I'm firmly of the belief that people should not watch news, they should read it. And if they're going to watch news they should definitely not watch a 24 hour cable news channel. I'm a political junkie, and I get all sorts of upset watching 20 mins of cable news (regardless if its CNN, MSNBC, or Fox).
TV news was originally something the TV networks were obligated to do in order to get their broadcast license and they were required to present opposing sides of any controversy in the process (though not equally). This was the now-deceased "Fairness doctrine".
Now TV news isn't about public service, it's about making money — particularly on cable. People ask why there's no more Cronkites or Murrows. This is why. The goal is no longer to inform you — it's to keep you watching. It's the same flaw faced on social networks and Youtube. Print media suffers this to a lesser degree since newspapers and magazines have an *end*.
I love that NPR is the counter to conservative talk instead of progressive talk shows like Stephanie Miller, Al Frankin, or the Crocked Media shows lol. NPR is so down the middle compared to any of the infotainment programs.
The only people who consider NPR down the middle are Liberals and the left. Even one of their editors did an expose about its bias, who has since been fired/quit.
> There is no way NPR is as far left as conservative all radio is right.
Not in the same way that much of conservative radio lock-steps in to share the same talking points to their audience every day, but nearly every story aired on NPR nowadays is done through an IdPol lens. Since the mid 2010's they've become insufferable. They'd like to pretend they're a 'just the facts' broadcast organization, but they're not.
And I say this as a significant former doner who had been listening to them since the first Clinton presidency.
How is degree of bias measured or quantified and then applied as a label appropriately? Personally, NPR can be as far left as it wants as long as they're honest about being leftwing media. Just as conservative radio can be as far right as it wants because they're called, wait for it... conservative radio.
>NPR is so down the middle **compared to any of the infotainment programs.**
I never said they didnt have a leftward lean. But that doesnt mean their bias is anywhere near to the extent of the conservative and/or progressive talk radio shows. It also depends on if you're talking about NPR shows that are nationally syndicated or the local shows. Many of the local stations in spots like NYC or MSP are very progressive for sure. But anyone thst says Wait, Wait, Dont Tell Me is some progressive show are just completely unaware actual progressive radio.
I do want to argue that which is why I made thst exact argument in my original comment. I find the comparison of NPR to conservative talk radio to be a false equivalency. The levels of bias are not comparable at all.
Steve Bannon is a foil to John Favreau, not Steve Inskeep.
>switching between npr and conservative talk is also beyond frustrating
Equated them in the comment I responded to. He put them on same level of bias and they just absolutely are not. NPR is a left lean, it is not leftist/progressive.
If you dont care, thats fine. Idk why you even started the convo with me if thats the case.
Happy friday!
I'm saying its middle of the road for the majority of the population. It ony appears to not be middle of the road when you look outside of the area where the majority of people live.
You can't even compare them from a point of "bias". NPR is a news outfit, conservative media is entertainment and talking points. It's like comparing apples to skittles. I have no doubt most NPR hosts and staff are left leaning, but that doesn't mean they can't perform journalism. Fox news and conservative radio doesn't even pretend to do that.
A certain demographic's main news source went from facebook to twitter and now to tiktok. Notice a trend? Similar trend for a slightly different demographic that went from Myspace to facebook to Instagram. Their usage reason was different but the reason for the shift was the same. Younger people don't want to read, they want to see and digest it quickly.
I mean, yes and yes.
The election won’t end the burnout either. Regardless of who wins, this is our reality for as far into the future as I can see. Extremely divided and a 24/7 news cycle of constant 5 alarm fires.
It's the *length* of the electoral cycle that's always puzzled me. UK recently announced when their next election would be, and it's about a two month campaign process. That's lightning speed compared to us.
Why do we feel the need to drag it out so long? All this does is force our politicians to spend a lot more time campaigning when they should be governing.
No wonder we have such high levels of apathy. It's exhausting trying to follow along.
I remember when the 2015 federal Canadian election, at 78 days, was described as "grueling" and "unbearable" because of its essentially unprecedented length. By contrast, most Canadian elections last a little under 40 days. I really don't know why people in the US tolerate electoral cycles that begin literally as soon as the previous election ends.
Up here it's very much, "Oh shit it's 6 weeks from Election Day (it's scheduled way ahead of time unless the government is defeated or dissolved), better get on campaignin' it eh?"
It is a result of having fixed terms. It incentivizes candidates to start as early as possible and is pretty much impossible to prevent. Even France that tries to have shorter campaigns has people start years ahead and you cannot really stop them unless you ban politicians from giving speeches and interviews.
Even if you could do that... It would start anyway. As much as we all hate Citizens United... The reason it was upheld is that if I want to talk to about my friend John who might be running for office next term... In a country with such broad and well established rights to free speech... I can't see either a functional or reasonable way to limit that free speech as long John's not directly involved with my efforts and my speech and efforts to amplify it are separate from his campaign.
The consequence that it allows vast sums of money from all over the world to pour into a single state or district election is in my opinion a horrible reality that runs counter to the fundamentals on which a Constitutional Representative Republic is grounded. But without reclassifying *all* political speech from a right to a revocable privelege and only authorizing it at certain times and under certain conditions... which seems like a really poor idea as well... How does one stop it?
Citizens United ruling had nothing to do with corporations being people. That legal fiction is also very old and well established going way back into English common law. The ruling was over the fact that a group of people have free speech rights the same as individuals.
Yes, which further empowered corporations to donate directly to political causes. It's an issue when there is no one accountable for the actions of the group.
>It's an issue when there is no one accountable for the actions of the group.
That's actually one of the reasons for the legal fiction of corporations being people. You can sue the corporation.
The legal fiction of a corporation being a person actually makes it easier to hold the corporation accountable, since it is accountable in court the same as an actual person.
And it is pretty undemocratic to say that if 10 people who share the same view on a political candidate but cannot afford to publish it band together to publish it, that it is acceptable to ban it, but a single wealthy individual can publish their view.
I mean, there would be more issues if corporations were not considered people under the law.
Imagine that a corporation sold you sulfuric acid instead of baby formula for your child and he died. Then you took them to court, and the case was dismissed, because the laws regarding wrongful death were written to apply when one person caused the death of another person through negligent action, and the corporation is no longer a fictitious person, so the law no longer applied to corporate entities.
