TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
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User ID: 373
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
No, it didn't challenge the idea that Trump won in 2016.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
None of these seriously challenged the idea that Trump won in 2016.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
And Republicans protested in 2012 when Obama won re-election. But in that case and the one you cited, neither were trying to undo the results of the election other than expressing general disapproval that their side lost. Neither went to the federal capital, and neither were egged on by a sitting president.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I also didn't like the BLM protests, but their major aim wasn't to undo a presidential election. They were a separate issue entirely.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The question isn’t whether you can prove that the ballots are illegitimate or not. The question is why can’t you?
Because nothing will ever be enough to someone who's engaging in motivated reasoning. I support requiring an ID to vote, fixing gerrymandering, fixing incumbents' free mail privilege, etc. But if all these issues are remedied, I'm sure there will still be others. Yet US elections have been fairly secure so far -- that's why Trump's 2020 crusade kept turning up nothingburgers. The public perception only started diverging from reality (seeing huge issues everywhere, most of which didn't matter) when Trump started being a sore loser.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
That just puts the cart before the horse. Trump has every incentive not to be fair or unbiased, not only because he could keep some small hope of actually overturning the result, but also to muddy the waters and retain his clout within the Republican party ("I'm not a loser, I'm a victim!")
Election skepticism wouldn't be anywhere near as much of a problem if Trump wasn't being a sore loser in the first place.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Thanks, that'll be a useful bit of info in the future. Saved.
Still, there was nothing even remotely close to J6 on the Democratic side. The likely counter would be the Mueller investigation, but it was very different from J6. It's not an ongoing idea that all elections are fake. Harris isn't implying "wait until I win or lose to see if the election is legitimate" like Trump is.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Pardon everybody who was involved in “January 6th”
Drop all the lawsuits against Trump.
If somebody actually committed a crime, why should they get automatic clemency? It's like a BLM supporter saying "there will never be racial reconciliation unless you pardon everyone for everything that happened during the BLM riots."
ENCOURAGE as many audits and court cases (with discovery power, that are not dismissed on “standing”) as they want.
Actual, televised court cases for any of the grievances republicans have wrt to “January 6th”.
Televised, with discovery power, and “you are held in contempt” power to investigate the 2020 election, the origins of Covid, and the vaccine.
Would these do anything? If they get their day in court, the default outcome would be for them to... still fail on their merits. What happens then? Republicans will then just say the courts are still biased.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
IIRC a pretty similar number of Democrats said the same thing about the 2016 election
I'd be very interested if you have a source on this.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Is there anything the government could feasibly do to nudge Republicans towards accepting the results of the election in the event that Trump loses? Trump himself has a big personal incentive to say the election is "rigged" if he loses no matter what. It redirects the conversation from analyzing the defeat ("how could we do better"), which will inevitably shine a light on Trump's shortfalls, to one where the basic facts of reality are debated instead. The obvious example is the 2020 election. Lesser known was that Trump did the same thing in 2016 when he lost the Iowa primary to Ted Cruz. Now it seems he's preparing to do the same in 2024.
Many Republicans are more than willing to go along with this, mostly due to either negative partisanship or living in a bubble ("everyone I knew was voting for Trump, then the other guy won? Something doesn't smell right!"). If the pain of defeat stings, why not just be a sore loser instead? I've debated many people who thought the 2020 election was rigged, and inevitably it goes down one of three rabbitholes:
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Vibes-based arguments that are short on substance, but long on vague nihilism that "something was off". Nearly 70% of Republicans think 2020 was stolen in some way, yet most are normies who don't spend a lot of time trying to form a set of coherent opinions, so the fallback of "something was off" serves as a way to affirm their tribal loyalty without expending much effort.
