Iowa itself is a lost cause. It’s 75% Republican here. We’re gerrymandered to high hell, so even if Baccam squeaks through, Iowa state legislature won’t look very blue. If it’s 60/40 Republican I’d be absolutely shocked.

But contributing one Senator nationally would be pretty neat.

If Harris gets Iowa the race is over. These races are not truly independent - they are correlated. If Harris picks up Iowa, there’s a very good chance that means she’s swept every swing state.

Right - I just mean literally any attempt to try and cater to a specific group is gonna be like this.

Both campaigns go after different groups. I just think literally anything that is contained in these are going to sound racist.

In a less charged example, both candidates try and appeal to women. Those could be viewed as sexist.

To be fair… When the article’s opening line is “In outreach to Black Men”, it doesn’t really matter what you put after. It’s going to sound bad.

It can be both things.

There are no definitive data points that should lead anyone to believe that either candidate has a significant advantage.

I’m not sure anyone who is well versed in election projections or polling would say anything other than it’s a toss up. As a heavy consumer of said data and reporting, I haven’t seen anything to the contrary.

You’re not wrong about media incentives, but they’re also not wrong that this is a very close race.

Technically… But there’s also a lot of waste from the 500 pack that people throw out half of. It likely evens out.

… What?

Is this some weird “victim mentality” thing?

People love to use it because it got popular and grew to mean more than the original definition to the point where it just got generic to encompass a wide range of things. It’s the same as cringe.

I thought the same thing. People are obsessed with the word gaslighting.

This seems more like textbook hypocrisy. Person doing thing talks about the harms of others doing that thing.

Omg what kind of dog is that? It’s marvelous.

I mean generally it’s all correlated. It’s not perfect, but typically a 2-3 point national poll lead is close to an electoral college tie.

I have to say this is not a good take. Polls aren’t all the same, but news outlets treat them like they are. Even the same pollsters come up with slightly different numbers each time they run them.

Because there is a certain amount of uncertainty doesn’t make them invalid. We just need to be more educated on filtering the good from the bad.

You sort of have 2 options:

1. Get educated on polling errors, the statistics, and the methodologies of the polls and arrive at your own conclusions.

2. Ignore anything written by the main media outlets about polls, because looking at a single poll is really dumb.

They definitely do matter, and there’s validity to them, but they don’t claim to be the exact truth. If you know how to use them, they are quite helpful.

These are great points. I’ll have to think on this a bit further - thanks for the info!

I see your points here. I don’t think they are wrong, but I have a different opinion on Trump’s election.

I think the onset of social media created a real shit storm of misinformation particularly during the Obama years. I don’t think it was backlash because he was black (though I admit this is not knowable, just my opinion), but more because of the overall grievance with how things operate.

You can’t really separate race out of the equation, because I think Democrats had good messaging showing the effects of institutional racism and sexism against minority groups, particularly at a systemic level. However, there was a massive concentration of wealth in America at the same time.

Trumo came along and his message wasn’t really that novel. He just said hey, this shit sucks for everyone, not just minorities. White people are getting screwed too. And I’m the guy that’s going to fight for the rural voter.

I take your point that it’s not outright racism. It’s not someone saying I’m not voting for this person solely because they are X, it’s some end around way of going about it. But I think Trump played the White Greivance card and I think Democrats are getting a little better at leaning into it. The unfortunate truth is that both things are totally true. White people are getting screwed (concentration of wealth to hover levels) AND minorities groups are getting screwed (because of systematic racist effects that are still residual in daily life for them).

As I’m talking this out, I’m not sure where to land. There’s multiple pieces here that intersect with race, but I’m not sure they are the core tenant. I think there might be some voters who realize that everyone is getting screwed, but maybe worry that Harris would prioritize racial issues before overall everyone getting boned issues. Maybe that’s the group?

Didn’t come to a great conclusion, but your comment had some layers to it so it got me thinking.

I think you skipped part of the argument. I’m sure those people exist, but what about the number of disengaged voters who were over Joe Biden or disagreed with him on various issues? I think the number of votes lost because of race or gender is not 0, but the gains through reinvigoration are far, far higher.

Right… We become beholden to the laggards of social progress because we think we can’t win without them, and we alienate and stagnate the progress of those doing the most.

This is a hilarious misreading of polling data. Kamala may not win, but her percentage chance to win might be double or more of what Bidens was.

People I follow were estimating Biden at 10-15% by the time the election rolled around. All the models assume that a candidate would run a normal campaign. Something that he is not capable of doing.

How many people, realistically, would vote for a white male Democrat but NOT a non-white female?

People are talking about this, but I don’t know who this voter is. The hard line racists and sexists were not moderates, they’re all already Republican.

There are far more democrats that were against Biden because of his age than would be against Harris as a woman. This is a net gain. Fuck the people who won’t vote for her along gender or racial lines. I don’t want to try and appease them.

Give people something to vote FOR rather than vote against.

You clearly didn’t even read it. I addressed that point specifically.

I’m not immune to criticism or critique, but if you’re going to respond, it’s good to know what you are responding to, or you look a bit foolish when you asked a question directly answered in the text.

