What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Admiral Yi]

Here's the thing... repeating a simple message over and over again is an effective propaganda technique, and there is an absence of a simple message being repeated at a high frequency back to counter it.

Seems not to be working.  CNN runs story after story about what a bunch of lying sleazebags the Republicans are.  The Lincoln Project is putting out a video a day on the same subject.  Repetition doesn't guarantee success.

[DGuller]

I'm afraid you're right, but that's not a reassuring answer in that case.  I'm hoping for a more fixable issue to be the cause.

For it to be fixable the first step is understanding the core of the problem. And - also obviously - this is highly contested, adding complexity.

Is "the woke menace":

1) A highly successful right-wing psyop? (in which case the fix involves countering the psyop)

2) A highly corrosive political tendency causing real damage to society (in which case I suppose the fix means finding a way to neutralize it)

It's probably not going to surprise you or anyone else, but I firmly land on option 2.  In fact, option 1 strikes me as a dangerous coping mechanism to avoid recognizing a problem, and just writing it off as a right-wing propaganda rather than a genuine source of friction that alienating people that should be firmly in the liberal camp.

I'm going to admit that I don't know much about what the right wing propaganda is pushing, I deliberately blocked myself off of it, so I have no idea how much my complaints coincide with their propaganda.  However, no one prevents conservative propaganda from just reporting the truth, if that's convenient for them. 

If Biden sends out death squads to summarily execute anyone admitting to have voted for Trump, I'm sure that on this board Berkut and I are going to complain about it.  I'm also sure that Fox News is also going to complain about the menace of Biden death squads executing Trump voters.  That doesn't mean that Berkut and I were influenced by Fox News propaganda, it may just mean that we're complaining about something so obvious that anyone who reports the truth either out earnest conviction or cynical convenience is going to converge on the same story independently.

In my own experience, there is a silent faction (could be majority, could be minority) of liberals that definitely share my bewilderment at the wokeness.  As far as I know, all of them are in the same boat as I am; no matter how much the woke left irritates them, they're not voting for GOP.  However, statistically, there have to be more marginally liberal people, or maybe just politically apathetic but liberal-leaning people, for whom the wokeness would be the straw breaking the camel's back.  I don't see how reliably liberal people like me can be so deeply turned off by the woke faction without the less reliably liberal people just switching camps or giving up on voting.

[Admiral Yi]

My pet theory is that modern US politics is all driven by anger, and the GOP has found targets of anger that give people more pleasure than Democratic targets of anger.

[Razgovory]

I still think the economy is hitting Biden and the Democrats very hard and I think the Republicans have hit a nerve with parents who are afraid that a school is going to impose transexuality on their children.  There is also a problem with Democrats for not everyday screaming "THIS IS AN EMERGENCY.  THE REPUBLIC IS IN DANGER.  YOU SHOULD BE PANICING."  The attitude of Democrats in government, the slow pace Jan 6th committee and the failure to simply charge Donald Trump aren't helping that.

If Democrats want to save the Republic, they may have to drop some of the more controversial issues... 

[Valmy]

I bet decriminalizing weed on the federal would go a long way to turning the tide with the youth vote.

It is such a slam dunk win politically it still boggles my mind the Dems in DC won't do it.

[Syt]

I guess they all deserve what they get.

Pretty sure my wife can get a job in Germany again and we can move on out of here quickly. She's been talking about moving back for years.

Purely anecdotal, but in my YouTube feed (no doubt due to the algorithm homing in on my opinions and also me watchingvideos of expats "explaining" Germanyto people back home) I've seen a number of videos of USians in the 25-35 age bracket pop up who look at info about health-care, public infrastructure, political culture, employee rights  etc. in US vs other countries and seem quite eager to just bail and move to Europe. And also seen one or two older ones (vets with German wives) who are looking to go back to Germany, because they find living conditions over here much better. It's also something that pops up on German reddit about weekly at least.

Are there any emigration numbers, i.e. how many people have left the US in recent years, their demographics and destinations?

[Valmy]

I guess they all deserve what they get.

Pretty sure my wife can get a job in Germany again and we can move on out of here quickly. She's been talking about moving back for years.