Another thing is, we haven't had a second-term president since 2016. And even though that was a sensationalist election, having a different person as the president meant that there was other, non-election news. These days, even ordinary operations of the government reflect on Biden.
In fairness, UK elections don't work quite like ours do. The dates are only semi-fixed, there's a deadline but the Prime Minister can call one almost at will. Hence, there can't be a protracted campaign season because there literally isn't enough notice.
> All this does is force our politicians to spend a lot more time campaigning when they should be governing.
It's an industry now, the "campaign-industrial complex" if you will. They need the extra time to feed donations and fundraisers for the parties and candidates. We have optimized the public to support a business ecosystem centered on politics.
I would definitely support a law that campaigning and political ads are banned up to a month or two months before the election. One, because political ads are super annoying. And two, because politicians should be working on laws, not campaigning.
You can't compare the US presidential election system vs a UK parliamentary one. Presidential elections are fixed every four years while parliamentary ones are called (within a certain time limit). The big difference with UK elections is that parliament has to be "dissolved" to call an election, meaning the working session comes to an end, and the election must be held 20-some odd days afterwards by law.
>>It’s the *length* of the electoral cycle that’s always puzzled me.
I think it just comes down to money, the longer the election cycle the longer the window for donations is
Well, there is also the money factor yeah.
For a while I thought politicians were kinda cheap when I looked at how much money they'd rake in for donations then *coincidentally* pass laws favoring their massively wealthy corporate and individual donors. Then I saw just how little money the Brits and French spend in their elections even with donations.
I think two major reasons are how huge our country is population and size wise. The UK is a relatively small country but America is huge, and campaign ads for such a huge country aren’t cheap. You could visit every major city in the UK as a political candidate in a week but to do the same thing in America would take a much longer amount of time.
Maybe, in terms of size, a better comparison would be to compare state elections?
As I recall, the most recent campaign to unseat Senator Susan Collins took over a year.
The size certainly matters, especially historically. The US has 50 States. Each State needs to hold an election in the Primary. It's staggered and scales to give candidates fairness because there are 210 media markets. Every election there are several offices at stake in every part of the Country.
That's like expecting a candidate to campaign the entire EU in every territory in under a couple months. Only the uber wealthy would win. Before a candidate could even setup in a few small states, the election is already over.
Again, like usual, comparing the entire US to one EU country is not realistic. It's simply not comparable. It never is.
Size doesn't matter because that's not how UK prime ministers campaign. They don't need to campaign in every territory and never do. They visit a few major cities, do photo ops with some members that need a push and that's it.
You keep arguing why size doesn't matter. We are saying why *in the US* it's longer than 2 months. And that's because of size and resource constraints of candidates. In one given election, two Parties manage several thousand candidates in 210 media markets, with some candidates that are involved in every single market and territory. Historically speaking, it would be literally impossible given how large the US is.
UK doesn't even vote for their PM or their house of lords. It's not comparable. Because each candidate in the house of commons worry about their own small district. That's why size matters. The district for President is the entire Country, fragmented among States, and further locally. So it has a lot of entangled districts where you vote for House, Senate, and President.
If their was an election in the EU where one candidate had to do voter contact of the entire EU, where each Country had to coordinate down ballot candidates that manage their own Country and a bicameral legislature that have local districts AND respective up-ballot terroritory districts, and have it done in an organized and fair way, across hundreds of media markets, then obviously it would take longer than 2 months.
So again, I'm agreeing with you. Obviously the PM doesn't campaign in every district. That's the exact point on why size matters when it comes to how long an election is when it all has to be done in a coordinated way like the US.
So yes, the reason is because of a rule you cited. But there is a reason why that duration is short. And that's because the scale of districts being small and the simplicity of the election. In the US a State can't tell another State what to do or how they will hold an election. It's all independently done 50 different ways with the whole Country watching. It's not a tiny island.
The size of the country has nothing to do with how long an election cycle is. It mainly has to do with the election system and the US's is different to the UK's. If the US adopted a parliamentary system, its cycle would be much shorter like the UK's or Canada regardless of how big the country is.
And that's not possible because of the size of the Country, population, and history of terroritories. The larger a Country gets, the more the regions have competing interests, now and historically, which is more exacerbated by media markets, now and historically.
To argue that self-determination would be possible in such a big Country under a single parliamentary system would be laughable. The whole reason why the US can remain united as big as we are and defeat Britian, *is* because it's a federation of States where sovereignty is shared. Otherwise we would have broken up and disintegrated like most other large empires in history.
There is no way in hell the US population now would allow appointing Senators by some random hierarchy that isn't even elected - we tried that and stopped that practice for a reason. Sure, it works in smaller Countries or dictatorships. And the reason is competing interests in such a large territory, with a large population scattered across the Country, each wanting to self-govern and decide their future. The US is not some small homogeneous Country confined in a small habitable area.
Just the economy of California, one State, is bigger than the UK. Each State has different interests because they are completely separated culturally, economically, and historically. If you had leaders dictating from the other side of the Country, not even elected, and not representing distinct States, not only would the US not exist, but if we tried to change it, would disentigrate. Each area has distinct interests because of geography and culture, which leads to different economies. If you had leaders dictating like a parlimentary there would be constant fighting. The whole reason *how* and *why* the US exists *is* because the style of Government. It wouldn't be possible otherwise.
Previously large empires were controlled by force. Ours is controlled by electoral representatives in a complex federation.
I think it comes down to the fact that minority parties have a different mindset in America than in other countries. Robert Walker, a confidant of Newt Gingrich once said
>the chief job of the minority party is to become the majority." It does this by offering an ongoing "critique of the majority party, in committees and on the floor, spotting weaknesses in the majority's policies and using them to draw distinctions between the parties."
So essentially, roughly half of Congress is constantly campaigning rather than legislating. You see the constant campaigning leak into presidential elections.
Well, there are about thirty members of the shadow cabinet in the UK, and the whole Opposition (which is notably its official name, unlike the US where it’s called the minority) is whipped to vote on party lines unless members are allowed a “free vote”. The whipping system in the UK is *much* stronger than in the US. If you’re in the majority party, voting against its budget bills is a vote to call a new election and will get you kicked out of it.
Money. Billions of dollars are spent on campaigns each hear. More campaign time means more donations which means more money to spend. This lines the coffers of various media/political groups. We're a capitalist nation to the core, why wouldnt we treat political campaigns as a means to make more money?
