I tried beating him as Republican. Worked for Rubio in 2016.

I know plenty of dumb liberals. I know some smart conservatives. Most the smart conservatives I know won't actually be voting for Trump. Unless they are simply doing so for their own political gain.

Just to be clear, I don't think the division of conservative believes or liberal has anything to do with intelligence. I think believing Trump and his lies does. 

I think viewing trump supporters as all stupid is underestimating his fanbase, which is why liberals struggle so much beating an "easy" target.

I know flatly brilliant people who are voting Trump based on policy.  I don't agree with them, but to view trumpers as stupid...  always take your opponent seriously, especially when he has won before.  

After watching hours and hours of videos analyzing the early vote, I am confinced I know less than what I do before.

This sounds like sane-washing, including your preceding post.

Intelligence in one field doesn't mean that the very same people can be politically inept. Hence why people with college education can be and are anti-vaxxers too.

You argue in favor of the strategy of appeasement, that Democrats have to treat Republican voters with the utmost respect. But here's the thing: When has this ever worked? It's a strategy that actually makes things even worse. Pick your subject - anti-vaccination movement, Putin, Netanyahu, whatever - and look at the results; appeasement has always failed. The reason why it goes down this way is because appeasement conveys that the other side has good and valid reasons for behaving the way it does, which makes people on the fence of any given issue prone to assign more credibility to the wrong side of an issue and that ultimately leads to the stupid growing in numbers.

This week Kamala Harris has explicitly said that she thinks that Donald Trump is a fascist and this was news because she hadn't done it before. This is mind-boggling because the evidence for Trump being a fascist had been established years ago already. If she puts this out there, then it has to be discussed if there's any merit to it, because she is a serious politician. Mike Johnson and and Mitch McConnell know this, hence why they immediately put out a public statement calling for a stop to calling Trump a fascist under the pretense of dangerous rhetoric. You can tell that Harris is on the right path here.

When Harris was interviewed by Fox News, she got the gotcha question if she thinks the American people are misguided or stupid for supporting Trump in such large numbers. Harris responded by saying that she would never say this about the American people, and in the aftermath she got praised for her restraint. But she actually messed up there, because this was the golden opportunity not to say that the American people are stupid, but that they are misguided and that Fox News takes large responsibility in this area, pointing to the clip that Baier just showed her seconds ago as the evidence. She should have said that the American people are getting lied to by Fox News for the sake of profit and if Baier had disagreed there, she should have smacked him with the Dominion lawsuit right afterwards. But alas, Harris took the ill-advised high road here. Granted, this was her first appearance on Fox News and that's difficult enough to handle, so she could have done much worse than she actually did.

Trump is a fascist and it's plain out in the open. He's the most anti-American candidate there has ever been in the history of US elections. So if people are still willing to vote for him despite all that, it requires a high level of stupidity because for most Republican voters it means giving up their rights in exchange for paying higher taxes. That's like the worst deal ever.

But I'll give you that not all Trump voters are stupid. A portion of them really do love fascism. A portion of them is in it for the financial benefits; obviously, being already rich is a prerequisite here, because only the rich will benefit from Trump's tax plans. But most Trump voters are neither neonazis or rich, so they fall into the category of stupid.

What I disagree with is that fighting stupidity is easy or "easy" because you need a consistent strategy. The Democrats do not have it and that's why they struggle. They've been unable to get the press on TV to talk about Trump in a serious manner. Fact of the matter is that a lot of terms that are being thrown around in politics are terms that many voters are unable to explain, as could be seen in the Kimmel video. Democrats should not operate under the assumption that common people know all the basics, so an increased focus on talking about dictionary definitions of words and how they apply in the current political landscape would have been a good start. After all, Harris only called Trump a fascist in the aftermath of the dictionary definition being put out and many journalists are also only catching up now.

As the saying goes, the best argument against democracy is a ten minute conversation with the average voter.

I'll do so for you then because in the choice between a feminist woman and an anti-abortion sexual assault convict, one of these definitely qualifies as the pick-me choice.

Indeed, women should get blamed if Trump wins. Just because most of them will vote for Harris doesn't mean that the minority will have an excuse for doing something stupid. There are women who are fond of fascism, there are also rich women. But everyone else? Nope, no excuse. If women could be counted on, then Harris should win them over by a 70 point margin, but it will be a lot closer than that.

That men will favor Trump comes as no surprise, because a lot of them are losers and would love the world to be turned upside down, so that losers will be considered strong men, and strong men weak. Men are very stupid, but that shouldn't lead us to the conclusion that women can't be stupid too.