Purely anecdotal, but in my YouTube feed (no doubt due to the algorithm homing in on my opinions and also me watchingvideos of expats "explaining" Germanyto people back home) I've seen a number of videos of USians in the 25-35 age bracket pop up who look at info about health-care, public infrastructure, political culture, employee rights  etc. in US vs other countries and seem quite eager to just bail and move to Europe. And also seen one or two older ones (vets with German wives) who are looking to go back to Germany, because they find living conditions over here much better. It's also something that pops up on German reddit about weekly at least.

Are there any emigration numbers, i.e. how many people have left the US in recent years, their demographics and destinations?

There are basically no records about emigration from the United States except estimates of how many American citizens are living in a certain country. And that number is complicated because many Americans live abroad temporarily for work or whatever but intend to return at some point.

But with the absolutely insane American tax laws that make you pay tax on money you make in foreign countries emigration really looks like a shit deal to me. Unless you go someplace that gives you almost instantaneous citizenship.

[garbon]

You have to file tax returns but until you hit a certain threshold in income, no tax is due.

[Valmy]

You have to file tax returns but until you hit a certain threshold in income, no tax is due.

So are all the people complaining about that just millionaires? How high is that threshold?

[Syt]

Btw, I think people are deluded if they believe that support for the GOP would crumble if only marginalized groups would be less uppity and sensitive, or if they could publicly say things that a large group of people find unacceptable without consequences. The GOP has been selling windmills as giants to their electorate for many years now, and they're trading heavily on those fears, real or imaginary. They've successfully created the image of the Democrats, even of the Biden/Pelosi variety who would not be more at home with e.g. the Austrian Conservatives than the Social Democrats, being this left wing menace intent on destroying America and they and their (real or imagined) agenda must be stopped no matter the cost; and they have backers with vested business interests and deep pockets who support them in pushing that message. (The Democrats do, too, to some extent - and usually in less "traditional" industries (manufacturing, fossil fuels, finance sector, ... where the GOP is strong) which is why you likely won't see any meaningful labor market reforms or improvement of employee rights anytime soon, I suppose.)

[OttoVonBismarck]

In the latest "We fucked" news:

New NPR/Marist poll is remarkable

Republicans lead Democrats on generic Congressional ballot among these groups:

🚨 Parents with children under 18: 60% choose GOP; 39% Democrats

🚨 Latino voters: 52% GOP; 39% Dems https://t.co/9QxnZsZ54D

https://twitter.com/Cavalewis/status/1520095372949049346?t=-kHBaIbbqDbLBDSeUwC2Fw&s=19

Also shows young people (Gen Z and Millennials) evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

This corroborates other polls that show Latinos and youth trending toward the GOP.

The Dems are definitely fucked, but I think that poll has some really weird crosstabs that make me think the sample size isn't good or some of the sub-groups. Like Dems losing Hispanics and Gen Z but somehow not down that much among independents? Doesn't make a ton of sense. Also winning under $50,000 income (which Hispanics and Genz are disproportionately likely to be in that bracket versus other groups represented), makes little sense with the other cross tabs.

There's a difference between "the Democrats are going to lose the House" and "this individual poll is telling us something meaningful about all these different demos, some of which may have been poorly sampled in the poll.

There's a lot of other polling and fundamentals showing Dem support among both parents and Hispanics have weakened tremendously in the past 4 years, which means that seems pretty above board. There isn't nearly as much fundamental support for buying the Gen Z / Millenial argument though.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Here's the thing... repeating a simple message over and over again is an effective propaganda technique, and there is an absence of a simple message being repeated at a high frequency back to counter it.

Seems not to be working.  CNN runs story after story about what a bunch of lying sleazebags the Republicans are.  The Lincoln Project is putting out a video a day on the same subject.  Repetition doesn't guarantee success.

CNN has average viewership of like 1.5 to 3 million for most of its shows. Country is 330m. CNN isn't meaningful in any sense at all.

I personally have a suspicion some of the gray hairs in the DNC power structure tend to look at how much they are "winning" in mainstream media like CNN (which few voters watch, and certainly almost no Hispanics or young voters), and confuse it for messaging.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think while we talk about it a lot on here, you guys also dramatically overstate wokeness, sorry but I really do. I think wokeness hits a particular nerve with the early 2000s, late 1990s socially libertine but economically centrist/conservative bunch that has always been a little over-represented here on Languish, and it hits a particular nerve with the college educated middle aged white generation (regardless of their political affiliation.)