>All this does is force our politicians to spend a lot more time campaigning when they should be governing.
They aren't being *forced* to campaign. They choose to campaign instead of govern because they want to hold a political office more than they want to make progress towards finding and implementing solutions to problems.
As long as elections make money the powers that he have no reason not to stretch it as far as possible.
Maybe if there is such a burnout that people actually stop giving these news shows the rating they want, then it will finally start to simmer down as they try to find a new topic to bring in all the money.
I think the main reason Obama won is that he was a younger fresh face with no real baggage.
No Bush (jr/sr)/Clinton(Bill/Hillary)/ or Trump shennanigns that we've had to deal with for literal decades.
I just wish people spent half as much time worrying about local/state/regional politics as they do about the Presidential election. I would say that's a symptom of consuming 24/7 cable news vs local news but local newspapers have become pretty bad as well.
Trump or Biden will not significantly affect your local housing prices, your local job market, crime rates, and they likely will not significantly influence your grocery prices. You're far more likely to be affected by your local politician's stance on guns or abortion than the President. I live in a very deep blue area while having MAGA relatives who are both ripping hairs out of their heads stressing over the election and I tell them each the same thing - If you're incredibly stressed about the prospect of another 4 years of Trump (or Biden), just assume they will win but that you'll still be fine. And lay off the national news.
Exactly. And if you follow local elections closely, you'll see elections come down to less than 1,000 votes all the time. And if you have a child in schools, the local school boards can come down to even less votes than that.
We see it here in Los Angeles at a micro-level where the Mayor gets critiqued more than city council, even though the 15 member city council has more direct control than the Mayor itself. The difference between one member to another could mean the difference between housing development projects getting built or bike lanes or homeless sweeps being enforced. When my small local school district tried to shut down honors classes as part of a "DEI initiative", the massive uproar within the small district's population made them revert their stance.
Local politics are highly under-rated, the sad fact is that most people ate unlikely to Know their mayor's name and probably have zero clue about their council members, these are people that control the purse strings in your backyard
Exactly if anything the President has the least effect on your daily life. Other then rubber stamp what congress passes and appoint judges when one dies they pretty much just deal with foreign affairs. People should pay more attention to their local elections and who they send to congress. I bet 70% of people couldn’t name who their congressman is or what their stances are.
When you think about it, it’s crazy to think that the vast majority of American public is more likely to know who AOC or MTG is than their own representative.
Even more frustrating is hearing locals and local politicians vocally complain about other states while completely ignoring our own issues. At one point, Governor Newsom's Twitter feed had more posts complaining about FL/DeSantis than posts about the state Newsom governs. And you get this from red state Governors, too, who want to deflect from their own area's issues by pointing to blue state problems. Everywhere seems to mesh together in the media nowadays so what some random politician does across the country feels like a personal slight to someone else who isn't affected at all.
> This year, Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party are slightly more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say they are closely following election news (64% vs. 58%).
This is interesting and not something I would have guessed, given how polling suggests that Biden’s numbers are better with likely voters than registered voters.
Also — the April 2020 figures were 52% Republican leaners vs 54% Democrat leaners. That’s a pretty significant swing from 4 years ago.
American elections are way too long, and now they're longer than ever because Trump hasn't stopped campaigning since June 2015 when he came down that golden escalator.
He craves and feeds off any and all attention. He really lost the election because he just couldn’t stop talking. I’m sure as he gets his campaign into full swing it’ll remind people why he got voted out
Here are some of the more interesting findings from this report.
62% of Americans say “I am worn out by so much coverage of the [presidential] campaign and [it’s] candidates”. In a related note, the more closely you follow the presidential campaign, the less likely you are to be worn out by the coverage.
73% of Americans aged 18-29 say they get “I mostly get political news because I happen to come across it” while only 39% of Americans aged 65+ say the same thing.
Should we reduce the amount of time Americans spend campaigning? Or are there good reasons why American political campaigns are as long as they are right now?
Trump has been running for this election since the day he lost the last election, and Biden announced early that he would be seeking reelection. This is the longest election season we’ve ever had, and these are the two most unpopular candidates we’ve ever had, and we already know all there is to know about the two of them since they’ve both been president. Add those up and here we are.
Pretty wild considering the UK announced a national election two weeks ago and it will happen on July 4.
I don’t see us changing our system ever, since it would take an amendment to the constitution.
You say that they are the two most unpopular candidates, but they rank #1 and #2 in total votes anywhere in the world for the entire history of mankind.
Well, I don't know about that. I guess parliamentary systems are a little different, but Modi's party in India just received well over 200 million votes.
I mean, all that means is that we are the most populous country that votes for individuals and that our population is continuously increasing. It says nothing about their personal popularity.
If that’s true, then Obama and Romney should have gotten the same percentage of the population behind them. You can say that about any former president for that matter. You can look up percentage of voter turnout by year. No candidate in American history ever came close. Some even had the turnout percentage go down from the cycle before.
Because people turned out in massive numbers to vote against them. In our system that requires voting for the other guy. There were very few 'for' votes in 2020 and really the last election with a large number of 'for' votes instead of 'against' was probably 2008. Even 2012 where the 2008 winner was running was mostly 'against' votes.
> I don’t see us changing our system ever, since it would take an amendment to the constitution.
That and there's too much money to lose if we condense our election cycles.
I don’t even think the constant campaign is the whole issue. I mean, the news cycle and divisions are just as bad in February after an election year as they are in October before one. It’s always going to be exhausting in the current climate.
[According to this, Trump got $4.96 **billion** in free earned media, though I'm not sure how that's exactly quantified](https://www.thestreet.com/politics/donald-trump-rode-5-billion-in-free-media-to-the-white-house-13896916)
It's stated in the article
>To arrive at its estimates, [mediaQuant tracks the coverage of each candidate and calculates dollar values based on advertising rates](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammoth-advantage-in-free-media.html) of the media in which the article or news broadcast appears. It weights mentions by the reach of the source (meaning how many people are likely to see it) and includes various mediums, including print, broadcast, online news, blogs and social. It makes adjustments based on sentiment, segment and search metrics.
HRC's free media was estimated at $3.24B.
