07-15-2022, 04:42 PM
(07-12-2022, 03:55 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(07-12-2022, 01:45 PM)David Horn Wrote:(07-12-2022, 10:37 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(07-12-2022, 09:14 AM)galaxy Wrote:(04-22-2022, 12:50 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The Millennials/Gen Z today are the most disapproving of President Biden, according to polls now. They are going in just the opposite direction from what is needed and what I expected. Whether they are dissatisfied with him on the left or from the right is not clear.
Dissatisfied from the left.
This can be seen in polls for the 2022 midterm elections. In every case, without exception, when a state is polled for a Senate or Governor election, the Democratic candidate far outperforms Biden's approval in the state.
This is distinctly different from 2018, where in most cases the Republican candidates polled very close to Trump's approval in any given state, and from 2010, where the Democratic candidates were consistently close to Obama's approval.
What has changed is polarization. Disapproving of a Democratic president no longer makes people vote Republican as it did in 2010. Now, it makes them vote Democratic but be unhappy about it. The Democrats, if they want to do well in this election, need to realize that their most important task is not convincing people to prefer them over Republicans - that part is already done. What isn't done is convincing them to actually vote. The midterms will be won or lost by turnout.
Yes indeed. Both appear to be needed though. The polls for the congressional midterms are still stuck at a slight Republican lead. A number of Senate races are too close to call. Democrats need to take PA and WI back, despite a WI supreme court determined to keep the state Republican through voting restrictions. Still, those look winnable. And they need to hold NV, GA, AZ and NH in which the Senate races are tied and may show a 1 or 2 point Republican lead. NC and FL are outside chances for a Democratic pick-up.
The real question: what happens on election day? Apparently, the 1/6 commission is actually getting traction, and the tar is being spread far and wide. Will that mean a Dem sweep? TBD, but probably not. We're tribal now, and even a dispicable member of one's own party is better than a saint from the other. I do agree that turnout is key. The least likely to vote are the youngest, and most Blue in belief. Worse,they need to motivate one another. They aren't listening to the rest of us.
They listened to Obama in 2018.
https://youtu.be/7hZgg_KjvDQ?t=3277
Will they listen to voices like his now, including Biden's voice, at a time when Democrats supposedly are "in power" (which they are not, and that needs to be made clear)?
Something is different this midterm year: the former President stinks up the political process. Unlike other one-term Presidents who from Taft to the elder Bush who have abandoned any hope of regaining the Presidency, this former President has yet to retire from the political contest. Perhaps had he not initiated the Great Ugliness of January 6, Republicans would be in a great position in which to wipe out Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and start transforming America into a "Christian and Corporate State" and make it stick. The elder bush didn't muck things up for Bob Dole; Ford didn't much things up for Reagan; Carter didn't much things up for... whatever; Hoover and Taft both got out of the way. On behalf of one's Party it is best that a one-term President not remind people who voted against him why they turned against him. Trump does that loud and strong. I have no desire to hear or smell a hippopotamus' fart.
Trump's Three (Judicial) Stooges have so far done more to provoke dissent against policies of the Religious Right (I expect more clunkers overtly on the side of the Economic Right) than to create legal coherence. Even if Trump no longer wields power, the winter of discontent that he has brought to America has outlasted his Presidency.
I am tempted to believe that the low approval numbers for President Biden reflect how unhappy many Americans remain. The only options that the other Party offers are those of a pure plutocracy with a thick coating of insane (fundamentalist) and corrupt (Wealth Cult) religiosity. Except for the MAGA cult, most of us are tired of Donald Trump and wish that he would just leave the scene once and for all.
(A reference to his ex-wife who just passed away is unintended). Plenty of people will need to stifle the urge to say that God "took home" the wrong Trump, including some high-profile comedians and talk-show hosts.
In any event how well a country does in a 4T is the rate at which it abandons 3T ways that got the polity into the mess and adopts 1T ways that porte3nd something more placid and viable.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.