I’m even more mystified as to why people insist on supporting a seditious traitor for president. I will say that I firmly believe that the character of this nation in 1968 was infinitely better the character of this nation now. I can’t imagine someone like Trump getting even 20% of the nation’s support in 1968. In fact, he’d probably already be in prison.
George Wallace was as committed a white supremacist in 1968, and that was about his support. But white people were doing better in 1968–much of the Civil Rights movement was still in progress then, so racists didn’t feel nearly as threatened as they do today.
LBJ pushed through the Civil Rights Act and the South never forgave him. Wallace picked up that hatred and waved it like a banner. There had been major race riots in many cities every summer from 1964 through 1968, with that year perhaps worst because of MLK’s death, and whites everywhere were scared and angry even in the north. The 1968 Democratic convention controlled by Mayor Daley’s racist/fascist police force showed the world what the white establishment wanted to do to their enemies. LBJ actually was still more concerned about being called a baby-killer because of Vietnam, but he could see that he had two major groups virulently against him and the scum of the earth for him so that if he ran he would have little support.
Nixon, of course, had no difficulties in reaching out to the scum of the earth. When he ran, he created the Southern Strategy to get the South to flip to the Republicans. Those same minds, now manifest in later generations, provide Trump’s base.
Ted Kennedy could not get over Chappaquiddick in 1980. No politician could in those days. No politician not named Trump could do so today. Trump survives because his base has the gift of living in a bubble, in which all Trump news is favorable and everyone else’s actions are pure evil. Those who step out of the bubble are exposed to a different reality. Votes maybe can be peeled off that way.
We really have little experience about voters living in a bubble. Bubbles this all-encompassing are something new in the world. Can they be sustained? Can they be broken and if so how? What happens if they shrink even a bit? Nobody knows. There are no precedents, not even 2016 and 2020.
I suspect it’s quite high on the minds of American Jews and on the minds of Americans with Palestinian relatives. Whatever their positions are, they/we are all grieving and feeling endangered. I suspect it’s nowhere near that high on the minds of the rest of the population; with the possible exception of those expecting Revelations to come true any minute now.
Where are these millions of disaffected Democrats coming from?
Biden is the incumbent. That proves that people will vote for him. We’ve got a candidate who’s proven he can beat Trump. I don’t see any reason why we should switch to a different candidate.
I can see why the people who want Trump to win would like us to switch to a different candidate. I suspect those millions of disaffected Democrats exist only in the hopes of millions of worried Republicans
I don’t either, but there’s all those swing state voters that Biden carried in 2020, who seem to have found a reason. We seem to be sayin pooh-pooh to those polls, or are in serious denial.
One reason is that the lesson of 1980 – challenge the incumbent and they are damaged – was learned.
If Biden wins in November 2024, without any serious primary challenge, the lesson of 1980 will be reinforced.
If Biden loses in November 2024, despite facing only trivial primary challenges, the lesson of 1980 will be lost, and the next incumbent should expect stronger primary challenges. Of course I am assuming here that a second Trump term, however bad, would not mean an end to the current electoral system.
I think that the situation in 2023/2024 is unique, and lessons such as discussed here tend to be overlearned.
Today’s Times has another article on the same poll the OP used to start this thread. Shared link.
Mr. Trump, however, remains in a weaker position than such gains might make it appear.
If the former president is convicted and sentenced — as many of his allies expect him to be in the Jan. 6-related trial held next year in Washington, D.C. — around 6 percent of voters across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin say they would switch their votes to Mr. Biden. That would be enough, potentially, to decide the election.
Live by the polls, die by the polls.
6% would switch if Trump is convicted? God help the United States of America.
6% of voters is about 12% of the Rs.
But yeah. The idea he hasn’t been getting zeros in every poll for the last ~4 years proves our nation is either doomed, or will soon have a near-death experience.
Convicted without having yet exhausted appeals? I doubt it would be nearly that much.
