For your undecided friends and relatives. The man is not well. He is not fit to be president of any country. If he quits, you get Vance. Who is not quite human.
It may take some effort for them to see who Trump is. Mostly a fake.
If they are still "I just don't know about Kamala..." remind them of their duty to the country:
Finally, a word on polls from Jeff:
He does not seem to be winning in other areas, so it makes sense to repeat the claim, from Ohio to Colorado to California.
I took a few wild guessed in the 538 polling game.
I took the view that the ones that agree to answer at all are angry about 1 migrants or 2 abortion.
You can do your own guessing here:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/donald-trump-poll-quiz-2024/
It was a populist movement, a cult. It lasted a good 9-10 years. Trump has almos run out of steam, though there is some bluster still left to Trump at a rally. I think Trum is going to lose. But that does not solve our problem. These voters are still there in 2028. It will be hard to pass any major reform, such as rules for the Supreme Court and any plans to take the lifetime appointment away. As well as border plans. Some plan will emerge, but the Trump folks want zero immigrant admitted.
He captured white males. Polls list men without a college degree. This Brookings chart lists just the so called working class. Overall, the Trump support is white males, but in the working class also a good portion of women. In the middle class voters it is not that way.
There is at times a lack of interst in an election from this group regarding the issues and a candidate. You can see it for McCain, but not especially for Romney. He was as far as possible from the working class!
A website has listed the types of Trump voters we had in the 2016 election:
https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/the-five-types-trump-voters
I've abbreviated the groups:
The problem with voters and elections is that we think it is about the candidates and the issues. (The Trump issue is all a straw man...). But it is not. The voter is filling out the ballot, and at that moment, it is about them. Very very few might think about the welfare of a bigger group. No, it is 90 plus percent about that voter. The information is collected and sort of stored as a combined gut feel. And then you pick one. It's that simple. Often times there is a bias against the party in party, and that too is not actual math. The president and party in power simply must be punished.
"I don't like Trump, but I just don't trust Democrats. They are like lawyers. In fact most of them are lawyers. Kamala..."
People have strong feelings about presidential candidates. I have heard Trump talking hundreds of times. I remember things my governor said, but I don't even remember what he sounds like.
There are the so called low information voters who don't know how to vote, and then there are the ones voting on some single issue. It's not exactly known how we decide on a vote. You can do all the psychology experiments and still won't know much. I've listed the Tversky-Kahneman type of factors in earlier posts. The voters with firm beliefs and a lifetime of voting one party can best explain why they voted.
But here we are. What do we do about these people?
Not much. They are not going to be able to decide better no matter how many Trump facts you present. On the other hand, some won't vote at all, as Trump is not gaining voters.
So what is there to do? Make sure polls are not under Trump folk attacks and intimidation. Make sure the people who we have had all along remember to vote. For them, you can paint the scary picture of the Trump world.
So if you have a lot of time on hand and are just reading these social media posts all day, take a break. Fall is a beautiful time in most parts of the country. Enjoy the outdoors. It's only about a month anymore.
On the lighter side, I posted a Threads post on the undecided voter. They can't even pick a lunch meat out of these two. How can they pick a president?
In 2016 and 2020 there was polling error. The factors were different. Let us just say it was complicated.
Kamala is looking to beat Trump in PA. However, it is harder to poll states than the country. Therefore the most recent poll seems to drive the state data presented at
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris
But polls are polls, and are not really facts. Rasmusen is skewed, Fox poll is occasionally realistic.
The tossup map is worth a look. It seems to be up to date.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/maps/president/2024/no-toss-up/electoral-college
Note that the table gives PA to Harris but the MAP above does not. With PA included Harris gets 276.
Even that is not news. And as for news, Trump is still getting too much news. He is running a risky campaign as many people out there are mad at him. Maybe just stick to the putting green and driving range, Mr Trump?
I know, and the media knows, that the election will be decided by people that really don't care about elections or politics. Yet, there must be some way to reach them. These people will not watch the debate. They certainly can choose based on a very unconscious gut reaction.
Kamala has to get to the 3% over Trump level (arrow) to safely win the battleground states. There, PA is the key. Polling there is not telling us much. She may still win at 2%, but there will then be recounts. We want to avoid those due to GOP manipulation of ballots.
So what will happen after the debate? This sort of a boxing match now. Kamala has to get a few hard punches at Trump. He has to be suffering and give the appearance of a loser on the little information that trickles through to the low information voter. Mainly through social media but also through their friends. They will get the general impression of the state of Trump. This is maybe the FIRST TIME in 12 years that there is a good chance to make Trump look like a loser. And make it stick.
(I may add a poll to this post a week or two after the debate.)
Other than two candidates, voters also base their voting on two things:
1 how they feel the economy
2 the vague "country is going in the wrong direction."
That second one is pretty much why they always want a NEW president, every four years. Here we have the problem of separating Kamala from Biden.
As for the economy, the voter may well be right in deciding that the party in power is responsible for the government part of the economy. The normal economic cycles are a fuzzy concept to them. But the facts do not really get to the voter, and there is a lag time of up to a year to see any affect the current administration has on the economy. Working class will only remember that "Biden tried to forgive student loans for those college folks."
I have reasons to vote for Harris and I could state them and you would not be surprized. I have some ideas that the Trump folks and MAGA would consider radical. But worldwide, they would not be. Most people in the Western world allow a role for the federal governmnet in our lives. Only those that were convinced by Reagan 40 years ago that "all government regulation is bad" stick to the pure free market idea of the world.