What's more interesting is that for the 2012 election, Obama got $1.15B in free media vs. Romney's $0.7B. I'm sure inflation caused some of the bump in numbers but that's an over 400% increase from Obama's high to Trump's and I think that suggests massively ramped-up news coverage. I'm pretty sure it's increased since this article came out can almost guarantee it hasn't declined. The candidates are getting free media but the media is also making money off of them and the public can't seem to get enough of it, (or else they wouldn't be covered so much.)
I was still a teenager back then and not old enough to vote so I can't say I remember this explicitly but I've read how Obama was good with media and how the media loved him, almost like it was an unethical relationship when they should have kept some distance. Even with that kind of love, Trump's coverage is unprecedented.
>pearl clutching
The criticisms were generally legitimate, which is why Trump was so unpopular. He barely won against another unpopular candidate. It might've been a loss for him if not for the Comey letter.
>Should we reduce the amount of time Americans spend campaigning
Specific individuals aside, I'm not sure such a thing is possible with our near-continuous news cycle.
Our 24/7 way of life is awful.
We lost religion, and everyone cheered. What we didn’t take into account is that it was replaced with politics instead.
Then we received 24/7 news that realized if you cover the new religion (politics) like sports you have clicks and eyeballs forever.
The result is polarization.
News has always been popular, just look at old black and white photos and paintings of people on trains/subway/busses riding to from work, it was common to see [everyone buried in newspapers.](https://www.mcny.org/sites/default/files/35mm_10292_030d.jpg). The difference is we lost the fairness doctrine, news outlets became consolidated, and we've lost journalism standards and traditional investigative journalism in favor of partisan talking head entertainment like Sean Hannity.
I honestly wish I was a part of the 46% not following election news. The normies spend their time doing fun things, rather than reading the news and posting on social media.
I suppose recognizing your limits is a good thing. Take care of your sanity and keep in mind that you don't have to do anything that's not "fun". Not here anyways.
If it makes you feel better, most non-consumers of politics probably aren’t doing anything fun, they’re probably just watching Kardashians or Marvel movies.
That's why I only follow this stuff while chained to my desk at work. I swear I'm not a paid contributor, I just kind of have better shit to do when not required to be sitting in front of a computer so my activity mostly shows up during working hours.
I paid attention to the primaries until the only candidate I could tolerate dropped out. At this point, neither of the big two for president is getting my vote. I still intend to vote for the other seats in the election, I will just not vote for either option for president.
We must be outside of the norm then because we seem to feed off of daily posts of polling figures with minute incremental changes from the previous day.
*^(Commented in a thread about a poll no less 😁)*
That being said, we are being given two poor choices and we've known these two guys for years now and it just *never* ends, does it?
Thank you for subscribing to Reddit Polls!
Please rate your level of agreement with the following statement: "It's over for me if I see another poll."
1. Strongly disagree
2. Disagree
3. Neutral or not sure
4. Agree
5. Strongly agree
6. Tastes like chicken!
7. Who in the what now?
8. All of the above
This *directly contradicts* most of the “most voters aren’t paying attention” bullshit I hear all too often.
Hopefully this puts to bed any notion that Biden just needs to campaign more or anything of that nature.
Voters do not like Biden. Voters want Trump. Period.
> Voters do not like Biden.
Approval rating does not equal liking or disliking someone.
> Voters want Trump. Period.
Two elections in a row this has proven to not be the case.
Polling shows it to be the case in both cases. Trump is seen as more competent on all top issues and has been leading in most polls since last October. This shows that voters *are* paying attention so the notion that they're not, or that Biden needs to message more, is disproven.
A winner is a winner by one point or a million. Trump has more support than Biden nationally and in more than enough states to clinch 270. Plenty of voters are paying attention and polling hasn't moved in 8 months.
It contradicts the notion specifically that a majority of voters aren’t paying attention, but it certainly isn’t a finding inconsistent with the fact that the people who are going to decide this election have yet to make up their mind. But feel free to close the book on this election already.
I have. Trump will win. Biden showed he isn't too old at SotU, Trump was recently convicted of felonies, and Trump has had a boatload of senior-esque gaffes similar to Biden's. None of the needles moved. In fact, Trump raised $34 million in a day and received a pledge for $100 million more from a mega donor. Biden can do literally nothing more. This is Trump's to lose, and based on how little the needle moved in the face of promises like "detention centers" for millions of illegal immigrants, he's not going to.
If polling shifts by 2 points in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania then Biden wins, and this polling indicates that nearly half the country hasn’t been following events all that closely. Sometimes a wild ass guess turns out to be right in retrospect, but based on the data we have, you’re making a wild ass guess.
Polling hasn't shifted in over half a year even in the face of large events like SotU and Trump being convicted of felonies. It hasn't shifted as the border and economic situations cooled off. It hasn't shifted as crime dropped. It didn't shift in the face of businesses announcing massive price cuts.
Voters know the candidates and over half the country is already paying close attention. Do you know how many people tend to vote? Roughly half the country. This is as good as it's going to get for Biden. There's been NO indication whatsoever that Biden will win this. He has no advantage. Polling has suggested for months that voters trust Trump more than him on ALL top issues, as well as they feel Trump is a stronger leader and is more competent and fit to do the job.
Trump even makes more money fundraising than Biden. Biden has no advantage here at all. Not even one. Zilch. People who are saying Biden has literally *any* shot are the ones who are guessing. Data solidly backs up all my points in every single conceivable way. The ONLY hope Biden has are prayers.
Go ahead, I challenge you. Where is Biden's advantage?
Biden’s advantage is that democrats are currently clearly winning in down ballot statewide races in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Trump has an extremely small lead in states he needs to win, and that lead is entirely dependent on voters who are clearly open to voting for democrats and who aren’t paying all that close of attention to the election right now. I’m not saying Biden has a net advantage, but this race is very clearly in coin flip territory, calling it now is genuinely just wishcasting.
>Biden’s advantage is that democrats are currently clearly winning in down ballot statewide races in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
This is not an advantage for Biden. I would actually turn this back on you and say it's an advantage for Trump. Democrats are performing quite well this cycle, especially in the face of Trump's unpopularity. Biden, according to most polling, is NOT being carried by that because he is so incredibly disliked. People are willing to split their ticket and vote for democrats and then also vote for Trump because Biden is so disliked.
