As a Democrat this article is scaring the crap out of me

@MrBrownstone No, I think Biden has done a pretty good job as president. I understand that most people wouldn’t go that far, but outside of your right wing echo chamber a lot of people are grateful to at least still have most of our democratic institutions more or less intact.

@Theyitis so you don't care one bit about the corruption pointing to excess of $20 million in selling of government secrets through his son when you have top secret emails that are forwarded to your son while you are vice president.

@Subsumedpat Well I hope not, but American voters tend to have short memories. Polls have shown that more voters now approve of Trump’s job as president than they did in January of 2021.

@Subsumedpat I am willing to take a bet that Biden will not win! I have offered numerous times to donate $10 to the DNC if Biden wins, and anyone that takes my bet will donate $1 to the RNC if a Republican wins, but no one will take my bet!

@fanuc2013 I will.

@hartfire According to the article America has become a rich enough country that class no longer determines what party you belong to. I think for most of the twentieth century your theory would be correct, most middle and working class people trying to figure out which party to belong to would look first at the economic philosophies of the two parties and think, “Trickle down economics? Wtf! That’s only going to help rich people get richer.” So they would become Democrats.

But now cultural values are what most people look at to determine which party they belong to. If they went to college, got white collar jobs, live in big coastal cities, generally like learning new things just because they like learning new things, they’ll be Democrats. If they didn’t go to college, got blue collar jobs, live in flyover country, go to church, enjoy hunting and fishing, only care about learning new things if it helps them make more money, then they’ll be Republicans.

Of course there will still be some swing voters and the economy will still be a major issue, but they won’t judge economic arguments on their own merits anymore. If their cultural values are closer to the second type of person I described above, then they’ll probably simply adopt Republican economic philosophy. It fits with their cultural values, so they’ll be motivated to defend trickle down economics even though it doesn’t actually make any sense, much like how they defend Trump no matter how obvious he makes it that he’s a criminal and no matter how harmful his policies are to them.

@Ynotisay Okay, fine, he’s writing to sell books and raise his profile. Still doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

Why would they want to step up and do what it takes to vote? As I pointed out previously, you have a better chance of winning the lottery than you do of casting the deciding ballot in almost any election, therefore your vote most likely won’t matter. Also, European countries mostly don’t have winner-take-all election systems. It’s usually a deal where each party gets a number of seats proportional to its share of the vote, so every vote really matters.

@Theyitis "Therefore your vote most likely won’t matter."
EVERY vote matters. That's the whole point. And a non-vote can carry just as much weight as a vote. Sometimes a vote is against something.
And you do know that someone with fewer popular votes can still win a federal election, right? How do you think Bush came in to office?
Here's what I think it's about. Voting is selfless. It's about considering the well-being of the collective. Some don't have that gene. Some see the world through their own eyes only. Those are largely the people who don't vote. Or jack themselves with third/fourth/fifth party vote. It's all about them. That's not my lane.
So don't vote if you don't want. That's your call. But my take is that those who don't vote have lost all rights to whine about....whatever. I personally find that disgusting. Others, clearly, don't.

@Ynotisay Of course I know that someone with fewer popular votes can win a presidential election, that makes even more votes not matter. I’m a Democrat living in the middle of Missouri. What do you suppose the chances are next year of my state giving its ten electoral votes to someone not named Donald J. Trump? In fact, we pretty much know which way each state is going to vote next year except maybe Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, so unless you live in one of those seven states your vote for president most likely doesn’t matter. I can see why you think it’s selfish for people not to vote, and I kind of share that sentiment; however, I also recognize that our elections rules are generally set up to make casting a ballot a particular burden for people who work for a living, with vanishingly tiny chance of any reward for doing so. That shows our government disrespecting its people.

@ViciDraco Gee, everything in your second paragraph, looked at from another perspective, looks like a disaster. Government overreach, letting deadbeats escape their obligations, inflation running rampant and aggavated by union demands, the IRS going after small business and middle income 9which is what they are going to do) etc, etc. Wrong track. And then there is the "green" push into absurdity.

@Zonuss It’s not going to change my behavior, other than giving me something more to worry about. My vote doesn’t even matter. I’m a Democrat in small city Missouri, and there can be no doubt our state will give its ten electoral votes to Trump so I’m kinda thinking I’ll probably just cast my ballot for Cornel West because I think his platform would be the best for the country.

The purpose of the article was not to convince people to vote Republican, it was to inform people of the demographic shifts between the parties.

@Theyitis So what
It doesn't matter who wins.
I'm a staunch Democrat.
I'm not a Biden guy.
I prefer Trump at this point.
I assure you most people feel this way deep down inside. Even if they don't say it out loud.😂

@Zonuss Um, hell no!!!

I don’t, and I assure you that at least plenty of Democrats recognize Trump as a grave threat to democracy and would sooner vote for a ham sandwich than for Trump.

@LvChris Did you actually read the article? The demographic changes have been happening gradually for about two and a half decades, and the polls are bearing this out. The Democratic Party is rapidly becoming the party of the college-educated (like myself), and thus the party of the elite, the wealthy, the white, and, most alarmingly, the few. Left leaning institutions that created a sense of community, of belonging, like unions are in decline. Today, the institutions that give Americans a sense of community are primarily talk radio and right leaning churches; thus, the Republican Party is displacing the Democratic Party as the party that most people see as “caring about me”. If you look at the recent national polls for president in 2024 Biden is actually holding onto most of his older and white voters, but his margins among younger voters and minorities are dwindling down to almost nothing. Those polls have shown Trump winning up to 20% of the black vote. 20%! That figure for a Republican candidate is unprecedented since the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.

There are even more reasons to be pessimistic about next year, mostly centered around the near certainty that President Biden will be running for a second term. I think the truth is that Biden’s age is really not a liability, that the Right has just repeated that propaganda incessantly since Biden’s inauguration such that most people now believe it; however, they believe it nevertheless, and Biden’s not going to get any younger before Election Day. Also, inflation is still hurting a lot of people. Now you can say that inflation is not Biden’s fault, you can say Republicans in Congress and Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have prevented Biden from enacting his policies that would have dealt with inflation, and you can even point out that Republicans’ plans of more tax cuts for the wealthy would only make things worse for the vast majority. But what matters to most voters is that they see the economy as bad and Biden is president so he gets the blame. Oh, and the economic forecast for next year is bad too. You may say the forecast might be wrong, and maybe the economy will hold steady next year; however, it’s equally likely that the forecast will be wrong and economic growth will be even slower than predicted.

But by the time Democrats realize that Biden can’t win, it’ll be too late, we’ll be stuck with him as the nominee anyway. Even if they have to take the nuclear football to his prison cell, Trump’s going to be president again in 2025.

@LvChris You’re in denial, and I’m not talking about a river in Egypt.

@Coolkid77 DEAD WRONG!!
"Record inflation" NOPE. Higher in Reagan's first term.
"crimes at all time highs" Crime's been declining for decades.
"helped caused 2 wars" Bulllshittt!!
"record spending" NOPE. Trump had $4 trillion deficits in 2020.
"lots of tech companies layoffs" Employment is at record highs, better than Trump.

The trouble with our conservative friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.


https://www.commerce.gov/news/blog/2023/02/news-unemployment-its-lowest-level-54-years And yes, these are the same statistics that Trump used to crow about.

The Covid jobs recovery is complete and then some