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Motte-and-bailey to Trump's claims by ignoring everything Trump himself says, and instead going after some vague institutional flaw without providing any evidence to how it actually impacted 2020. For instance, while mail-in ballots are a nice convenience for many, there are valid concerns to a lack of oversight in how people fill out their ballots. People can be subjected to peer pressure, either from their family or even from their landlord or another authority figure to fill out their ballot a certain way. However, no election is going to 100% perfect, and just because someone can point out a flaw doesn't mean the entire thing should be thrown out. In a similar vein, Democrats have (rightly) pointed out that gerrymandering can cause skewed results in House elections, yet I doubt many Republicans would say that means results would need to be nullified especially if Democrats had just lost. These things are something to discuss and reform for future elections.
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People who do buy at least some of the object-level claims that Trump or Giuliani has advanced about 2020 being stolen. There's certainly a gish-gallop to choose from. The clearest meta-evidence that these are nonsense is that nearly everyone I've debated with has chosen a different set of claims to really dig deep into. For most political issues, parties tend to organically rally around a few specific examples that have the best evidence or emotional valence. The fact that this hasn't happened for Trump's claims is indicative that none of them are really that good, and they rely more on the reader being unfamiliar with them to try to spin a biased story. One example occurred a few weeks ago on this site, one user claimed the clearest examples were Forex markets (which were subsequently ignored), Ruby Freeman, and the Cyber Ninja's Audit. I was only vaguely aware of these, so I did a quick Google search and found a barrage of stories eviscerating the Ruby Freeman and Cyber Ninja narratives. I then asked for the response, preferably with whatever relatively neutral sources he could find, since I was sure he'd claim the sources I had Googled were all hopelessly biased. But this proved too high a bar to clear for him, and so the conversation went nowhere. Maybe there's a chance that some really compelling evidence exists out there that would easily prove at least some of the major allegations correct, but at this point I doubt it.
At this point it seems like the idea that elections are rigged is functionally unfalsifiable. The big question on the Republican side now would be whether to claim the elections were rigged even if Trump DOES win. The stock explanation would be that the Dems are rigging it so they have +20% more votes than they normally would, so a relatively close election means Trump actually won by a huge margin. On the other hand, saying the election was rigged at all could diminish Trump's win no matter what, and it's not hard to imagine Trump claiming "this was the most legitimate election in the history of our country" if he manages to come out on top.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
welp =/
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
OK, sure, "nothing is neutral", but do you have any evidence or sources that have a reputation for doing good work that you can provide? As in, people who aren't just broken clocks fishing for an answer they want, regardless of what reality might show?
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I've never heard about the story beyond a passing mention. I've debated a fair few election skeptics, but they each pluck their own pet theory out of the gish gallop so it's always something new. All I see on the Ruby Freeman/Shaye Moss story on Google is Giuliani losing a defamation suit against them, and being asked to pay a ludicrous sum. Is there a site (preferably neutral) that summarizes it better in your eyes?
I don't really want to watch 5 hours of hearings in any cases.
Upon Google searching it, I find the audit itself was highly controversial for being directed by a partisan firm. I plugged the 74k claim into Google, and found a deluge of articles saying the claim is just wrong, that the claimed discrepency comes from confusing that EV32 and EV33 files aren't meant to be full records of all ballots that have been sent, but rather:
The EV32 file includes all requests that voters make for early ballots, either by mail or in person, up to 11 days before Election Day. The EV33 file includes returned early ballots up to the Monday before Election Day.
I cannot find any followup from the other side. Do you have an article (again, preferably neutral) that has a response?
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
This interview is silly. Yarvin claims without evidence that Democrats know how to steal all the elections without leaving any evidence. When asked how Trump won 2016, he handwaves it away by claiming they "didn't have the technology back then".
This is just pre-cope for if they lose. If they win, they can claim "we won despite all the Dem fraud, we must have actually won by 40 points!"
Maybe there's actual evidence somewhere but I stopped watching after a few minutes.
Again, as I said to the other guy, if you're so sure the election is a foregone conclusion, put your money where your mouth is.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I got fed up with the enshitification of streaming services that I went back to pirating all the videos and TV shows I watch. I've gotten a google search result for a show I want to watch, only to subscribe and find out it's been removed a few too many times.
where is anybody bothering to exchange ideas about it?
