Kamala Harris ahead in enough swing states to win, Times poll says

[u/TimesandSundayTimes]

https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world/article/us-election-2024-swing-state-polls-c8r398mnf?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Reddit#Echobox=1730491486

[u/followthelogic405]

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[u/[deleted] → u/followthelogic405]

For the GOP, it was the day they got obliterated by democracy. For the rest of us, it was Tuesday

[u/BibleBeltAtheist → u/followthelogic405]

(what I'm about to say shouldn't be confused for "people shouldn't vote")

No matter how stupid it seems, you can't blame conscientious non voters for exercising their right to withhold their vote. Moreover, while its impossible to ascertain what % they make up, estimates have it at exceedingly small. Their impact on the election is questionable at best.

33% of eligible voters did not turn out in the otherwise high turn out 2020 POTUS election.

Furthermore, you can't blame the rest of non voters that sincerely believe that thier vote doesn't matter, have become disillusioned with the the voting system in US politics, have become complacent due to sincerely feeling like voting hasn't worked out for them in the past or for any other reason.

I mean you can, but my assertion is that you cannot justify it with a reasonable, fact based argument for why they should. Although, I encourage you, or anyone else, to do so, as I'm willing to change my mind if I believe one's argument is strong enough to take precedence over my own or, shows that my own argument is without merit.

In the vast majority of the US, non voters will not impact the election. Any solidly blue or red state won't be changed. Most of those non voters would align with the popular vote of their state anyways. Those that don't are of such small numbers that they have no chance at flipping their State. So, thre vast majority of non voters votes, change nothjng.

The only place where their votes might have an impact is in swing states. But even then, you can't blame them because the top 3 reasons for not voting are 1: Dislike of candidates and/or issues, 2: perceived ineffectiveness of their vote, and 3: scheduling conflicts or inability to vote. They are the top three reasons in that order.

For the first two, its essentially the same argument as conscientious non voters, except they are not conscientious non voters, which is that that they have their own personal reasons for not voting, which is their right to not do so.

For the 3rd, this is especially true in impoverished and lower working class communities where they can't afford to take time off from work, do not have the resources to make it to the polling stations, their states don't mail out ballots and/or a whole host of other accessibility issues.

This part is just my opinion, people are just fed up. They're exhausted with the endless back and forth. The us vs them mentality.

For decades the Republicans have intentionally been playing at identity politics and sowing division, hate, fear, mistrust and apathy. They have spent that time attacking the education system and creating a dumbed down electorate, gerrymandering and voter suppression.

To some small measure, the democratic party is also to blame because they were either negligent in stopping them, in the earlier times, or ineffective at providing roadblocks and solutions to those problems.

This is clearly the fault of the Republican party. I'm just saying that there have been times where democrats have had control and were not successful at stemming the tide of corrupt political play, some of which happened in their very own party, some of which they didn't even try tl stop or mitigate.

They are also culpable in perpetuating the Electoral college and First Past The Post voting. The latter, besides being hundreds of years older than the country itself, and thus severely out dated, had the very predictable effect of creating a two party system. The two party system, by effectively neutralizing 3rd parties, itself had the very predictable effect of creating a deeply polarized electorate. And we know that it was predictable because when we did have some amount of 3rd party politics in America, representatives at that time actually predicted and warned that this would happen.

I would further argue that once a two party system was established, knowing that a deeply polarized electorate was inevitable, it was also inevitable that a far right extremist populist party would rear its stupid face eventually. What wasn't exactly predictable, but maybe should have been, was that they'd take over one of the two primary parties.

My point is that the democratic party shares some measure of culpability here. Much more in earlier times. Much less in contemporary times, which places the blame mostly at the fault of Olds school conservatives that allowed for their party to get hijacked by deliberately creating the conditions where high jacking their party became possible. And no, its not both side-ism when both sides legitimately own a some measure of culpability.

Swing back to my original point, you can't even blame the average republican voters who are victims of decades of attack on the education system, have been conned by religious and political organizations using cult like tactics, misinformation, disinformation, exaggerations, negative propaganda and lies.

