Think Like an Evangelical

Fetuses are babies. Those Democrats just do not know how to take responsibility for their actions. You can have 7 babies and still have a career on the Supreme Court. What is your problem?

You can just leave the baby at a fire station!

The problem...getting back to politics...is that abortion is pretty much removing anything from the uterus. The fetus could be dead and the woman has to carry it 9 months as things currently stand.

Perhaps just being on the Supreme Court and a mom did not prepare them for all pregnancy situations? Maybe a pregnant woman a doctor could better decide these things? Too late. The Supreme Court decided. States, and maybe Congress?...can better decide this for you.

Independents: I'm voting for someone else!

 You are? First of all, your polled number is just about how selfish you are. But I hope you are selfish enough and go buy donuts and coffee instead of voting in November. Because the election is important and we Democrats know it. It's not an election that will accommodate you with your special choices for a leader.

I was addressing the independents there. The Trumpsters are still 88% behind their hero, who will stumble into the election a broken man. He has almost nothing left as any political goal. Merely revenge. He will take care of that the first year. But with a congress that will not play along.

Let's make sure that does not happen. Show up to vote! Vote for the old man. He has 4 years left in him. Kamala will never be president.

An Election Like Never Before

We have never had an election like this. Never have two men who represent the major parties and who both were presidents for a term run against each other.

The role of social media is greater than ever before, and so is misinformation. It puzzles me that so called independents show up to vote with so little information. It might just be a news item a week before the election. 

The other factor that is unusual is the divisiveness. There are people on the left who are somehow unhappy with the economy. It could be just home  prices and other issues of your personal economy. Reluctantly they will vote for Biden. 

Trump on the other hand is promising "tremendous growth. " You will be so well off you don't even need your Medicare and Social Security. What if you are 75 and all your income IS social security? Other than that, Trump is against evil government and will eliminate as many departments as possible.

And of course, we have nerver had a presidential candidate under criminal indictments.

The divisiveness leads to polling that says Biden is unpopular(55%) but Trump is even more unpopular (60%). The latter should actually be closer to the truth. He did very little as president other than cut taxes. He was poor at foreign policy. I think his plan is not to have much to do with other leaders. All the effort in the first year would be to dispose of illegal migrants.

Because of the unusual setup, polling has been rather meaningless so far. And I think only the more angry responders were among the ones that replied to the polls. Polls in battleground states through the summer are the only ones with any meaning.

Democrats vs. MAGA

The part of the population that Trump has captured seems to be as dumb as Trump himself.

All the racist stuff, "build the wall" and every other somewhat popular item Trump has made an issue seems to be something that Democrats can address. They can explain alternatives and propose a more reasonable solution.

There is one thing the Democrats did not count on. The attack on GLOBALISM. The results were seen in the Trump first term, but neither side took much notice of the tariffs on steel. MSNBC barely touched it. The US does not make all grades of steel and metal alloys. Those are imported and some are high tech materials. There was a problem, but the makers of products just paid the higher price, often to European steel.

China was the target for Trump, Chinese steel. "The U.S. tariffs affected about $350 billion in imports from China, or about 18% of the total, while China’s tariffs covered about $100 billion, or about 11%, of goods imported from the U.S. " From my state Trump gave subsidies or some support to soybean growers, exporting it to China. More at link:

https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/in-u-s-china-trade-war-bystander-countries-increase-exports/

The US is dependent on China for most of its consumer products as well as a good part of industrial products. Bulk chemicals are made in China, India and other places in Asia. These bulk chemícals are essential for drugs and sweeteners as well as polymers.

The disruption to life that Trump could bring about by isolating us, paying high tariffs for essential products as well as military issues would bring chaos in four years.

The MAGA wing of the GOP has no idea how the US government is involved in global trade and directing the traffic of goods. They just want to reduce the federal government to nothing. Their favorite saying is that "the government does not make anything."  Basically they only want an army and a mint to print money. This is just not going to work. Not even California is ready to operate as an independent state.

