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I've seen little evidence the Democrats have a plan B aside from jailing Trump. I see constant reports that their ground game is in shambles, they are hemorrhaging in every demographic except college educated white women, and polling in nearly every bell weather or swing state is devastating to them. But they just don't seem to care. They are either very stupid, or they have assurances from the usual three letter agencies about another, more pro-active Peter Strzokian "insurance plan".
Put me down for Trump dies in prison, and somehow all the cameras were broken and all the guards were on break.
We see a similar dynamic in Canada.
If you look at the polling numbers Pierre Poilievre's conservatives are on track for the largest majority in Canadian history and Trudeau's Liberals might drop to 3rd or even 4th place. It might be a Conservative Ultra-super-majority with a Bloc Quebecois official opposition.
And the Liberals and left seem to be doing nothing about it aside from jiggering the election date 5 days later so their government pensions vest before they leave office.
I torn between suspecting they think they have an apocalyptic event between now and 2025 that will make the polls irrelevant, or that they're just resigned to cashing out and letting the entire Laurentian Elite die under a hostile Alberta led government...
We have a similar dynamic in reverse in the UK where the Conservatives are heading toward a huge defeat. Ultimately Westminster system governments kind of sputter out after about ten years. They give up the ghost. It even happened to Thatcher eventually. Everyone in power knows the people want change regardless of type, so why try?
I've been Noticing lately that governments with any significant period of incumbency during the Covid period are tending to get hammered into the ground in the first 'dust-clears' election available. I suppose it's too much to think hope that voters are putting 2 + 2 together on the 'sky-money + forced business closure --> inflation + impending doom' thing -- but the 'inflation + impending doom' thing does seem to be enough.
I guarantee you that almost every swing Tory-Labour in the UK, Liberal-Conservative in Canada, or Labour-National in the New Zealand hasn't suddenly decided COVID policies were the wrong way to go.
They think, "it was good we got checks and didn't go crazy like the American's did opening up so soon, but bad prices rose."
Meanwhile, part of the reason, outside of general two party dominance that despite his current not great approval ratings, Biden is still outpacing most other incumbent world leaders is because regardless of what the Right and Left both think, the economy is currently the best in the world and inflation is amongst the lowest.
True -- but they are also Noticing that things kind of suck ATM and seem likely to get worse before they get better; this is what I mean by the electorates' inability to put 2 and 2 together at least not hindering them in making sure the incumbents reap what they've sown.
Note well that this isn't really a left-right thing -- the British Conservatives are probably getting hammered by a Labour party which in it's Blair iteration was to the right of the current Canadian Liberals -- who are set to be hammered by a Conservative party that is a bit incohate at the moment, but certainly very left wing by American conservative standards.
Sure, but if those parties had done what people here would've wanted on the pandemic, they would've likely lose elections in the 2020/2021 era, so at worst, they got three extra years in power, so they got to do what they likely thought was right, get celebrated for it politically, but then they lost as all politicians do.
Like, I know parts of this site likes to engage in conspiratorial-type thinking, but in reality, most politicians actually say and do what they believe on the big stuff. Poltiicians are actually far more honest today in 2024, worldwide, than they ever have been in history, because there's more feedback loops than anytime in history.
If you were a random Dixiecrat from North Carolina in 1966, you could go to DC, actually work well with your African-American colleagues in the Democratic party, vote for big-time spending bills that pushed a lot of money to inner cities, but also your district, then go back to your district, say some race-baiting stuff in some speeches, go to the opening of the bridge you got money for, slam the spending in Harlem, and easily win reelection, because nobody cares about a random House race in North Carolina.
Now, for good and ill, no politician can really pull that two step.
"Politicians tell voters what they want to hear, but don't follow up" is conspiratorial thinking now? Don't get me wrong, as an open conspiracy theorist this is welcome news to me. The issue I tend to run into is people saying "that's not a conspiracy" when I bring forward a documented case, so it will be nice to have a reference to possibly one of the most milquetoast examples of following incentives, being deemed conspiratorial thinking by an anti-conspiracist.
Depends on your definition of didn't follow up. Also, it's bad politicking to say, "if we get elected, and a big enough majority, and nothing changes economically, we're going to do x and y." This is true for Republican's and Democrat's - I'm not being partisan here.
Now, do politicians sometimes sign on to various things from pressure groups in a primary, then basically ignore or hope it doesn't come up? Yeah, but again, it's still better than in the past, when politicians were supposedly better. No, there's just more coverage of it than there was in 1986.
Like, personally, as somebody very rare here - a pro-Democratic Party partisan social democrat, I'm basically fine with everything Biden did, as everything he said he'd do, but couldn't was a combination of Manchin & Sinema, or factors outside of his control. Maybe is there stuff at the edges, that lefties on Twitter sometimes claim he'd be able to do, but most of that is wishcasting.
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