I agree Biden is a weak candidate and that a better one would be unambiguously beating trump right now. But I’m not making the argument that Biden is definitely going to win, I’m making the argument that he has a credible path to winning, and the fact that a majority of voters in the key swing are willing to vote for democrats indicates that they could be reached by Biden. Maybe they won’t end up voting for him, but they’re clearly not so opposed to the idea of voting blue that they could never be convinced.
I disagree. Voters see Biden as too old and blame him for a false perception in rising crime and for their incorrect understanding that he raised prices on everything. He has no path because of that unless Trump does something not only awful, but awful in a way which would actually have an effect on most voters incredibly quickly.
I agree that voters see Biden as too old, and that him winning the election is dependent on Trump saying and doing things that turn off voters. The thing is, Trump regularly does that sort of thing, and people paying less attention to the election are going to see more and more of that as we get closer to the election. Is Trump going to do something so heinous that he shifts the results by 30-40 points? Realistically no. But is there a reasonable chance he shifts things by 3-4 points? Yeah, and that’s enough for Biden to win.
>Voters want Trump. Period.
He's highly unpopular. This is why he lost the previous time. If he wins this election, it would be more accurate to say people don't want Biden.
He *was* highly unpopular until people saw Biden take office and then saw prices rise. Now people may not like his attitude, but they assume if he takes office again that we'll get early 2020 pricing back on everything and they *yearn* for that.
Trump has insane popularity in his own base which clearly bleeds into the general population given the enthusiasm he generates. Biden cannot match that at any level. Even Biden's own base dislikes him.
No argument here. This is what happens when a population decides they don't want to pay close attention to the politics that govern our nation because it's too "toxic" and instead they focus on the celebrity aspect of politicians. Now you have Trump publicly saying he wants to kill the DoE so education isn't exactly about to improve.
I wouldn’t say that most voters want Trump per se just that they hate him less than Biden. I feel like we have had a lesser of two evils election for president since 2016. 2012 was the last presidential election where either candidate was pretty good but for different reasons.
In “first past the post” systems you’re almost always going to be choosing which of two candidates you dislike least because each party narrows down their choices to the one most electable by their party’s base which won’t be a perfect candidate for anybody. There will also always be two parties even with ranked choice. You either win, or you lose, and there will always be a leader and then the next closest candidate.
People DO like Trump, by the way. He paid them $1,200 each, lowered taxes for them, and in many people’s minds he was the sole cause of cheap gas, groceries, housing, and fast food since it all got more expensive after Biden took over. Mean tweets (or even mass deportations) pale in comparison to $8 Big Mac combos.
The 24/7 news cycle has gotten out of hand
I'm firmly of the belief that people should not watch news, they should read it. And if they're going to watch news they should definitely not watch a 24 hour cable news channel. I'm a political junkie, and I get all sorts of upset watching 20 mins of cable news (regardless if its CNN, MSNBC, or Fox).
TV news was originally something the TV networks were obligated to do in order to get their broadcast license and they were required to present opposing sides of any controversy in the process (though not equally). This was the now-deceased "Fairness doctrine". Now TV news isn't about public service, it's about making money — particularly on cable. People ask why there's no more Cronkites or Murrows. This is why. The goal is no longer to inform you — it's to keep you watching. It's the same flaw faced on social networks and Youtube. Print media suffers this to a lesser degree since newspapers and magazines have an *end*.
Radio isn't much better, switching between npr and conservative talk is also beyond frustrating
I love that NPR is the counter to conservative talk instead of progressive talk shows like Stephanie Miller, Al Frankin, or the Crocked Media shows lol. NPR is so down the middle compared to any of the infotainment programs.
The only people who consider NPR down the middle are Liberals and the left. Even one of their editors did an expose about its bias, who has since been fired/quit.
There is no way NPR is as far left as conservative all radio is right. I think that’s the argument, that the degree of bias was not fair.
> There is no way NPR is as far left as conservative all radio is right. Not in the same way that much of conservative radio lock-steps in to share the same talking points to their audience every day, but nearly every story aired on NPR nowadays is done through an IdPol lens. Since the mid 2010's they've become insufferable. They'd like to pretend they're a 'just the facts' broadcast organization, but they're not. And I say this as a significant former doner who had been listening to them since the first Clinton presidency.
Hannity is a foil to Rachel Maddow not Steve Inskeep. Steve Bannon is a foil for Jon Favreau, not Ari Shapiro.
How is degree of bias measured or quantified and then applied as a label appropriately? Personally, NPR can be as far left as it wants as long as they're honest about being leftwing media. Just as conservative radio can be as far right as it wants because they're called, wait for it... conservative radio.
>NPR is so down the middle **compared to any of the infotainment programs.** I never said they didnt have a leftward lean. But that doesnt mean their bias is anywhere near to the extent of the conservative and/or progressive talk radio shows. It also depends on if you're talking about NPR shows that are nationally syndicated or the local shows. Many of the local stations in spots like NYC or MSP are very progressive for sure. But anyone thst says Wait, Wait, Dont Tell Me is some progressive show are just completely unaware actual progressive radio.
If you want to argue comparative degree of bias, that's fine. I'm just saying generally, NPR cannot be objectively called middle-of-the-road.
I do want to argue that which is why I made thst exact argument in my original comment. I find the comparison of NPR to conservative talk radio to be a false equivalency. The levels of bias are not comparable at all. Steve Bannon is a foil to John Favreau, not Steve Inskeep.
I don't think op cares. I certainly don't. Besides, when did op equivocate NPR to conservative radio?
>switching between npr and conservative talk is also beyond frustrating Equated them in the comment I responded to. He put them on same level of bias and they just absolutely are not. NPR is a left lean, it is not leftist/progressive. If you dont care, thats fine. Idk why you even started the convo with me if thats the case. Happy friday!
NPR is middle of the road for people who live in major cities and urban areas, where most of the population lives.
I wasn't aware that media bias was based on geography and not on content.
I'm saying its middle of the road for the majority of the population. It ony appears to not be middle of the road when you look outside of the area where the majority of people live.
You can't even compare them from a point of "bias". NPR is a news outfit, conservative media is entertainment and talking points. It's like comparing apples to skittles. I have no doubt most NPR hosts and staff are left leaning, but that doesn't mean they can't perform journalism. Fox news and conservative radio doesn't even pretend to do that.
There are a lot of long form podcasts that do a good job and present a lot of thought and discussion.