And if some kind of compromise verdict, billed as conviction on less serious counts only, it might help Trump.
A lot of people who said they would switch were IMHO just giving the socially acceptable answer.
EDITED: The question of whether you would change your vote on conviction and sentencing makes little sense because everything depends on the details. Was he just sentenced to probation? Is this a federal case where he can try to self-pardon if elected? What exactly was he convicted off? I think you need an open ended highly non-judgmental discussion to figure out how someone actually thinks about it. There is a methodology for his sort of thing, but I can’t recall what it is called. Face to face helps. I had a part-time job many years ago in college doing this sort of thing. Like a focus group, except one on one. Good job.
In a rational universe, the appeal status or the sentence or even which of the felony charges he was convicted of, doesn’t matter. Anyone convicted of either conspiring to overthrow the election results and/or stealing and sharing secure information would get 0% if he dared running for dogcatcher.
What if Biden is the one convicted?
Impossible? No. There is such a thing as a rogue prosecutor.
Republicans will not be wrong to question a verdict. What will probably be wrong is the answer they tell themselves after they question it.
Also, the evidence, in mainstream media newspaper stories, that Trump tried to overthrow legitimate election results, is overwhelming. Criminal conviction would not much change the public evidence.
Fortunately, prosecutors, whether rogue or not, do not convict people all by themselves.
And a rogue jury, and a rogue appellate court? 'Cuz those are the two other things that would have to align for a (1) conviction that (2) stands more than a month or so.
ETA: ninja’d
I fully expect that in a future Trump term, all his political opponents will be investigated, and possibly even indicted. That’s the dystopian nightmare that we’re facing. Fortunately, as others have pointed out, that is not the same as a conviction.
Many countries of the world today have all the trappings of a justice system like ours. And every bit of it works corruptly for the ruling party & the Head Honcho. Not only prosecutors, but also judges.
If the Reactionary Wacko Traitors get power at the federal level, they will work very hard to institute that same system here. Disgraced politician trump is certainly the current leader, but if he dropped dead tomorrow, the RWT movement will not die. Somebody else will emerge to try to take up the mantle. They may not succeed this year, but the movement will be back before the decade is out.
Once the RWTs do have federal power, there will be nothing at the federal level to prevent the same thing happening at the state level. Right now today in 2023 the RWTs are busy defeating the intent of the federal constitution in every spot where the letter of the federal constitution as interpreted by our semi-RWT supreme court leaves them room to do so. It’ll be open season in every RWT state once we have RWT Feds.
Do not assume the federal or state judiciary can withstand a wholesale assault by the craven legislature, the corrupt executive, and the ravening public. Country after country thought that bulwark would hold. Until it did not.
I beg of you, please don’t start with this nonsense yet again.
One reason many people would vote for Individual-ONE is because he is such a baffoon. It is comforting to them that he really does seem to be able to accomplish anything meaningful. A genuinely competent person would scare them, hopefully before that person could be handed the levers of power.
One of Desantis’ biggest hurdles to greater power is that it looks like he might actually be able to do stuff, which conflicts in part with the Rs’ long-standing “government bad” mantra. It is like they put a sort of kill-switch into their agsnda – at least, for as long as democracy remains functional.
I agree there is a faction that just likes pranking the government. And who are not thinking about how expensive to themselves such pranking will be. IMO that faction was significant in the 2016 election, and in trump’s early popularity with the noisy MAGA crowd. As the crazy incompetence continued and morphed into dangerous, at least some of the prankers began to think better about “government as simply a joking matter”.
I doubt there many people today in 2023 who are genuinely aware of why they’re voting for who they’re voting for and who think trump would be a good choice for benign prankster. That story is over.
IMO the folks who’ll vote for trump in 2024 are the folks who’d say “Any (R), literally the worst imaginable chimpanzee, is better than the most-conservative imaginable (D). And Biden is far from the most conservative (D) I can imagine. So (R) it is, period, amen, no questions asked.”