What's wrong with Democrats?

Politics & Elections
121

That would be terrible, but I thought we were talking about stuff like the R’s cutting back on early voting and ballot dropoff locations. I’m sure voter intimidation happens, but I don’t think it’s causing widespread suppression of D turnout.

I might be giving the wrong impression. I typically vote for the party which does much better with higher D turnout. The more people that vote, the more chance I have for having my preferred candidates win. So I’m not against higher turnout or anything like that. My original point was that people who support the D positions seem to be less politically engaged, politically motivated, and less likely to turn out to vote in general. It seems to me that actions to encourage voter participation are typically done by the D’s in areas strategic to the D’s. Things like voter registration drives, get out the vote drives, shuttles to the polls, snacks in line, etc. are done by the D’s to try to get more D voters. They aren’t doing it altruistically to ensure that everyone votes. They are doing it for self-serving reasons to get more D votes. These changes made by the R’s are about reducing convenience, which has the effect of having fewer low-enthusiasm voters make the effort, which seem to be voters who would vote for D candidates.

I personally think all this talk about voter suppression and return to Jim Crow is going to have a negative effect on voter turnout for the D’s. The low-effort voters are just going to hear “voting is hard” and “your vote won’t matter” and not bother. The people who barely voted anyway aren’t going to be motivated to flock to the polls to try to vote in people who will implement a few more dropoff locations and a few more hours of Sunday early voting.

122

Directly, I’m pretty sure the answer is no. But indirectly? Harder to say, as states receive federal funding, and counties receive state funding. I know it’s not as simple as taking money out of one box and putting it into another, but ultimately the government and its services are all funded from the same source, and while it’s not quite a zero-sum game, large expenditures in Category X do have to be accounted for in drawing the parameters of Category Y.

123

What resources have you reviewed that caused you to form this opinion?

124

That’s true on an individual level. But if one party actively makes it less convenient for blocks of voters who typically vote for the other party, it’s suppression.

Or maybe their lives limit their opportunities to vote – in ways outlined numerous times in this thread – or their regions have a much lower number of polling places per capita than others. Please stop ascribing their low turnout to low motivation when there are so many other factors in play.

125

There’s also a HUGE element of fear involved- the Right has cultivated it for decades. Fear of foreigners. Fear of non-white people. Fear of far more nebulous stuff like white loss of status, fear of their “way of life” being destroyed (as if change wouldn’t happen regardless), and so on.

That’s why that crowd is so eager to believe whatever the GOP tells them and support it 110%. They’re terrified of the modern world, and want to regress back to some sort of idealized 1950s society that never actually existed. And the typical Democrat and progressive take on things is pretty much directly counter to that.

Put simply, the Right has transformed from being conservative to being reactionary. This means that the ground on which the political fight takes place has changed for a big segment of the population, especially with the effect of the right wing’s captive media.

According to this article, the electorate breaks down as 37% conservative (i.e. hard right), 35% moderates, and 24% liberals. Which means that the moderates are the key in contested elections (i.e. where the elections aren’t overwhelmingly lopsided), and the Republicans only have to get a bit more than 37% of the moderates to win. Democrats have to get something like 74% of the moderates to win.

I have a feeling that whatever would gain 75% of the moderates to vote Democrat would probably be anathema to a big chunk of the party as too far right. Meanwhile, all the Republicans have to do is appeal to the chunk of anxious moderates, and they’re in.

126

If you’re walking on a treadmill, and – using a remote control – I gradually but persistently raise the deck’s incline and the belt’s speed … at some point, you’re going to struggle/fall off.

Maybe it’s better if we define where the line is between

  • Your fault for not being able to keep up, and
  • My fault for screwing with you with malign intent

Remember: people with strong quantitative and analytic skills are involved in these efforts, and – just like in the private sector – they work with exceptionally granular and accurate data, and they’re damned good at their jobs.

Unfortunately, the organizations for which they work are generally run by evil, but not stupid, people.

127

That is a feature of the voter suppression efforts, not a bug.

128

Aye, like a system that makes it hard for them to vote SO THAT they will not vote.

129

I think it’s been suggested earlier: Invent a time machine. If the lines are too long on voting day, go back in time and vote at one of the early voting locations. Easy Peasy.

130

Ah, so that election, you’re screwed then. So sorry, better luck next voting time. We’ll see how we can screw you over then buckaroo!