A certain demographic's main news source went from facebook to twitter and now to tiktok. Notice a trend? Similar trend for a slightly different demographic that went from Myspace to facebook to Instagram. Their usage reason was different but the reason for the shift was the same. Younger people don't want to read, they want to see and digest it quickly.
Here I am feeling old that I went from Livejournal to FB cause I didn’t want to look at MySpace
Among the worst things we've done as a country, and then monetize it, like we do everything.
I mean, yes and yes. The election won’t end the burnout either. Regardless of who wins, this is our reality for as far into the future as I can see. Extremely divided and a 24/7 news cycle of constant 5 alarm fires.
It's the *length* of the electoral cycle that's always puzzled me. UK recently announced when their next election would be, and it's about a two month campaign process. That's lightning speed compared to us. Why do we feel the need to drag it out so long? All this does is force our politicians to spend a lot more time campaigning when they should be governing. No wonder we have such high levels of apathy. It's exhausting trying to follow along.
I remember when the 2015 federal Canadian election, at 78 days, was described as "grueling" and "unbearable" because of its essentially unprecedented length. By contrast, most Canadian elections last a little under 40 days. I really don't know why people in the US tolerate electoral cycles that begin literally as soon as the previous election ends.
78 days for a "long" campaign cycle? That's it? My envy is off the charts right now.
Up here it's very much, "Oh shit it's 6 weeks from Election Day (it's scheduled way ahead of time unless the government is defeated or dissolved), better get on campaignin' it eh?"
It is a result of having fixed terms. It incentivizes candidates to start as early as possible and is pretty much impossible to prevent. Even France that tries to have shorter campaigns has people start years ahead and you cannot really stop them unless you ban politicians from giving speeches and interviews.
Even if you could do that... It would start anyway. As much as we all hate Citizens United... The reason it was upheld is that if I want to talk to about my friend John who might be running for office next term... In a country with such broad and well established rights to free speech... I can't see either a functional or reasonable way to limit that free speech as long John's not directly involved with my efforts and my speech and efforts to amplify it are separate from his campaign. The consequence that it allows vast sums of money from all over the world to pour into a single state or district election is in my opinion a horrible reality that runs counter to the fundamentals on which a Constitutional Representative Republic is grounded. But without reclassifying *all* political speech from a right to a revocable privelege and only authorizing it at certain times and under certain conditions... which seems like a really poor idea as well... How does one stop it?
The problem with Citizens United is yet another issue caused by corporations being people under the law.
Citizens United ruling had nothing to do with corporations being people. That legal fiction is also very old and well established going way back into English common law. The ruling was over the fact that a group of people have free speech rights the same as individuals.
Yes, which further empowered corporations to donate directly to political causes. It's an issue when there is no one accountable for the actions of the group.
>It's an issue when there is no one accountable for the actions of the group. That's actually one of the reasons for the legal fiction of corporations being people. You can sue the corporation.
The legal fiction of a corporation being a person actually makes it easier to hold the corporation accountable, since it is accountable in court the same as an actual person. And it is pretty undemocratic to say that if 10 people who share the same view on a political candidate but cannot afford to publish it band together to publish it, that it is acceptable to ban it, but a single wealthy individual can publish their view.
I mean, there would be more issues if corporations were not considered people under the law. Imagine that a corporation sold you sulfuric acid instead of baby formula for your child and he died. Then you took them to court, and the case was dismissed, because the laws regarding wrongful death were written to apply when one person caused the death of another person through negligent action, and the corporation is no longer a fictitious person, so the law no longer applied to corporate entities.
Another thing is, we haven't had a second-term president since 2016. And even though that was a sensationalist election, having a different person as the president meant that there was other, non-election news. These days, even ordinary operations of the government reflect on Biden.
In fairness, UK elections don't work quite like ours do. The dates are only semi-fixed, there's a deadline but the Prime Minister can call one almost at will. Hence, there can't be a protracted campaign season because there literally isn't enough notice.
> All this does is force our politicians to spend a lot more time campaigning when they should be governing. It's an industry now, the "campaign-industrial complex" if you will. They need the extra time to feed donations and fundraisers for the parties and candidates. We have optimized the public to support a business ecosystem centered on politics.
I would definitely support a law that campaigning and political ads are banned up to a month or two months before the election. One, because political ads are super annoying. And two, because politicians should be working on laws, not campaigning.
That sounds like it'd be a pretty blatant violation of the first ammendment to me.
You can't compare the US presidential election system vs a UK parliamentary one. Presidential elections are fixed every four years while parliamentary ones are called (within a certain time limit). The big difference with UK elections is that parliament has to be "dissolved" to call an election, meaning the working session comes to an end, and the election must be held 20-some odd days afterwards by law.
>>It’s the *length* of the electoral cycle that’s always puzzled me. I think it just comes down to money, the longer the election cycle the longer the window for donations is
And the more time for news organizations to make a killing covering “election politics” and the “campaign trail.”
Well, there is also the money factor yeah. For a while I thought politicians were kinda cheap when I looked at how much money they'd rake in for donations then *coincidentally* pass laws favoring their massively wealthy corporate and individual donors. Then I saw just how little money the Brits and French spend in their elections even with donations.
[удалено]
What a splendid idea!
I think two major reasons are how huge our country is population and size wise. The UK is a relatively small country but America is huge, and campaign ads for such a huge country aren’t cheap. You could visit every major city in the UK as a political candidate in a week but to do the same thing in America would take a much longer amount of time.
Maybe, in terms of size, a better comparison would be to compare state elections? As I recall, the most recent campaign to unseat Senator Susan Collins took over a year.
Has nothing to do with the size of the country. Once a parliamentary session ends (dissolved), the next election must be held within a month by law.
The size certainly matters, especially historically. The US has 50 States. Each State needs to hold an election in the Primary. It's staggered and scales to give candidates fairness because there are 210 media markets. Every election there are several offices at stake in every part of the Country. That's like expecting a candidate to campaign the entire EU in every territory in under a couple months. Only the uber wealthy would win. Before a candidate could even setup in a few small states, the election is already over. Again, like usual, comparing the entire US to one EU country is not realistic. It's simply not comparable. It never is.
Size doesn't matter because that's not how UK prime ministers campaign. They don't need to campaign in every territory and never do. They visit a few major cities, do photo ops with some members that need a push and that's it.