You don’t even have to engage with the post, but not reading and engaging is what’s led to the collapse of good political discourse.

This is the dumbest shit and we need to fucking grow up a bit. These “questions” are asinine and not that hard to explain.

1. Not denying the incident was reported, but there’s a heavy insinuation here that this was set up or manufactured. If so… They needed an entire Secret Service detail, local event police and everyone standing by to be in on it. A couple hundred people are going to be involved and no one leaks it?

2. “Supposed” gunman. I like how you pivot from “this is probably set up” to “ok even if it was real Trump is capable of worse”

3. Again, the insinuation of an inside job here. We’re going to involve a hundred or more people and no one thought it would be a problem to kill a bystander? Or the gunman was so good he killed a specific plant? And they had a 100% success rate… No one heard the plan and thought “oh this is a bad idea” and spoke out about it?

4. Big difference between deleting text messages and MURDERING AN AMERICAN to further a political agenda.

5. Yes. Things happen all the time. Trump people are saying this is to distract from Biden being inept. There’s always a convenient time.

6. Yes you dumbshit he was concerned about his hat because they already had the all clear. The shooter got taken out in seconds. They wouldn’t have moved Trump. And they all were saying it was all clear. Also have you ever seen people in an absolute panic? Not the most rational state. Same thing with his shoes. That’s ALSO why he took the photo op. They all dove on top of him. They figured out the shooter’s location and took him down before Trump even got up.

There’s pictures of the fucking bullet in flight. So either that was ALSO manufactured (a member of the press willingly heard the plan ahead of time and doctored a photo or they actually shot a bullet inches away from Trumps head AND captured it). But no let’s just get Trump, a bumbly ass fuck to orchestrate this perfectly. I’m sure he had it a planned to go down, and everyone covered him and he pulled out a razor blade, cut his ear, and put it away, all perfectly executed and no one caught anything on camera from any of the dozens of angles.

This shit is so fucking stupid and I’m so sick of hearing about it. These points all rely on the most ass backwards way of thinking where dozens of people are in on this conspiracy and relies on all of them bring cool with killing someone to make it good for Trump.

Get this shit outta here. This doesn’t deserve the pixels on the screen used to illuminate this nonsense. Be a fucking grown up. We’re going to have to figure out a real way to beat Trump, not pretend this was some false flag bullshit. Accept reality. Be a goddamn adult.

I’m not even saying you’re wrong for questioning, but I am saying you are wrong because the sheer volume of things that would need to occur for this theory to be even remotely possible is so ridiculous, I would consider aliens an equally plausible situation.

This is the dumbest shit and we need to fucking grow up a bit. These “questions” are asinine and not that hard to explain.

1. Not denying the incident was reported, but there’s a heavy insinuation here that this was set up or manufactured. If so… They needed an entire Secret Service detail, local event police and everyone standing by to be in on it. A couple hundred people are going to be involved and no one leaks it?

2. “Supposed” gunman. I like how you pivot from “this is probably set up” to “ok even if it was real Trump is capable of worse”

3. Again, the insinuation of an inside job here. We’re going to involve a hundred or more people and no one thought it would be a problem to kill a bystander? Or the gunman was so good he killed a specific plant? And they had a 100% success rate… No one heard the plan and thought “oh this is a bad idea” and spoke out about it?

4. Big difference between deleting text messages and MURDERING AN AMERICAN to further a political agenda.

5. Yes. Things happen all the time. Trump people are saying this is to distract from Biden being inept. There’s always a convenient time.

6. Yes you dumbshit he was concerned about his hat because they already had the all clear. The shooter got taken out in seconds. They wouldn’t have moved Trump. And they all were saying it was all clear. Also have you ever seen people in an absolute panic? Not the most rational state. Same thing with his shoes. That’s ALSO why he took the photo op. They all dove on top of him. They figured out the shooter’s location and took him down before Trump even got up.

There’s pictures of the fucking bullet in flight. So either that was ALSO manufactured (a member of the press willingly heard the plan ahead of time and doctored a photo or they actually shot a bullet inches away from Trumps head AND captured it). But no let’s just get Trump, a bumbly ass fuck to orchestrate this perfectly. I’m sure he had it a planned to go down, and everyone covered him and he pulled out a razor blade, cut his ear, and put it away, all perfectly executed and no one caught anything on camera from any of the dozens of angles.

This shit is so fucking stupid and I’m so sick of hearing about it. These points all rely on the most ass backwards way of thinking where dozens of people are in on this conspiracy and relies on all of them bring cool with killing someone to make it good for Trump.

Get this shit outta here. This doesn’t deserve the pixels on the screen used to illuminate this nonsense. Be a fucking grown up. We’re going to have to figure out a real way to beat Trump, not pretend this was some false flag bullshit. Accept reality. Be a goddamn adult.

I’m not even saying you’re wrong for questioning, but I am saying you are wrong because the sheer volume of things that would need to occur for this theory to be even remotely possible is so ridiculous, I would consider aliens an equally plausible situation.