Nobody ever really did this. Debates have always just been simultaneous press conferences.
just wondering what the options are besides the groupchats.
There are none, since it's incredibly rare for people to actively go out and search about things that could change their minds on political issues. Revealed preferences are that people don't give a crap about being persuaded despite exhortations of "having an open mind".
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I'm interested. Please present the best evidence you have.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Repealing the 12th would do little more than act as a massive incentive for an assassin's bullet. The VP has basically no defacto power, but that could change if #1 isn't around any more.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Fox may have jumped the gun on calling Arizona, but nobody called the national race overall until 3 days later when it was clear that Biden did indeed win.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
This strike is comically atrocious PR for unions generally. Led by a fat entitled brat that looks like an IRL interpretation of Evrart Claire, with a millionaire salary who just so happened to start the strike one month before the election and having been photographed having a meeting with one of the candidates. He even has connections to the mafia and an unsolved murder (????) hanging over his head too.
Basic longshoremen themselves have had all sorts of suspicious stories come out, like how they get paid half a million per year to wash trucks, get fired for not showing up, and then rehired anyways due to their connections. Their salaries are also sky-high. They'll claim it's because they're working overtime since they're short-staffed, but it's an open secret that the union will only let you join if you have dynastic connections. They're also aggressively opposing automation in this strike as the cherry on top. Just a magnificent feast of hypocrisy, whiny entitlement, and rent-seeking.
Unions are good if they're counterbalancing employers' naturally higher market power, but unions that are too powerful are functionally just parasitic cartels that make society worse off for everyone.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
“he’ll accelerate the decline of the US empire and cause political instability/collapse due to failed reform attempts”
If you haven't heard this from the right, you haven't been paying attention. Stuff like "Obama is ruining the country" was common back in 2009-2017, especially in regards to stuff like TARP and Obamacare. Lots of breathless exclamations that a Kenyan was turning us into a Communist nation, with a leader who was definitely going to pursue a third (and fourth, fifth, etc.) term subverting the constitution.
think the notion that Trump has a 50% chance of winning the upcoming election is, in light of what happened the last time he tried, is rather far-fetched.
Put your money where your mouth is then.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
This largely proves my point.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
future historians will draw parallels between Gorbachev and the Kamala Harris presidency
This is just goofy. First off there's only like a 50-50 shot she'll win the election.
Next, the implicit argument of your claim is that Harris will lead to the political collapse of the USA, a doomer take that the far right has correctly predicted 4929 of the last 0 times it's happened. This is another motte post claiming something bombastic with little evidence. Another broken clock.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The vast majority of the world is not experiencing interstate conflict, you're just hearing about the bits that are because it creates explosive headlines (heh). Then your brain is automatically the availability heuristic (incorrectly). Simple as.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Do you have evidence and statistics of how the response is bad? As in, comparing it to past hurricanes. This site leans heavily right, and with a Democrat as president my default assumption is that the party out of power complains like broken clocks.
One barometer that can be checked is power outages. Florida has actually recovered very quickly, going from >1M without power to <100K in just a few days. The poorer inland Appalachian regions have fared worse and are only 33-50% reconnected, but it's still just been a few days since the hurricane hit.
As another commenter said, why aren't planes and helicopters air dropping supplies and Starlink in?
And if there has been a major relief effort, where is the news on it? The left controls pretty much the entire mainstream media, so where are the videos of airlifted supplies? I know internet is out, but people on X have shared plenty of videos of waters washing away homes etc.
Disaster porn always gets more views due to human negativity bias. There's a few people reporting on the relief efforts like the article I linked, but most don't focus on it for normal reasons of optimizing for views.
Do these factors make it more likely for these swing states to turn Blue or Red?
Not really much at all. Hyper polarization means any changes will be miniscule. Obviously Trump could say it's a huge Democrat disaster no matter how bad it was but I haven't really seen much of a compelling narrative yet among even Republicans, let alone swing voters.
I don't think so. I've argued in the past that Republicans think the economy is far worse than it actually is, that real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) wages are up, etc. but I've never denied inflation was actually happening.
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