Misinformation

One has to figure out what to make of news items. Polls may be properly taken and not manipulated, but as polls at this point are +/-4% accuracy, they mean nothing. You can follow the polls going up and down on some news item, such as Israel. Those items do affect the election, but only about two weeks before the election. The general public, voters, has no memory of things half a year before.

More worrying is the misinformation, fake videos and so on. The video clips may be real, but even the Biden campaign clips the worst bits together. In the case of Trump, hearing a whole minute of his speech comapred to the ten seconds does not improve it much. His attention span in the strream of consciousness speeches is not that long. He has no theme other than "The US is going to hell" and "they are invading our country." Underlying is the basic theme all the way back to Reagan: government is evil, taxes are bad.

Controlling social media will do little, but it is nevertheless necessary for the craziest conspiracies. It will help. But not much.

As the case of women in developing countries shows, only education will help us move to a world where we have some control of the material that is fed to us on a daily basis. That and the mute button on your TV remote.

The Internet is a worse situation than the TV, as you can follow links fed to you and go "down the rabbit hole" as we say. Young people and seniors are most at risk. The working age public is exposed to friends and coworkers daily who will guide them and also expose them to a variety of views. Simply hearing that normal people have a variety of views on Israel and Palestine for example introduces a healthy discussion. As opposed to screaming at peole on message boards and social media.

Tucker Carlson famously "proved" that mostly immigrants and illegals are serving time for felonius crimes. But those crimes were related to being illegals such as staying here with no visa! None of those crimes were against American Citizens.

The education really should start in high school. Show them that if you Google these two items you will get two different results (as well as paid ads related to it):

1 vaccines cause autism

2 vaccines do not cause autism

Vaccines cause an immediate reaction, which may be severe for a few days for some. That is in fact your immune system working. 

Similarly, try googling these:

1 Is crime increasing?

2 Is crime decreasing?

The second will give these. Also, use Bing or other searches to check on Google.

The search engines are put together to give you answers you would like, based on your search hisrory. Not so much the facts. This keeps you browsing and getting them ad income.

Is there a way forward past Trump?

Republicans are stuck with some Trump policies. They cannot lose their voters because they disagree with Trump. Ukraine is a good example.

If we end up with Trump, some America First issues will change quickly. Most of them domestic issues. The change in foreign policy will be much slower. The US military is still somewhat independent of the president.

If we end up with Nikki Haley, we will see a quicker exit out of the Trump era. Pew has run the poll. There is still a lot of anger which Trump whipped in 2016 and which had kept Trump himself going. But the country will only see revenge under Trump. Haley is our way out of this. Not really commenting on any of her political views, she just appears more normal next to Trump. This may turn against her in the middle of the primaries. DeSantis dropped out and more of the extreme voters will go from him to Trump than to Haley.

The story ran December 14th. The headline had to do with a dislike for compromise. Trump certainly will be exactly that. He will decide on money going to foreign countries and even NATO. The NATO issue is more to do with our bases abroad. Trump wanted to completely pull out of South Korea. "We are not their piggy bank." In other foreign policy matters Trump will simply tell leaders what he will do. He does not discuss with leaders.

Trump voters are not entirely in support of ideas that the GOP brought up, so they are pretty much focued on the candidate and not the issues. Trump is trusted to do something about the border. Foreign policy is not something they think much about. More than half the voters overall think foreign policy is important. It came up in the 2022 election, long before the current Israel mess.

Among Republicans, those with college degrees and those over 65 have ideas that match Nikki Haley. There is no difference between men and women supporting Trump, but more men support Haley than women. Those with high school only do not support Haley.  Those supporting Haley are the group likely to leave the president slot blank when electing, if Trump is the candidate. 

