]

Dream on.

What makes anybody think that America is remotely drawn to left-wing policies?

The Democrats would have to be insane to go to an election - any election - on a left-wing platform. I'd vote for them if they did that, so would David, but 70% of Americans would vote the other way. It would be the biggest landslide loss since an empty chair lost to Monroe in 1820.

[David]

Considering 50% of Americans barely bother even showing up ever (for either of the centre-right or far-right political parties), I find that a bit hard to believe. The fact is that many of the policies considered "socialist" in an American context are actually insanely popular, and have repeatedly been shown to be so in polling. See the following infographic as an example:

https://infogram.com/untitled-1hke60gpeoo325r

Ah, but maybe it's not the policies that are the problem, but the "socialist" boogieman? Again, it doesn't seem like a dealbreaker:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/257639/four-americans-embrace-form-socialism.aspx

In a country with voluntary voting, somewhere in the 40–50% range (and increasing all the time as old conservatives die off and the new generation comes through) is more than enough for a left-wing candidate to win. We didn't get to see whether it would have been enough this time around, and may never – the Democratic Party will make it its mission to freeze out any candidate on that wavelength – but I think the notion that the American population would never abide a left-wing presidential candidate is far too pessimistic, and baselessly so (and it's a pessimism that ultimately helps the right, because many people – as we saw in this year's primaries – vote not according to what they believe in but what they are told other people around them will support).

[Tannin]

Plausible on face value, David, but completely nonsensical.

48% of American voters voted for Trump FFS! To win an election, all the Republicans have to do is run enough of a socialism scare campaign to attract three more percent of the electorate.

Face reality. It is a deeply conservative country. The very best thing you can hope for is a vaguely sane and reasonably moderate centre-right administration - one in fact very like Biden's.

[David]

Actually, only 31% of eligible American voters voted for Trump. And that's an important clarification, because you can't just presume that trying something radically different would have no effect on non-voters – many of whom choose not to vote precisely because they feel disillusioned by a two-party system that they feel doesn't speak for them or address their material needs.

The reality is that America is changing. It's not the same as it was in the 1980s or even ten or fifteen years ago, for that matter, and political truisms from past eras don't necessarily apply any more. Millennials and older teens tend to have very different views of things like socialism, Christianity, guns and free-market economics, and large minority (particularly Hispanic) populations are changing demographics, too. I agree with P4S that a Democratic Party that knew what was good for them would respond to those shifting values and drag the country into the twenty-first century. But unfortunately their corporate donors and conservative party royalty likely have little appetite for that.

[Tannin]

We have evidence about the propensity of non-voters to vote.

They don't.

For years and years now we have been hearing hyper-optimistic claims from Sanders supporters and fellow travellers that young people are going to turn up and vote. In this election! Yes! Any day now. Soon. Well, sometime. Probably. Maybe. With any luck. Perhaps. Well if not today, then tomorrow. Tuesday for definite. Next month anyway. Possibly.

If they didn't turn put to get rid of the worst, the most incompetent, most corrupt and when you get down to it downright evil administration the country has ever seen, they will never turn out.

Quit dreaming.

[David]

But isn't that the thing? They've never had anything to vote for. They didn't get excited about getting rid of Trump the way a lot of older, cable-news bingeing rusted-on Democratic voters did. They wanted to be offered something, and Biden offered nothing. I honestly don't blame them for not voting.

[Tannin]

Failing to vote was utterly stupid.

It takes a truly massive dose of ignorance and naivety to fail to understand that you practically never get to vote for someone. That's not how elections work. Never have, never will. 99 times out of 100, there is no-one you really, honestly, want to vote for. But 100 times out of 100, there is someone you can wholeheartedly vote against. That is your job as a voter and a citizen: eliminate the unfit.

(And if they are all unfit, just eliminate the worst one. That's how it works.)

Democracy works exactly like evolution: it never selects for an individual, a community, a race, a species, or an ecosystem. Never. Not in the 3,500,000,000 years of life on Earth. It merely eliminates the unfit.

The appalling failure of these trendy young non-voters to comprehend these basics and act accordingly led directly to the recent spectacular failures of democracy in places like the UK and the USA.

That is one difference between democracy and evolution: one of them works all the time.

[Tannin]

And they were offered something: they were offered a choice between no-better-than-average and much, much worse. An easy choice. A clear choice. And, once again, they screwed the pooch.

[David]

^ I don't see any particular reason to blame younger voters here. In some respects, they may have saved Biden's bacon.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/526983-young-voters-set-turnout-record-aiding-biden-win

Yes, "more than half" means nearly 50% of them stayed at home, which might sound pretty grim. But it's still better than any US election in recent memory, it seems. And I dare say that if you're getting low engagement from under-30s election after election, decade after decade, generation after generation, the problem clearly isn't with them (either individually or as a group). The problem is the system itself.

[Tannin]

No argument that the system is rotten.

The thing with younger voters is that certain people (not mentioning any names, but his initials are "David") have this persistent fantasy that young people will come riding in to the rescue if only they had someone like Bernie to motivate them.

It's not a realistic fantasy, and it has failed to come true many times already - but even if it was true, it is very, very likely that the candidate who could motivate these non-voters - who let's face it, aren't very bright at the best of times - would be an almighty turn-off to a zillion other voters. Result: victory to someone like George Bush Mark III.

The way to motivate uninterested voters is to go after the really stupid ones and motivate them with bigotry, greed, contempt, hatred, and racism. Fire them right up. And we have seen exactly this in big, bold living colour. Examples include Trump, Bolsanaro, Hitler, and Boris Johnson.

[watt price tully]

Just how rotten a lot of the GOP (Republicans) are: Whomever thought of the saying "The Fish rots at the head first" must have had Donald Trump in mind:

The Inside Story of Michigan’s Fake Voter Fraud Scandal

How a state that was never in doubt became a "national embarrassment" and a symbol of the Republican Party’s fealty to Donald Trump. (fealty defintion: a feudal tenant's or vassal's sworn loyalty to a lord)

"....After five years spent bullying the Republican Party into submission, President Donald Trump finally met his match in Aaron Van Langevelde.

Who?

That’s right. In the end, it wasn’t a senator or a judge or a general who stood up to the leader of the free world. There was no dramatic, made-for-Hollywood collision of cosmic egos. Rather, the death knell of Trump’s presidency was sounded by a baby-faced lawyer, looking over his glasses on a grainy Zoom feed on a gloomy Monday afternoon, reading from a statement that reflected a courage and moral clarity that has gone AWOL from his party, pleading with the tens of thousands of people watching online to understand that some lines can never be uncrossed...."

“We must not attempt to exercise power we simply don’t have,” declared Van Langevelde, a member of Michigan’s board of state canvassers, the ministerial body with sole authority to make official Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. “As John Adams once said, 'We are a government of laws, not men.' This board needs to adhere to that principle here today. This board must do its part to uphold the rule of law and comply with our legal duty to certify this election.”

One principled Republican stood up to the others.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/24/michigan-election-trump-voter-fraud-democracy-440475

[Tannin]

Especially for David: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xVAX2Bb3MU

[David]

This must be how everyone else here feels when I post Contrapoints videos and Chapo Trap House clips.