But a lot of polling gives a different picture.

32% of voters identify as woke, including 49% of Democrats and 30% of independents. Only 23% of Democrats and 21% of Independents answered "No" they aren't woke. There are larger percentage who "Don't know what woke means"--31% of all voters don't know what it means, 26% of Democrats and 32% of independents.

Between Dem / GOP / Independents, of the voters who know what woke means, more identify as woke than "No" or "Unsure" except in the GOP.

It is unlikely that the Democrats can peel off any significant number of self-identified Republican voters. Most people just don't switch parties, aside from the weird minority that change whom they support almost every election (i.e. mentally deficient idiots.) So a crusade of anti-wokeness is going to actually double down on a position that is less popular among both current Democrats and Independents, with no clear prospects for pulling significant votes in.

I also think because wokeness annoys most of you more than anything else the Dems do, you really want that to explain why Dems lose x voters, but the polling to me doesn't clearly show that to be true. The large % of voters who don't even know wtf you are talking about is indicative to me that the "very online" and "very political" people are a lot more familiar with "wokeness" than is the person who hardly pays attention to politics but does vote every 2 years. There's like 160-175m potential voters out there, and I think there is a tendency to dramatically overestimate how much some of these voters follow the controversies a lot of us online culture/political warriors are well immersed in.

[Valmy]

I think it has to do with the fact that the Democrats are hamstrung by having a tiny minority limiting what they can actually do (not that I have confidence they would be making huge waves with a larger majority but still) combined with having to own the current economic shitstorm resulting from war and pandemic.

The Democrats should be destroyed in this election. I think they will lose but because the country is so freaking gerrymandered and polarized I actually think the needle will move shockingly little. I could be wrong but that is my feeling.

And I kind of agree with Otto. Distancing yourself from your own base in a vain attempt to win over Republicans is a move likely to alienate key parts of the base while winning few Republicans. I kind of feel like the Democrats already played that game in the 1990s and early 2000s with little success.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Issues that I see Democrats actually polling really bad on:

1. "Democrats are out of touch with hardworking people like me", is a question Dems have done very badly on for quite a long while. I think to some degree the culture wars on tied up in this, but I also think this is part of the broader "messaging deficit." The Republicans don't have a good economic message for working class folk, but they do have a cultural message for them. Democrats don't seem to have any consistent message for them at all, which represents a fairly big messaging gap. The closest messaging Democrats seem to have for this is specific backing for wonky social welfare programs that are poorly understood and poorly explained, and America's working class have never been that easily bribed by straight hand outs.

2. Crime. Democrats poll terribly on crime and are blamed for the surge in violent crime. I think there is little Democrats can do to fix this now, but this was kind of their own creation--Republicans literally found a way to blame Democrats for rising crime in 2020 when Trump was President and while Republicans were Governors in many of the States with high crime rates. I think part of this is because of the dysfunction in the Democratic coalition there was no consistent message on crime, no serious attempt to link crime to the then-Republican administration, a fear of pissing off criminal justice reform types (which included the BLM movement) and etc.

3. Economy is bad, Biden is blamed. This is a basic political function that has little real fix. If you're President and the economy is perceived as bad, it hurts you. In Virginia by the way the economy actually out polled education in importance to voters. While I think McAuliffe bungled his ass off on the response to the CRT messaging, and in a relatively close race where many thousands of Democrats simply stayed home, even a slightly better performance by Terry may have won him the Governorship, I do think the narrative that Youngkin just won straight because of CRT is a little off base and not entirely consistent with the polls.

Interestingly in one exit poll, the top issue for Virginia voters was the economy/jobs, 33% of voters selected that as their top issue. Youngkin won those voters 55-44. The next highest was education, 24% of voters said that was their top issue. Youngkin only won that group 53-47. The next highest issue was taxes, 15% of voters, Youngkin won that 68-32. Youngkin probably gained significantly more margin with several of his promised tax cuts than anything to do with schools, particularly because a lot of Virginia voters who listed education as their top topic appear to have stuck with the Democrats.