131

I live in Maricopa country, Arizona. You know – the one where there was terrible voter fraud because the wrong guy won so the Republicans hired Cyber Ninjas to look for bamboo fibers in the ballots thus proving they’d been imported from China.

Before all that started, in 2014, the registrar badly miscalculated the number of people who wanted to vote and, to meet the budget set by the Republican-led legislature, reduced the number of polling places by a third. The result was long lines on election day, as long as eight hours.

Following that debacle, mail-in ballots were encouraged by the county. Previously, you had to give a reason for requesting a mail-in ballot; now you would get one simply by asking and, furthermore, could request to be put on the PEVL – Permanent Early Voting List – and would be automatically mailed a ballot without asking.

I signed up for that in a heartbeat and in the elections since then, have received the ballot about a month before election day and typically spend a couple hours across several days voting, most of the time spent on those obscure down-ballot offices like school boards and water board committees you just don’t get any news about.

In the elections since then the program was expanded each time to the point where even if you were not on the PEVL, as early as October 7th last election you could go to a number of early voting locations, get a print-on-demand ballot, fill it out, and deposit it. On election day hundreds of voting centers opened. A voting center is different from a precinct in that, as with the early voting locations, you can go to any location, get verified not only that you are registered to vote but have not yet cast a ballot elsewhere, and receive the proper ballot to cast.

As a result in the 2016 and 2018 elections more and more people were voting my mail and by the 2020 election it was around 90% by mail, and a big chunk of the remainder were cast before election day. Everybody was fine with this until, like I said, in 2020 the majority of people in the county voted for the wrong guy and the clown-car drumbeat of suddenly discovered, completely invisible voter fraud by the Republicans started.

Now the Pubs are saying they want to trash the system and allow voting only in person with who-know how many polling stations come voter day. If it looks like a duck, walks like a dick, and quacks like a duck, it’s a voter-suppression duck.

132

A real legit ballot will have Panda hairs woven into the paper.

133

Bolding mine

:smiley:

Now we know how to spot them in a crowd!

134

Dr. Freud, your slip is ready.

135

Not sure if it was from this thread, (slapping myself for not quoting it at the time) but a poster mentioned concerns that at the beginning of Biden’s term, there was speculation: How gaffe-prone will this new president be, considering his past? This was really the main initial concern that I, myself, had for how Biden might perform, coming out of the gates, but ever since then, I, too, haven’t noticed a whole lot of gaffe-a-delics goin on.

I certainly haven’t seen the GOP / anyone on the right appropriating any memes / potshots to that particular end. Sure, on youtube you’ll already find compilations of, yes, gaffes he’s made since president, however, all of them, to a gaffe, are so incredibly minor, that anyone would made those minor mistakes. Did any of them make a non-right headline?

No, he hasnt been oractorically perfect in this term, but I’m glad that he’s (so far) dispelled worries about gaffing out to a much harsher extent like he used to.

136

Missed edit: to be sure - not that I’m doing some endzone dance over that, but it is cool to see he’s sharpened up a little, and I’m sure it kills many that they haven’t had any real meat to feed on, gaffe-wise.

137

“Joe stated his case logically and passionately, but his perceived effeminate voice only drew big gales of stupid laughter.”
-Narrator, Idocracy

What’s wrong with Democrats is that they think that being smart and morally right will get them elected by a nation of morons. To the average Fox News watching American trying to make ends meet, Democrats come across as a bunch of ivory tower elites imposing a bunch of rules and restrictions and bizarre social experiments that will supposedly improve people’s lives in some abstract way.

138

Yes but…

The Republicans and their media ally Fox News make sure that Democrats are perceived that way. And the Democrats have been unwilling to throw minorities under the bus to ensure that the Democrats can’t be portrayed that way.

Fox News successfully buries the substantive Democratic agenda - which is very much aimed at helping the average Fox News watching American make ends meet - under a never ending tidal wave of froufrou about the pearl clutching problem of trans people in women’s toilets etc.

139

Fox News successfully buries the substantive Democratic agenda under the substantive Democratic agenda. Which is to say they create a tautology where they present everything the Democrats suggest as stupid simply because it’s the Democrats that suggested it. i.e - health care is too expensive = Democrats are socialists who want to ruin health care.

140

That also