2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[garbon]

Voters being responsible for whom they elect and Harris running a poor campaign can both be true at the same time.

It can be. I don't think she has run a poor campaign though.

Oh, yes she has and I don't even think it's debatable.

[Oexmelin]

I think you are misinterpreting what the word fault means in that sentence.

It is of course, the voters' fault. It is only the voters who vote.  Claiming that it is some force other than voters that selects who gets elected is problematic to say the least.

It's not problematic. It's the realization that what passes as choice is constrained and influenced in myriad ways that tend to undermine the straightforward attribution of fault. If it were so simple, I would contend that the billions of dollars poured into American elections are really a stupid ineffectual use of money.

[crazy canuck]

"Blame"/"fault" are such annoying terms. Rarely does anything have a single cause and too often when people speak about blame they do mean single and only factor with all others completely absolved.

Obviously voters are responsible for how they vote. They ultimately were the ones that crossed the box.
But even in a theoretical of a literal gun to the head, put your mark here or else, this still holds true. Where is the line drawn here?

As in most society-wide things I'm reluctant to put too much of the onus on the individuals and rather the factors that led to this mass-delusion.
Its a failure of the education system, a failure of conventional politicians to provide for these people (which isn't to say Trump will in anyway actually do that, but he does provide an outlet for flipping the table and hope its eventually set back up differently), and a failure (/success) of the social media companies for setting up this direct access to tap into people's system 1 thinking that any dodgy actor in all the world is freely able to use.

In the case of a democratic election there is a very simple causal relationship. The person who gets the most votes wins.

Only voters get to vote. 

[Josquius]

"Blame"/"fault" are such annoying terms. Rarely does anything have a single cause and too often when people speak about blame they do mean single and only factor with all others completely absolved.

Obviously voters are responsible for how they vote. They ultimately were the ones that crossed the box.
But even in a theoretical of a literal gun to the head, put your mark here or else, this still holds true. Where is the line drawn here?

As in most society-wide things I'm reluctant to put too much of the onus on the individuals and rather the factors that led to this mass-delusion.
Its a failure of the education system, a failure of conventional politicians to provide for these people (which isn't to say Trump will in anyway actually do that, but he does provide an outlet for flipping the table and hope its eventually set back up differently), and a failure (/success) of the social media companies for setting up this direct access to tap into people's system 1 thinking that any dodgy actor in all the world is freely able to use.

In the case of a democratic election there is a very simple causal relationship. The person who gets the most votes wins.

Only voters get to vote. 

Huh?

[crazy canuck]

I think you are misinterpreting what the word fault means in that sentence.

It is of course, the voters' fault. It is only the voters who vote.  Claiming that it is some force other than voters that selects who gets elected is problematic to say the least.

It's not problematic. It's the realization that what passes as choice is constrained and influenced in myriad ways that tend to undermine the straightforward attribution of fault. If it were so simple, I would contend that the billions of dollars poured into American elections are really a stupid ineffectual use of money.

If you did, you would not be the first person who made that contention. Go look at the research on that topic.  Or consider how much more money Harris has spent for no discernible difference.

And yes the candidates who appear on the ballot get there in a process that is separate from what can described as a general democratic will.  But the choice Americans are making in the election is a stark one.  Not in any way something that can be fairly characterized as "passing for choice".

[crazy canuck]

"Blame"/"fault" are such annoying terms. Rarely does anything have a single cause and too often when people speak about blame they do mean single and only factor with all others completely absolved.

Obviously voters are responsible for how they vote. They ultimately were the ones that crossed the box.
But even in a theoretical of a literal gun to the head, put your mark here or else, this still holds true. Where is the line drawn here?

As in most society-wide things I'm reluctant to put too much of the onus on the individuals and rather the factors that led to this mass-delusion.
Its a failure of the education system, a failure of conventional politicians to provide for these people (which isn't to say Trump will in anyway actually do that, but he does provide an outlet for flipping the table and hope its eventually set back up differently), and a failure (/success) of the social media companies for setting up this direct access to tap into people's system 1 thinking that any dodgy actor in all the world is freely able to use.

In the case of a democratic election there is a very simple causal relationship. The person who gets the most votes wins.

Only voters get to vote. 

Huh?

It is fair to say that every election result in a liberal democracy is the fault of electorate.  Whether or not you think the result was good or bad.

[Tamas]

I have zero patience for "but the poor misdirected voters!" thing. Fuck them. Nobody is forcing them to stay uninformed and stupid, especially in this day and age where every poor uneducated person is glued to TikTok on their phone. And a lot of the same people will absolutely blame you for not supporting their fascist candidate, and will stand aside when the police comes for you. None of them will be saying "but oh they were mislead by the media, do not hurt them!"