This election is over. Trump will definitely win, and I say that as very much a Kamala supporter. The current moving average of polls now has Trump ahead in the popular vote (by 0.1% as of this moment, but still) and the direction has been consistent for several weeks now. And here is what the current electoral map projection looks like based on the state-level breakdown. In other words, if tomorrow were election day, that's what the outcome would probably look like and you'll notice that Trump is averaging a lead in every swing state now, including the entire Midwestern "blue wall" and, for the first time in his political career so far, also Nevada. On top of that, current turnout levels suggest that, if anything, the polls may actually be underestimating the vote share Trump will wind up getting this year, much like they did the last two times. I would bet on an outright Trump win this year, marking his best showing to date. It's definitely time to sober up about this year. When the polling trajectory, the betting markets, and the early voting turnout levels are all telling the same story, one has to pay attention. And frankly, the Democrats are acting like they're losing. I think on some level, we all kind of feel it. The joy is gone from this campaign.

There are, of course, reasons this is happening. Between the two candidates, Harris is the less-known quantity. For those of us who've followed her campaign as avidly as I, we know what she stands for, what the outline of her program for her first term is, and our minds were made up much sooner than this. I mean I've already voted. It's non-politicos though...the people they call low-information or low-propensity voters...who decide in the last month which candidate to back, if they opt to vote at all (which, invariably, many don't), and Trump's gargantuan ad blitz here in the final stretch of the campaign has proven effective at defining Harris for those more oblivious people who obviously lived through the Trump presidency but remain generally unfamiliar with Kamala Harris. Her previous presidential campaign's woke streak is coming back to haunt her, as are some truly idiotic remarks from recent weeks about how she'd have done "not a thing" differently were she in Biden's shoes. The status quo is deeply unpopular and wokeness just as much and she just doesn't do a good job of explaining her personal evolution on a whole range of issues. She dodges too much whenever asked about those things. There's a dif between playing things safe and being consistently evasive on certain subjects people want to know about to know if they can trust you. She should have some answers for those things by now.

Honestly, I think it'd be in the Democratic Party's best interest to revive the so-called "blue dog" faction of their party in the future. Those people are the dying remnants of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal worker-farmer coalition and the modern Democratic brand simply sucks at reaching either end of that spectrum increasingly. There's too many goddamn Venture Capitalists for Kamala and Business Leaders for Harris, too many events with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and other assorted neocon militarists who've never heard of a war they didn't want us to fight and couldn't give a rat's ass if you starve or wind up homeless or die of a fentanyl overdose. I'm seeing way too much Mark Cuban on my screen and it's communicating the wrong message. It's time to get back to kitchen table issues. Where are those in this last stretch of the campaign? Wtf happened to that whole message?

This is also just simply a change election year worldwide. The world, and the working class in particular, is unhappy with the post-pandemic cost of living, housing shortages, and the mass migration that's opened up to add more strain to our resources in a context of what's often been real scarcity and already-strained government budgets. In America's case, that means people are also just simply looking for excuses to vote for Trump this year. Harris is stuck fighting against that tide and what it all means is that she has to basically be perfect to win and Trump can get away with pretty much anything at the moment. Is that fair? Hell no! Is it reality though? Yes.

We can discuss my prescription for a revived and improved Democratic Party in greater detail later. For right now, I think we all just need to take some time to process the reality that this is happening again. I started getting that same sinking feeling I did back in 2015-16 again about a month ago after the second Trump assassination attempt and would characterize that as the turning point in this contest. It didn't have much of an impact in itself (because Trump is who he is; he's just not a very sympathetic person), but it started a long-term trajectory that's been accelerating of late. A trajectory that continued in the VP debate and many subsequent media interviews and now in the ad wars. Harris still draws massive crowds, but they're not adding up to a win. Personally, when I heard her say that she'd do "not a thing" differently from Biden, I knew in my heart at that moment that she was going to lose. It's taken me a couple weeks to go through the stages of grief though because, despite my efforts to be strictly objective, I have to admit that I got caught up in the Harris campaign and emotionally attached to it. I was a true believer for a while and felt convinced she would win after her debate with Trump! So it's been a process for me to accept that it's not going to happen and go back to just being objective. It's not been easy. Now maybe you (anyone) didn't necessarily get as attached as I did, but nonetheless I think we all need some time. I just think it's better to get past the denial stage now so that one can be as mentally-emotionally prepared for what's about to happen as one can be. We all need to brace ourselves for a second Donald Trump presidency, with all it implies about the kind of country we're starting to become.

If Trump wins it will come down to a few core factors.

