It’s just a #GreenShirtGuy world now.
Category: Politics
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Who’s to Blame For the 2020 Election?
This seems to be the big question that is going around liberal and Democrat circles; whose fault is it that they didn’t win more? Democrats won the White house, but didn’t take any State legislatures, lost seats in the House, and at best will have 50 seats in the Senate. The Blue Wave never showed up, and 70 million people voted for Trump. Someone has to be blamed for this! What Democrat fucked this up?
Republicans are to blame, but not the way you think.
Here’s the thing; Biden won by 5 million votes, and Biden also got enough votes in the swing states, just like Trump did four years ago, to win the Presidency. What that says to me is that very few minds were changed in the past four years, and those who did change their minds were Republicans. I would argue that those Republicans who voted for Biden, made a point of splitting their ticket to keep Biden in check.
But doesn’t that reinforce the idea that Democrats failed to do a good job at selling their platform to Americans?
No, because that platform wasn’t the reason people were voting. Democrats voted to remove Trump, and Republicans voted to keep him. That’s it. It doesn’t get anymore complicated than that.
2020 was not an issue election, and it wasn’t a traditional change election. It was a referemdum on Trump.
It wasn’t about BLM, or Defunding the Police, in the sense that those two issues are being pointed to as why there wasn’t a Blue Wave, but that’s all horse shit. BLM and Defund didn’t turn off Trump voters. That logic is like saying the racists and white supremacists were going to vote for Biden/Harris, but damn it, The Squad said “defund the police,” and now all those Trump voters went back to Trump?!?! Like I said, it’s a horse shit argument. Trump voters were always going to vote for Trump, no matter what.
Remember the 5th Avenue comment? Trump killed 250,000+ people, and he still got 70 million votes. They weren’t voting out of a logical selfinetrest.
Where Democrats get it wrong is that they keep bringing logic to the emotion fight, and that’s why they don’t do better.
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The GOP is Afraid of Their Base
Yesterday, Reuters/Ipsos released a national opinion survey that found 79% of Americans believe that Biden won the election, with 13% saying the election hadn’t been decided, 5% said they did not know who had won, while 3% said Trump had won. (Remember, more people didn’t know who won, than believe that Trump won. Just, think about that for a second.) In detail, six in ten Republicans surveyed believe Biden won, as compared to all Democrats who believed Biden won. (There is some more interesting information if you want to read more here.)
It’s pretty clear that most Americans see the election as being over, and Biden won. I even feel that this survey also confirms my belief, which I wrote about yesterday, that 70 million Trump voters are not all hardcore Trumpers. (Here’s my blog if you need a refresher.)
So, what gives with all the National Republican/Conservatives sticking up for Trump’s election fraud lies? (If you made it this far, then you know the answer, as you must have read the title of this blog.)
The GOP is still afraid of their base, which is only getting whiter, more conservative, smaller, and this might be the last election where they could possibly win without having to change their ideology. America is getting more diverse, progressive, and people are moving from strong Democrat states (California, and Illinois) into deep Red states; Texas, Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina. If the GOP base is still hardcore loyal to Trump, (that 3% from the Reuters poll, remember) and if that group makes up of 51%+ of the voters who take part in primaries, then don’t make them angry! Republicans have had 10 years of being primaried, and they have learned their lesson if they want to stay in power within their party. Sadly, this situation has killed off all of the Republican moderates, but I’m not the first to point that out.
The worst part about all of this is that the National Republican/Conservative leaders are playing a very dangerous game with the integrity of all elections in the future. The longer they support or stay silent about false claims of stolen ballots from Trump, they will be giving more oxygen to it, the harder it will be to walk it back.
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70 Million Trump Voters; Not a Monolith
This seems to be a big talking point in the news and online right now; Biden got 75 million votes, the most ever for a winning candidate, but Trump got 70 million votes, the most ever for a Republican. The context seems to be that Biden’s 75 million are a fractured group that will come apart at any moment, while Trump’s 70 million are solid as a rock.
I have to disagree, with that take.
What I am reminded of is a research study that was part of our curriculum in a Sociology class I took in college. The study was over punk rocker membership and social strata, and how that reflects on society as a whole. Follow me on this…
In the punk rock world, at the center were the hardest of the hard-punk rockers. These people dressed punk 24/7, lived it, and worked in it. Punk rock was their identity, and nothing could shake them from it, and though hard core and the most visible, it was a small group. Then around them was a larger ring with more people, but they were not as hard core, listened to the music and adopted the ideology, but also might have had a job and paid bills. Then outside of that ring was a larger group, who liked the music, and maybe had tattoos, but worked normal jobs, and dress punk out of work and on the weekends. (I think you get the point.) Finally, after several rings, you get the final group that likes the music, but does not have anything else to do with the punk scene, but those people do consider themselves to be “punk” on some level.
This is how I see Trump’s voters. Trump’s people want us to believe that all 70 million voters are the tight hardcore at the center, but to be honest that’s the smallest group. The majority of Trump voters make up those final two “soft” outer rings. They consider themselves to be Republicans/Conservatives, but aren’t Trump people. Now, if you give these two rings the binary choice of Republican or Democrat, they will always side with Republican because that what they consider themselves, but again, they aren’t live or die Trump people. They are the people that are sad that Trump lost, but they don’t see it as a conspiracy.
My point; relax everybody. It’s not as dire as everyone thinks.