Republicans that have college degrees have no major problem with Biden as leader. The economy is doing well, and again...these are the people who have 401K plans. Personal issues are very important to the wealthy and upper middle class.

Abortion was not a major factor for Republicans in 2022. The independents and Democrats will have to show up in polls with that issue throug 2024. Partly it will end up on state level refendums votes. Those will help turnout. The issue is not off the books yet, and may get Biden the win.

Mornin'! 10 more months of this?

Probably.

Biden's message failing the working classes

Joe Biden can deliver a speech, though of course he does stumble a bit. There is no need to do it all live. You can film and edit. 

What I talk about below is one item on the mind of Trump voters. However, it may be very tiny overall. The Trump base is angry. When people are angry about their situation it is difficult to change their mind. And....when it is all over, they seem to forget how they decided and claim that the result was "not their fault." Voters never take blame for what they got after the election.

Back to the topic. Joe's image.

That is neither here or there, the main problem is the message. It is not good to boast about the markets, the economy or even jobs figures. The person just getting by will feel even more of a loser reading about all this success. The success of corporations. On the personal level, wages did not go up as much as costs of consumer goods. The speech writers are failing. He needs to hire a writer with a bachelor's degree in poltical science or journalism. One that paid their own way through college. Address the needs of a person just getting by. Inflation increased prices and wages went up a little. But not enough. These people are not putting money into 401K accounts. The ones with the college degrees are. There are some small things improved for the consumer, but the details seem to be "not news." One item I have looked at poorly...I don't really do economics any more than catching a "meme" here and there...is debt. There seems to be some consumer debt in the picture. See link at the end.

Home prices have been another factor. Starter homes need to be built and Biden has made a small effort in this. The plan is for "500K" homes in the lower price end.

A person on a message board I follow put it best:

"We can look at home prices, wealth inequity and taxation, student loans, social safety nets, energy and the environment, childcare and healthcare costs, etc. and not seeing a future where major reform is required for it to work for anyone not eyeballing retirement."

I guess even I don't see the situation quite as it is, since I am in fact retired. I am not going to criticize things at the federal level, they did remarkably well past the pandemic. And I also know that Trump did nothing for me in the long run. We retirees, working class folks and students are not in the tax bracket where Trump helped out. But he will tell them he did, and the Trump base will believe him.

Meanwhile, I now shop for everrything: services, coffee at under 6 dollars a bag or new tires. We all do that now.

LINK to economics, personal debt:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/09/15/americans-gloomy-about-economy/70833096007/

The Perfect GOP candidate and The Compromise Candidate

Joe Biden is the perfect politician, but not the perfect candidate. People are trying to find fault with him. Too old, etc. But the main difference between the two candidates is the supporting group of voters.

Trump is a perfect candidate. But only for keeping the GOP going. He is also a faulty candidate, and is stained by all his autocratic maneuvering and speeches. He cannot really be Trump 2016 anymore. He is muddied. (And yes, there is some erosion of support for Trump getting to the end of 2023. The primaries will do something to his number, I predict.)

Trump does not have to be everything for everyone. Only to his base. This populist movement has picked up enthusiasm. Before Trump, from the grass roots level you could not get excited about Republicans. Only a weak bond as "our kind of people" for most of those voters. They basically had been Republicans for generations.

Trump, unable to make real friendships, needs his fans and they adore him. He simply needs to be himself, working with fear, hate and crude jokes. And he is ideal for them. They would not show up for DeSantis.

Biden is none of that. He was the 2020 compromise. He may be popular among those involved in the actual politics.  Few Democrats dislike him, merely wishing he made way for a follower. But he lacks charisma even for us Democrats. He is not as bad as Nixon was appearing in public (he really had to work at it), but he is simply a politician. He can work solutions with others. None of that really matters, since he is not given any credit for what he has done, and Trump (with little to claim other than a tax cut) runs the conversation. He is the media man. He has some skill as a performer. It does not not make any difference to his supporters what he achieved or what he promises. It just has to sound different from anyone before. And the supporters do not even need anything from a president. They only want to prevent "some people" getting anything from the government.