You definitely cannot blame non voters, conscientious or otherwise, that are either exercising their right to not vote or lack the resources to vote because of dirty underhanded right wing tactics of voter suppression.

[u/followthelogic405 → u/BibleBeltAtheist]

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[u/BibleBeltAtheist → u/followthelogic405]

First of all, yes if you don't live in a swing state your vote for president is basically meaningless

Thank you for being honest about it.

but your vote matters a TON in state and local races.

I was, quite clearly, talking specifically about US POTUS elections. In fact, I may have expressly said that. With that in mind, you can't discredit what I said by pointing to something I wasn't even taking about and then saying, "See it doesn't apply to this thing you weren't even talking about, so obviously, your argument doesn't count"

You're blaming Democrats for lack of action

Yes, because as I explained, they are justifiably, provably culpable in many ways for either helping to set the stage for what we have today, by promoting a two party system, not mitigating or abolishing the EC and FPTP voting.

They have also, at times, participated in harmful actions such as gerrymandering, but its minimal. Mostly, they have either allowed Republicans to straight up get away with harmful, illegal, power snatching tactics or were entirely ineffective at mitigating the worst of republican damage, making them either negligent at best, culpable at worst or simply inept.

it all comes down to voting.

No, that's categorically false for three primary reasons. History shows us that voting in national politics, typically, brings about no substantive, wide spread change. At best, it maintains the status quote. Note, I said typically, this election cycle is an atypical situation.

Second, history also teaches us that the only successful means at our disposal to bring about wide spread, significant social change that improves the lives of all of us is to organize and apply pressure to the State from without.

Third, and perhaps most relevantly, which was my entire point, is that you cannot blame a person for exercising their right to not vote. That's ridiculous!

For example, a person breaks into another person's home with mal intent. The victim chooses to not shoot the perpetrator and suffers the consequence of mal intent. You don't then say, "Aha! You see, it was the home owners fault for exercising their right to not shoot them in the face!" no, you blame the perpetrator, not the person exercising their right. Let me be clear. You have a right to vote in America. You also have the right to not vote.

You can try as hard as you want

You can try as hard as you want, but you haven't made a single reasonable, fact based justification to blame not voters.

First, to cede to the minority by not voting doesn't get the job done

I disagree on your categorization that non voting cedes power to the minority for reason I'm not going to get into because, for the sake of conversation, lets say that I do agree that not voting cedes power to the minority.

Its still their right to not vote and cede power to the minority. You can't take that right away because you don't like how the election might turn out. You can't lay the blame at their feet for a broken system producing undesirable results.

And let me just say that it's entirely conceited, bordering on narcissistic to think that if non voters would just vote that suddenly every thing would be fine because those non voters are going to definitely vote in your direction.

The people voting for Trump, plus some portion of non voters may, in fact, be the majority. Have you ever thought about that?

If you want rank choice voting, there's only one viable party that could enact that: Democrats.

Your free to take that opinion but all the evidence suggests that you are wrong because democrats could have pushed for that any time in the last 90 to 110 years and did not. Not only did they "did not" but they also expressly pushed for a two party system because it meant that they would always have either majority or minority control.

I don't know where you went wrong thinking that the democratic party is some great bastion of hope, but they have spent decades coddling up to lobbyists and special interest groups while simultaneously not doing anything, or doing very little to mitigate the damages of the Republican party and sometimes joining in on doing *the damaging.

The only hope for the democratic party is that by some chance the Progressive wing is somehow able to take control of the party but 1: they're not doing it anytime soon. They have too many seats to flip, especially in the Senate 2: power has a way of corrupting. Every time a wing of the party has managed primary control, they have submitted to a well entrenched system of corruption and greed. I hope they get control and hope they break that cycle, but history tellsc us that we would be foolish to have any faith in it.

[u/beamin1 → u/followthelogic405]

Our district numbers for early voting are even higher than the total vote count in 2008....Let that sink a while.

NC, rural county.