The undecided voters do not think about politics much. They have jobs, daily lives, social media and friends that take up their entire day. They are now faced with an election. What they decide may not be easy to explain. And they may not know why they voted one or the other. Many decisions are unconscious. Here is a summary of Tversky and Kahneman conclusions. Our decisions are not entirely rational.
Social psychologists and political science academics have studied the thinking of different types of people. The MAGA folk fall into a category that believes in hard work and may be quite normal and reasonable in their interactions with other people. It is only when politics comes up that their beliefs come up. They may not be able to explain them well, but George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling have labeled it "strict father morality." High taxes are seen as an immoral punishment of self discipline and a threat to economic competition. They actually believe that the system is fair and that anybody could become Elon Musk. The fact that there is almost no social mobility anymore and that most of them are stuck in the lower middle class forever is not clear to them. They believe in the American Dream of some 50 years ago, post WWII. The blind belief in "fee hand of capitalism" leads to pure capitalism being the ideal economy. That allows them to ignore the fact that the GOP will eliminate Social Security and Medicare.
They see abortion in this same frame. If you are not able to take care of disabled child, you should not have strarted a family. Abortion never comes up as an option to them. If a baby dies at childbirth, that was God's will. If the mother dies, that is the same.
The concepts of freedom that they have and we have are not the same. The freedom may be strictly based on their morals and some of that is definitely the JD Vance type of stuff. Very extreme individualism but then odd views of society.
The low information voter could also be one with no real poltical views. A person like this is quite dependent on their peers. belonging to a group is most important in life, and they will follow the leader of whatever group or community they are in.
All these factors lead me to believe that there are people in the MAGA camp simply because a family member is a hard core MAGA supporter. But when faced with the erratic behavior of Trump and the future of the country in the game, they may choose now to not support Trump himself. They can hang on to some MAGA principles but not show up to vote at all. Those are people that leave Trump rallies before they are over.
Reading material:
Presidents are usually blamed for a bad economy, but never get credit for a good economy. Inflation in particular is blamed on presidents. The current one was due to the pandemic, and was world wide.
Jobs, ecomomic growth and so on are calculated and tabulated. They are used in election ads.
Obama won two elections. I think he won the second one in that we had recovered from the disasterous Bush recession and healthcare was taken care of. But he was not making any waves past the first two years.
Now we are in a democratic term. Inflation did happen. Big corporations, two or three of whom control any particular product category (phones, diapers, toilet paper, baby food) fix prices. A smaller player (10% of the market) could sell at a lower price. But could never sell enough to make a difference.
Would they hesitate to raise prices? No. It will be blamed mostly on the current president. They want the republican elected, so that he can reduce corporatre tax. Once he is elected, will they reduce prices? (After their taxes are cut). No. Corporations never lower prices.
Corporations have paid 20-30% tax in recent times. It is apparently worth the trouble to buy as many senators and presidents as you can for even 5%. And then also have someone like Trump who defund the IRS so they can't collect tax.
So Trump does seem to be able to funnel money and manipulate people. His understanding of the economy for the rest of us is poor. He does not understand tariffs and balance of trade, for example. And he rarely does anything for you or me. At the end of his term he insisted on signing the covid checks. I don't think he would approve those again. Corporations were bailed out and will be again.
How does the voter figure out what is going on? They do not. They respond to prices going up, but never follow how much their salary goes up at the same time. Luxury good prices go up almost immediately when inflation starts. Small snacks at the gas station go up more than a bag of flour. Voters note a few things, ones they buy most often. Voters also do not remember very well how they were financially four years ago. It's just not something that can be measured by the consumer very well. If all the people around are complaining about prices, they conclude they were better off a few years ago.
The human mind is somehow guided by rules of thumb to make a decision in all everyday things. It it is not really set to collect all kinds of data to make that decision. If you are shopping, you just remember the previous time you bought a similar item. Most of us decide by the minimal infomation on hand. You look at the items on the shelf. Maybe check the Amazon price. A credit card allows many to overpend when shopping. You only realize you overspent when the bill arrives.* When you have a good liar like Trump repeatedly tell them they are worse off, they begin to believe it. Whatever the voter believes about the economy under Trump or Kamala, it is based largely on gut feel. There is no rational mechanism needed.
(*On line banking does allow better control than before.)
Some more economy comments at the end of my newer entry:
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com/2024/09/its-still-low-information-voter.html
OCTOBER 14th
NYT polls now show Hispanics and Blacks are moving to the right. Somehow elitism and a misunderstanding of presidents and economies (the incumbent is always blamed) led to race being less important than class and current economic situation. Possibly also shortage of housing.
A part of the morning letter (David Leonhardt):
Trump is handling this badly. I don't think he knows what to do. He is preaching doom and gloom. The lighter material in his stand up is well worn insults. Who on earth would want to hear ten rallies of that?
Contrast this to Harris. I still can't say she is super at being charismatic and I did not like her speech back in 2020 debates and primaries. But Kamala will have a pretty good chance of convincing people that we are not screwed. After the pandemic and the post pandemic jerks and fits in the running of the world and our country, she is the first one to announce that we are done with that. Done with Trump, Biden sent to retirement. We have a good future. We can do this! (I am not the only one interpreting it this way, several news people have said the same all day).