The GOP does not need the Trump base or Trump for politics, they need them for turnout. This group of voters is not affected by much of politics. Banning abortion did not lose the Trump base. The Trump base sees things as black and white. Things are good or bad. I do not know if these conclusions come from the peer group or a leader. In any case "the issue is decided" and any individual Trump voter is no more responsible for what banning abortion does. As for the turnout part, the logic goes something like this. The people that were not interested in politics before Trump, they will vote for the Republican as long as he or she never criticizes Trump. Other more traditionl Republicans will also vote for that Republican candidate. But it is the combined total of them that gets the win. As goofy and inconsistent as Kevin McCarthy was, he seemed to be doing these kind of calculations. He cold guess the support for various races by the campaign contributions. Whene he was even a little critical of Trump the money stopped coming in.

Trump voters are a rather homogeneous group of white working class Christians. Democrats are always a group of educated whites and minorities.

What will happen the next year is that we will use the same fear tactics that Trump does. We need to get him ridiculed and punished in court. We also need to lecture on the end democracy with Trump.

Then comes the big job: get turnout at the election.

The polling at this point is rather poor at reflecting anything more than a general feeling of not being quite as comfortable as before the pandemic. Prices went up, wages did not. On top of that there are things Biden has to do as president (Israel) that the public just has a gut feeling about. Meanwhile Trump...between rants about an unjust legal battle...has nothing else to do so he is promoting simple ideas that seem to ring true with sonservative voters. "Close the border" and so on. The exaggerated arguments do not amount to much more than strawmen arguments. Trump never closed the border for four years. Millions of cars drive in and out of Mexico each month.

SIDENOTE ON POLLING

Biden seems to be "too old" and incompetent to run the US in polls. But the voters that are polled do not actually follow news. It is still a year to election and this is not a part of the life of 90% of voters. So what is the basis of their decision? The polls, of course! The more negative polls they hear, the more they believe the polls. The current polls are just the result of a string of polls in the news.

Early Polling...and Independents

I respect independents enough that I don't think they are all politically naive. A lot of it is hatred of politics and politicians. These are people that decide things for you. You can send your congressman an email and a staff member will read it. But nothing happens. You form an opinion of that party (your congressman) based on being ignored. The independents then get to the election and with little information vote for one or the other, mainly by what items are in the  news for both that week.

Independents are a big part of polling looking strange. I believe they are not actually answering the question asked but just reflecting a general dislike of politics. Politics does run in the background and makes sure we have no catastrophes generated by bad planning. But those kinds of politics are not known to them. They do not want to hear politics in the news. Yet Trump is there in your face everyday. Trump knows he can make the news and the media just use that to make income. The independents ignore most of it. But the stuff they do hear, if they have any memory of it, is all negative.

One other problem with the polls is that they may not ask the right things. "Is there something else that makes you decide on Trump or Biden that we did not ask you about?" That sort of thing never gets asked. 

When so called independents are asked about Trump and Biden and the economy, I was a little confused. How is Trump running an economy? How did he run anything? Poorly. Perhaps these independents are simply libertarians and Biden running the economy would be ruining capitalism? It does not need to be run.

Or maybe I am reading too much into it? Independents do not care too much for the government, so Biden "running" it is just Biden wasting my tax dollars.

I have never been polled in a nonpartisan poll. I have voted for some 40 years.

Normally the voters are asked polling questions during the spring primaries. With Trump we are always pushing ahead of that. The independents (over 40%) are confused. Independents are still shopping for someone other than Trump of Biden. Too late. For the rest of us the question already came up in 2020. Who do you think can beat Trump? When you voted for Biden, you could reliably expect him to run again if Trump was running again. The not running issue would only have come up if the Republicans were past Trump. They are not. That, too, was predictable.