Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

The Economist has published an eleventh hour endorsement of Kamala Harris. “Donald Trump…poses an unacceptable risk to America and the world. If The Economist had a vote, we would cast it for Kamala Harris.”

This is the cover of their latest issue:

I want her to win Iowa, but I do not think that is going to happen.

On the off chance that it does happen, I vote for the cutie mark to be a Venn diagram.

This is beyond sickening coming from them.

@Background Pony #27EF
I would say a prosecutor’s badge like from the Ace Attorney series, but blue.

@TheFinite
That probably makes more sense. I just enjoy the fact that she likes Venn diagrams so much, and I find them fun too.

@Background Pony #B7D6
The Trump statement on Peanut is fake.
But yeah Magats are still running with it.

@Background Pony #27EF
How about a venn diagram on a badge?

You’re asking for some dangerous and powerful forces now.

That could work. Or a Venn diagram where one circle is a badge.

@BlitztheDragon
“What could possibly go wrong.”

Nearly everything went wrong when he was president the first time.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/01/trump-jeffrey-epstein-tapes
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fire-and-fury-the-podcast/id1750757108

And all this time MAGA memed that Clinton had Epstein suicided, lol

@Background Pony #B7D6
I’m pretty sure the Iowa result is due to the abortion ban kicking in recently(like, very recently)

So it’s questionable whether Iowa flipping in this one poll is indicative of a larger trend

@Commune
There is an overall trend towards blue cause the republican party is still very much stuck in a cold war mentality. Which as the generation that grew up with that continues to die is costing them.

@marinus18
Not even the Cold War… Their mentality is more like the early 1800s; before vaccines, abolition of slavery, suffrage or human rights were a thing.

@IWTCIEM
Clinging on to that was the cold war mentality. To hold on to the world before 1917 and the rise of communism. To refuse compromise with the left and to idealize the world that existed before it and before modernization. Most anti-communist sentiment was started in the 1920’s in both the US and Germany as well as other countries. In Germany the anti-communists won with the Nazi party while in the US the ‘America first’ anti-communist party lost to FDR’s new deal which was build on compromises with communists. The success of the New Deal should have discredit aggressive anti-communist sentiment since it proved all their doom scenario’s were untrue. However the US federal government alongside several megacorps especially general electric continued to fund and promote it anyway. The federal government as a means of cold war propaganda and the megacorps to try to still discredit the idea of compromise with communism.

So the republican party is a party build around clinging onto a past that was in turn build on clinging on to an even earlier past. It’s not that surprising it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
It is also build on the idea that this aggressive policy pushed by Reagan is responsible for the fall of the USSR which is just false. The USSR fell due to political instability, economic problems and other internal issues.
(In case someone tries to pull this card the USSR in the 1980’s had economic trouble especially due to it’s bloated military, imperial commitments, poorly thought out incentives structures and other things. But it was an economic stagnation which is very different from an all-out collapse.)

NYT/Siena just released their final polls.

Harris is now leading in Georgia (+1), North Carolina (+2), Nevada (+3) and Wisconsin (+2).

Michigan and Pennsylvania are tied (herding!), while Trump leads in Arizona by +4.

Yet again it’s looking like Pennsylvania will decide the race.

@SleepySteve
Of course all these have a margin of error greater than the margins. I’m fairly sure 90% of polls for the last three months have been either outright bullshit or adulterated to not hedge one way or the other out of fear of pointing too hard in the wrong direction.

Fucking going in blind as far as I’m concerned.

It’s been mentioned for a while now that pollsters are showing results like this because they’re afraid of polling errors like the ones from 2016 and 2020 which severely underestimated Trump. They’re really scared about that happening again.

After yesterday’s Selzer poll, though, there’s a good argument to be made that the polling error might go the opposite direction. One might think that’s insane given Harris isn’t likely to win over white non-college voters, but stranger things have happened.

My father tried claiming that Harris is far left because she was a prosecutor in California, and that I can’t trust her actions and the like indicating she’s more center-left because “everyone is lying.” I know politicians aren’t known for their honestly, but this feels very much like the mentality of “if I call everything fake, than I look smart.” And calling her far left just because she was born in CA and was a prosecutor makes no sense to me.

Did he forget that Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were both from California or did that slip from his mind?

@SleepySteve
He voted republican so I’m guessing selective memory, especially since I think my family sees CA has a communist state because someone who lived their called it that and they believe their friends more than actual facts it feels like (using the “we don’t know unless we experience it ourselves” excuse for the mentality).

@Meanlucario
But also most politicians don’t outright lie, they usually lie by omission or by being vague. Trump stands out for his blatant falsehoods. Barack Obama was a master at it as he said a lot of inspiring things but that were so vague as to not mean much. One of the few politicians who does not speak in vague terms and is clear and talks about specific policy is Bernie Sanders which is why he stands out so much.

Also California is the furthest thing from “communist”. A majority of it’s problems are due to how much power the tech and trade megacorps have. Leading to underinvestment in public services, gentrification of large areas and corruption in state issues. Most states try to deregulate to lure businesses but California already has all the businesses it needs. Their main priority is to make sure they obey the rules and help the state rather than hinder it.
All of the US of course has trouble with meddling megacorps but I would say California has it the worst since it’s the richest state and home to a large number of international corporate giants.

A big problem with the rise of AI and ever more convincing propaganda as well as the number of scams you see is that people become very distrustful as a whole. They feel they can only trust themselves and their immediate friends and family. This is what sociologists call a low trust society.
Greece was a lot trust society which let to a lot of self-denial about the problems they had until the EU came down on them like a ton of bricks. The EU’s “solution” to Greece’s political and economic problems was really bad but it was Greece’s fault those problems were there.

Have you asked him what he thinks “far left” means? I’m kinda curious about that.