In 2020
Biden: 81.2 million
Trump: 74.2 million

In 2024 so far
Harris: 67.0
Trump: 71.9

Trump got about the same amount of votes. Dems lost 14 million votes.

“Vote for my shitty policies or the other guy will have shittier policies” is not a platform.

The point of a democratic republic is that elected officials enact the policies those who elect them want. If you don’t offer to enact those policies you don’t get elected.

Yes, non-voters were stupid to not vote for the lesser evil, but the Harris campaign violated the very basis of democracy and thought they could simply use Trump to bully people into voting for them.

Imagine a system where a fascist Boogeyman is held up every election and people reliably vote against them without regard for who they vote for. The other party could put up whatever shitty candidate they wanted whether they espouse the views of the population or not.

Not only is that not at all a fucking democracy, it was the documented strategy of the Democratic party! Except it doesn’t fucking work, which they should have learned in 2016.

The Biden campaign offered something, notably student loan forgiveness, but both Clinton and Harris’s campaigns relied on the dumbfuck Pied Piper strategy that they would offer nothing to the voters other than being not-Trump.

That’s a dumb fucking strategy because there are fewer people that will vote Democrat as the lesser evil than will vote Republican just because Republican. They have to court people with policies they actually want.

And the absolute crazy thing is they tried this in 2016 and it failed, yet somehow had the balls to try again when it mattered more.

They didn’t lead to the apathy - they pointed out the existing apathy would cost Dems the election. It’s like saying the person who said you need to wear a seatbelt caused the wreck.

You’re exactly right about people being excited for Trump and lukewarm on Harris, but that’s entirely on the Democrats for picking the platform and strategy that lost to Trump in 2016.

Harris had a notable and surprising lead when they announced Biden was out - then they changed nothing else. People didn’t just not like the candidate, they didn’t like the policies. They only changed the candidate and thought Trump was a big enough cudgel to bully people into voting even though that demonstrably doesn’t work.

Yeah. I think it was the biggest issue and was easily solvable, but the campaign was a fuck up through and through.

Across Biden and Harris they kept trying to steal a sliver of the conservative vote instead of just taking from the huge infrequent voter slice. They didn’t do anything to try to get that slice to vote for them, they just threatened them with Trump if they didn’t get out to vote.

Trump didn’t get any more votes than last time.

He won because the Democrats lost.

The Harris campaign turned out great initially.

They fucked it up immediately by saying they weren’t going to be any different from Biden on Gaza and that was one of the wedge topics that had been created about Biden.

Rather than compromise with the electorate to get people out to vote, they tried to use Trump to bully voters out of the house saying he’d be worse.

It’s not even close to half. Republicans are a quarter to a third of the country.

It’s voter suppression and Democrats being the biggest possible fuckups they could be at every fucking opportunity.

I don’t particularly mind the culinary fruit/vegetable definition, but feel like sweet fruits/savory fruits/vegetables would have been clearer.

Tell that to Volkswagen, BMW, Messerschmitt, Audi, Deutsche Bank… And all these guys: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust

This is a good example of keeping your mind so open your brain falls out.

No. The article doesn’t explicitly say what party he planned to vote for. That’s right.

Almost all instances of election violence have been committed by the same party - even the attempted assassinations. I’m sure there could be examples of violence from the other party but I’m genuinely struggling to think of any.

So if a reasonable person hears someone in an election line was violent they’re not going to think “well there are crazies on both sides, so yaneverknow.”

I was going to put that in the list but felt it was long enough already, but it does fill the fruit dumpling gap.

Wrong time again…

Also Brown definitely wouldn’t have been the first to enforce faux tradition.

That shit has existed forever and the more meaningless, the more militant.

Ketchup on hotdogs. Folded pizza. Seafood with red wine.

All said with more authority yet far less evidence than anything Alton Brown ever said.

Fruit goes on cooked flour.

It’s been like that for centuries.

Cake. Danish. Fruitcake. Pizza. Filled doughnuts. Kolacky. Raisin bread. Banana bread…

For you, orange is red!

And abortion being legal doesn’t mean shit for a Catholic.

No one’s up in arms because non-Catholics eat meat during lent or don’t believe in transubstantiation.

Their religious belief has no place in government. If they don’t want to do it, then don’t.

The concept of the tragedy of the commons existed centuries before Hardin. He just uses that concept to justify an unsound conclusion and the concept would exist whether he wrote his paper or not.

Every time someone references it, they’re referencing that concept that really does affect communal resources, and probably have no idea what argument Hardin ever made based on it.

The beginning of the paper lays out the idea very well and I use it to teach people to treat shared resources respectfully, but tell them not to bother reading the conclusion.

Found the ancient Mesopotamian…

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2016+Clinton+pied+Piper+strategy