[Josephus]

George Carlin has a great bit.

[Oexmelin]

I have zero patience for "but the poor misdirected voters!" thing. Fuck them. Nobody is forcing them to stay uninformed and stupid, especially in this day and age where every poor uneducated person is glued to TikTok on their phone. And a lot of the same people will absolutely blame you for not supporting their fascist candidate, and will stand aside when the police comes for you. None of them will be saying "but oh they were mislead by the media, do not hurt them!"

If I thought that, I wouldn't have banged the drum about engaging with electoral politics for the last ten years.

A democratic regime, whatever its worth, is never the pure expression of some dispassionate evaluation arrived at in some contextual vacuum.

[Grey Fox]

Voters being responsible for whom they elect and Harris running a poor campaign can both be true at the same time.

It can be. I don't think she has run a poor campaign though.

Oh, yes she has and I don't even think it's debatable.

She's run an awesome campaign. They have a Fortnite map now!

[Valmy]

Voters being responsible for whom they elect and Harris running a poor campaign can both be true at the same time.

It can be. I don't think she has run a poor campaign though.

Oh, yes she has and I don't even think it's debatable.

Ok well then no point in me talking about it with you if it is not even debatable.

I mean I am sure there have been better campaigns in history but hers seems perfectly fine. She seems to be targeting all the swing states aggressively and making decent use of her resources.

I guess my problem is that all the criticisms I could make I have absolutely no idea if they wouldn't just make the situation worse.

[DGuller]

Obviously voters decide at the end, but at the same time, it's also obvious that on population level, voters can be influenced.  That's why we can blame both the smokers for taking up the deadly habit as well as the tobacco companies for effectively marketing it.  Individual decisions are always influenced by external factors to some extent.  For some people, these external factors don't tip the balance, but for others it does.

[Valmy]

I have zero patience for "but the poor misdirected voters!" thing. Fuck them. Nobody is forcing them to stay uninformed and stupid, especially in this day and age where every poor uneducated person is glued to TikTok on their phone. And a lot of the same people will absolutely blame you for not supporting their fascist candidate, and will stand aside when the police comes for you. None of them will be saying "but oh they were mislead by the media, do not hurt them!"

If I thought that, I wouldn't have banged the drum about engaging with electoral politics for the last ten years.

A democratic regime, whatever its worth, is never the pure expression of some dispassionate evaluation arrived at in some contextual vacuum.

Yeah but these things take decades to establish. If I was running for Governor in Alabama in 1956 on a civil rights for blacks platform I would get crushed no matter how brilliant my campaign strategy was. The voters do not want civil rights for blacks, because the voters (the ones allowed to vote anyway) are a bunch of racist assholes. I do think continuing to be racist assholes reflects badly on them.

But of course that didn't happen in vacuum, the voters were molded into racist assholes through manipulation and fear mongering by elites for decades.

But we are not talking about that right? We are talking about one election and the idea that some kind of brilliant strategy can lead inevitably to victory and that defeat means the strategy was bad. The voters actually deciding they just like what the other party's values are more can also play a factor.

So it is complicated. But I don't think one brilliant campaign by the right politician who says the right things is going to massively shift anything unless the right circumstances just happen to emerge. Kamala is basically coming into the same environment the Democrats had to barely survive in 2022. People are enraged by inflation and its hardships, something I don't think Biden had much to do with and indeed it has gotten better the longer he has been in office. But that is how political power works, you are responsible for whatever happens under your watch. Even in a system like the US where you are fairly constitutionally limited on what you can do as President.

Obama came in right as satisfaction with traditional Republican orthodoxy was at an all time low after the economic collapse and the wars. We can say he just ran a brilliant campaign but his party was absolutely destroyed in such a historic way and at such a bad time with the 2010 census hitting, that we have still not recovered. So for all his political talents he still led us to disaster. So who even is a good campaigner?

[crazy canuck]

George Carlin has a great bit.

[Barrister]

So if you're a politician, or working in politics, you have to take as a matter of faith that "the voters are always right".  You have to appeal to the voters you have, not the voters you wish you have.  So on that level yes - if you run a losing campaign the fault is with you, not with the voters.

But if you're a commentator, or political scientist, or whatever - you can certainly criticize the voters themselves.  It's not hard to find fault with the voters of 1930s Germany after all - Hitler did a pretty good job of telling people exactly what he wanted to do, and then doing it once in power.

But for obvious reasons it's a terrifically bad idea for a politician to criticize the voters.  Or even be vaguely critical - think of Hillary Clinton's "deplorables" or Mitt Romney's "makers and takers".