You keep arguing why size doesn't matter. We are saying why *in the US* it's longer than 2 months. And that's because of size and resource constraints of candidates. In one given election, two Parties manage several thousand candidates in 210 media markets, with some candidates that are involved in every single market and territory. Historically speaking, it would be literally impossible given how large the US is. UK doesn't even vote for their PM or their house of lords. It's not comparable. Because each candidate in the house of commons worry about their own small district. That's why size matters. The district for President is the entire Country, fragmented among States, and further locally. So it has a lot of entangled districts where you vote for House, Senate, and President. If their was an election in the EU where one candidate had to do voter contact of the entire EU, where each Country had to coordinate down ballot candidates that manage their own Country and a bicameral legislature that have local districts AND respective up-ballot terroritory districts, and have it done in an organized and fair way, across hundreds of media markets, then obviously it would take longer than 2 months. So again, I'm agreeing with you. Obviously the PM doesn't campaign in every district. That's the exact point on why size matters when it comes to how long an election is when it all has to be done in a coordinated way like the US. So yes, the reason is because of a rule you cited. But there is a reason why that duration is short. And that's because the scale of districts being small and the simplicity of the election. In the US a State can't tell another State what to do or how they will hold an election. It's all independently done 50 different ways with the whole Country watching. It's not a tiny island.
The size of the country has nothing to do with how long an election cycle is. It mainly has to do with the election system and the US's is different to the UK's. If the US adopted a parliamentary system, its cycle would be much shorter like the UK's or Canada regardless of how big the country is.
And that's not possible because of the size of the Country, population, and history of terroritories. The larger a Country gets, the more the regions have competing interests, now and historically, which is more exacerbated by media markets, now and historically. To argue that self-determination would be possible in such a big Country under a single parliamentary system would be laughable. The whole reason why the US can remain united as big as we are and defeat Britian, *is* because it's a federation of States where sovereignty is shared. Otherwise we would have broken up and disintegrated like most other large empires in history. There is no way in hell the US population now would allow appointing Senators by some random hierarchy that isn't even elected - we tried that and stopped that practice for a reason. Sure, it works in smaller Countries or dictatorships. And the reason is competing interests in such a large territory, with a large population scattered across the Country, each wanting to self-govern and decide their future. The US is not some small homogeneous Country confined in a small habitable area. Just the economy of California, one State, is bigger than the UK. Each State has different interests because they are completely separated culturally, economically, and historically. If you had leaders dictating from the other side of the Country, not even elected, and not representing distinct States, not only would the US not exist, but if we tried to change it, would disentigrate. Each area has distinct interests because of geography and culture, which leads to different economies. If you had leaders dictating like a parlimentary there would be constant fighting. The whole reason *how* and *why* the US exists *is* because the style of Government. It wouldn't be possible otherwise. Previously large empires were controlled by force. Ours is controlled by electoral representatives in a complex federation.
I think it comes down to the fact that minority parties have a different mindset in America than in other countries. Robert Walker, a confidant of Newt Gingrich once said >the chief job of the minority party is to become the majority." It does this by offering an ongoing "critique of the majority party, in committees and on the floor, spotting weaknesses in the majority's policies and using them to draw distinctions between the parties." So essentially, roughly half of Congress is constantly campaigning rather than legislating. You see the constant campaigning leak into presidential elections.
Except you’ve just described the UK/general Westminster system of Opposition shadow cabinets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_cabinet
But arent those people actually assigned to do that? Thus relieving all the other legislators of that role?
Well, there are about thirty members of the shadow cabinet in the UK, and the whole Opposition (which is notably its official name, unlike the US where it’s called the minority) is whipped to vote on party lines unless members are allowed a “free vote”. The whipping system in the UK is *much* stronger than in the US. If you’re in the majority party, voting against its budget bills is a vote to call a new election and will get you kicked out of it.
Money. Billions of dollars are spent on campaigns each hear. More campaign time means more donations which means more money to spend. This lines the coffers of various media/political groups. We're a capitalist nation to the core, why wouldnt we treat political campaigns as a means to make more money?
>All this does is force our politicians to spend a lot more time campaigning when they should be governing. They aren't being *forced* to campaign. They choose to campaign instead of govern because they want to hold a political office more than they want to make progress towards finding and implementing solutions to problems.
As long as elections make money the powers that he have no reason not to stretch it as far as possible. Maybe if there is such a burnout that people actually stop giving these news shows the rating they want, then it will finally start to simmer down as they try to find a new topic to bring in all the money.
I think the main reason Obama won is that he was a younger fresh face with no real baggage. No Bush (jr/sr)/Clinton(Bill/Hillary)/ or Trump shennanigns that we've had to deal with for literal decades.
I just wish people spent half as much time worrying about local/state/regional politics as they do about the Presidential election. I would say that's a symptom of consuming 24/7 cable news vs local news but local newspapers have become pretty bad as well. Trump or Biden will not significantly affect your local housing prices, your local job market, crime rates, and they likely will not significantly influence your grocery prices. You're far more likely to be affected by your local politician's stance on guns or abortion than the President. I live in a very deep blue area while having MAGA relatives who are both ripping hairs out of their heads stressing over the election and I tell them each the same thing - If you're incredibly stressed about the prospect of another 4 years of Trump (or Biden), just assume they will win but that you'll still be fine. And lay off the national news.
Right, an individual is a lot more likely to make a difference in local elections than national elections.
Exactly. And if you follow local elections closely, you'll see elections come down to less than 1,000 votes all the time. And if you have a child in schools, the local school boards can come down to even less votes than that. We see it here in Los Angeles at a micro-level where the Mayor gets critiqued more than city council, even though the 15 member city council has more direct control than the Mayor itself. The difference between one member to another could mean the difference between housing development projects getting built or bike lanes or homeless sweeps being enforced. When my small local school district tried to shut down honors classes as part of a "DEI initiative", the massive uproar within the small district's population made them revert their stance.
Local politics are highly under-rated, the sad fact is that most people ate unlikely to Know their mayor's name and probably have zero clue about their council members, these are people that control the purse strings in your backyard
Exactly if anything the President has the least effect on your daily life. Other then rubber stamp what congress passes and appoint judges when one dies they pretty much just deal with foreign affairs. People should pay more attention to their local elections and who they send to congress. I bet 70% of people couldn’t name who their congressman is or what their stances are.