1. Inflation, the average American will blame the incumbent government for their groceries being more expensive today than 4 years ago and believe that someone new can fix it where the incumbent government has failed to do so, these are low-educated voters because they don't understand how this works or how Trump would have little ability to fix it, not to mention his other economic policies are agreed upon by economists as being much worse than Harris policies. But the average voter will pin blame on Harris as part of the incumbent government and say lets try someone new.

I think these voters represents a large portion of Trump voters and will be the core reason why Harris may lose. For some reason, Conservatives across the world are often thought of as being the "financially savvy" party despite the fact that it's always this group of people that crash the economy and fuck things up and it's the left wing governments left to pick up the pieces and restore things. Left wing governments have a problem in dispelling this nonsense, likely because Conservatives are seen as being more friendly to the rich, whilst not understanding that Conservatives usually only benefit the top 1% and people still believing in trickle down economics.

This voting block represents a group of people who are largely selfish and only care about their own needs, so other policies won't matter to them, it doesn't matter that Trump is a fascist as long as their eggs are cheaper, it doesn't mean they "agree" with his fascism but they simply don't give a shit about it because they only care for themselves, that's quite a lot of humanity sadly. But they will turn on Trump the moment he can't get them cheaper groceries.

2. Millions of Americans that simply agree with Trump's fascism. They hear what Trump is saying, they understand what Trump is saying and they agree with it, they're full of hatred against anyone different from themselves. We ought to stop acting like Americans are special angels compared to other countries, that America is immune to this kind of stuff, if other countries can elect fascist because a large portion of the public agrees with their fascism then why can't America? America doesn't have the same experience of Nazism as Europe did, I don't know what the hell is taught about WW2 in American schools but as an outside observer, it doesn't look like it's good enough when Trump can praise Nazi Generals and say Hitler had some good ideas and still have millions of Americans voting for him or Americans feel confident waving Nazi flags around.

3. Immigrant scare tactics which has sadly probably worked on Arizona's voting block, just blame immigrants for all of the countries problems and give everyone a common enemy to be afraid of/hate then blame the left wing base as letting them "swarm" into the country and "letting immigrant murderers take over the country" These voters are a mix fear and low-education (no, I'm not an advocate for open borders, Lol).

The voters will 99% be average Americans, not "PHD Scientists" and I'd love for those PHD Scientist to explain how Trump's economic policies are better for the average American (not the super wealthy) than Harris policies (which dozens of economists have already said Harris policies are far better). I'd love for them to explain how Trump's foreign policy won't result in damage America's reputation with allies. I'd love them to tell me how well Trump's border wall went last time and his trade war with China. This leads me to believe they support Trump because they're already rich who stand to benefit while everyone else suffers (I.E. They do not represent the average American) or they agree with Trump's fascism.

This doesn't mean I underestimate them, or anyone underestimates them, Harris campaign has been banging on since the start that this will be a close election and they're the underdogs, I also am not labelling all Conservatives as stupid, I'm labelling the majority of Trump voters as a mixture of fascist, low-educated or simply selfish. I take fascists seriously and low-educated voters only help those fascists.

Some of Harris policies are meh, and some of her and Democrats stances are shit, but it's pretty fucking obvious that her economic policies are far superior to Trump's for the average American, who can only muster "drill baby drill" (when America is already drilling more oil than ever) and his utterly insane tariff idea. She is also not a fascist insistent on dismantling America's democratic institutions while Trump is and you'd have to either be an isolationist or insane to think Trump's foreign policy is better than Harris.

This would have always been a close race, no matter who was running, because firstly America is too divided as a country, Trump allowed people to express their hidden fascism and let that rot grow in the country. Secondly because of inflation and grocery bills and your average voter is selfish and low-educated on how much power a president has in dealing with their grocery bills. Nobody in Harris campaign has underestimated Trump, Harris has ran about as good of a campaign as she could, especially given the time constraints and attachment to Biden. Don't really think she could have done much more, if she loses then Democrats would have lost no matter what.

If your friend is voting for Trump then I'm sorry, I'm not going to spare their feelings and blame Harris, Lol.

Also it's fine to have fear, complacency is bad, but dooming that it's already lost helps nobody, it's exactly what Republicans want Democrats to feel like, so that it discourages others from even bothering cause "it's already lost" I've always taken the stance it'll be a close race which Trump can win, use that fear of him winning to keep up the fight until the end, don't just say "We've already lost!" and give up all hope, it's not ever yet.

Edit - Also, Democrats always do this, no offence but Democrats are the biggest doomers on the planet.

I'm more and more convinced that pollsters don't know what's happening either, that's why they're all practically merging on the same thing, if Harris wins then they're right because of MoE, if Trump wins then they're right because of MoE. It's only a landslide victory which will make pollsters wrong this time around, which makes me a little suspicious.