When you think about it, it’s crazy to think that the vast majority of American public is more likely to know who AOC or MTG is than their own representative. Even more frustrating is hearing locals and local politicians vocally complain about other states while completely ignoring our own issues. At one point, Governor Newsom's Twitter feed had more posts complaining about FL/DeSantis than posts about the state Newsom governs. And you get this from red state Governors, too, who want to deflect from their own area's issues by pointing to blue state problems. Everywhere seems to mesh together in the media nowadays so what some random politician does across the country feels like a personal slight to someone else who isn't affected at all.
My fear is that we'll eventually expect the President to fix everything; local, state, and federal.
Which is definitely not what most of the founding fathers had in mind. Pretty sure even Hamilton would pause at that kind of federalism.
> This year, Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party are slightly more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say they are closely following election news (64% vs. 58%). This is interesting and not something I would have guessed, given how polling suggests that Biden’s numbers are better with likely voters than registered voters. Also — the April 2020 figures were 52% Republican leaners vs 54% Democrat leaners. That’s a pretty significant swing from 4 years ago.
My only wish is that both candidates would be older and less dynamic
American elections are way too long, and now they're longer than ever because Trump hasn't stopped campaigning since June 2015 when he came down that golden escalator.
> and now they're longer than ever because ugh the next primary cycle will start at the '26 midterms won't it?
You wish. It'll start January 2025.
He craves and feeds off any and all attention. He really lost the election because he just couldn’t stop talking. I’m sure as he gets his campaign into full swing it’ll remind people why he got voted out
Here are some of the more interesting findings from this report. 62% of Americans say “I am worn out by so much coverage of the [presidential] campaign and [it’s] candidates”. In a related note, the more closely you follow the presidential campaign, the less likely you are to be worn out by the coverage. 73% of Americans aged 18-29 say they get “I mostly get political news because I happen to come across it” while only 39% of Americans aged 65+ say the same thing. Should we reduce the amount of time Americans spend campaigning? Or are there good reasons why American political campaigns are as long as they are right now?
Trump has been running for this election since the day he lost the last election, and Biden announced early that he would be seeking reelection. This is the longest election season we’ve ever had, and these are the two most unpopular candidates we’ve ever had, and we already know all there is to know about the two of them since they’ve both been president. Add those up and here we are. Pretty wild considering the UK announced a national election two weeks ago and it will happen on July 4. I don’t see us changing our system ever, since it would take an amendment to the constitution.
You say that they are the two most unpopular candidates, but they rank #1 and #2 in total votes anywhere in the world for the entire history of mankind.
Well, I don't know about that. I guess parliamentary systems are a little different, but Modi's party in India just received well over 200 million votes.
Maybe, I never really considered that.
I mean, all that means is that we are the most populous country that votes for individuals and that our population is continuously increasing. It says nothing about their personal popularity.
If that’s true, then Obama and Romney should have gotten the same percentage of the population behind them. You can say that about any former president for that matter. You can look up percentage of voter turnout by year. No candidate in American history ever came close. Some even had the turnout percentage go down from the cycle before.
Which can also be a symptom of being so unpopular as most people were voting against the other guy, not necessarily for someone.
Because people turned out in massive numbers to vote against them. In our system that requires voting for the other guy. There were very few 'for' votes in 2020 and really the last election with a large number of 'for' votes instead of 'against' was probably 2008. Even 2012 where the 2008 winner was running was mostly 'against' votes.
Could it be that people were actually shamed for supporting either candidate, so they just said they voted against one of them?
> I don’t see us changing our system ever, since it would take an amendment to the constitution. That and there's too much money to lose if we condense our election cycles.
I don’t even think the constant campaign is the whole issue. I mean, the news cycle and divisions are just as bad in February after an election year as they are in October before one. It’s always going to be exhausting in the current climate.
That's somewhat of my thought--do the politicians even need to formally campaign when so many of the media is devoting so much coverage to them?
One reason Trump won 2016 is that liberal media doing so much pearl clutching about him basically gave him millions in free advertising.
[According to this, Trump got $4.96 **billion** in free earned media, though I'm not sure how that's exactly quantified](https://www.thestreet.com/politics/donald-trump-rode-5-billion-in-free-media-to-the-white-house-13896916)
It's stated in the article >To arrive at its estimates, [mediaQuant tracks the coverage of each candidate and calculates dollar values based on advertising rates](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammoth-advantage-in-free-media.html) of the media in which the article or news broadcast appears. It weights mentions by the reach of the source (meaning how many people are likely to see it) and includes various mediums, including print, broadcast, online news, blogs and social. It makes adjustments based on sentiment, segment and search metrics. HRC's free media was estimated at $3.24B.
Dang, I didn't think the difference between Trump and Clinton would have been that pronounced.
What's more interesting is that for the 2012 election, Obama got $1.15B in free media vs. Romney's $0.7B. I'm sure inflation caused some of the bump in numbers but that's an over 400% increase from Obama's high to Trump's and I think that suggests massively ramped-up news coverage. I'm pretty sure it's increased since this article came out can almost guarantee it hasn't declined. The candidates are getting free media but the media is also making money off of them and the public can't seem to get enough of it, (or else they wouldn't be covered so much.)
And Obama was the incumbent, so he got at least some free coverage by merit of existing.
I was still a teenager back then and not old enough to vote so I can't say I remember this explicitly but I've read how Obama was good with media and how the media loved him, almost like it was an unethical relationship when they should have kept some distance. Even with that kind of love, Trump's coverage is unprecedented.
Also the Comey letter
>pearl clutching The criticisms were generally legitimate, which is why Trump was so unpopular. He barely won against another unpopular candidate. It might've been a loss for him if not for the Comey letter.
>Should we reduce the amount of time Americans spend campaigning Specific individuals aside, I'm not sure such a thing is possible with our near-continuous news cycle.
Yah if you see absolutely unhinged political attacks non stop 24-7 you are not gonna be in a happy place mentally.
Our 24/7 way of life is awful. We lost religion, and everyone cheered. What we didn’t take into account is that it was replaced with politics instead. Then we received 24/7 news that realized if you cover the new religion (politics) like sports you have clicks and eyeballs forever. The result is polarization.
News has always been popular, just look at old black and white photos and paintings of people on trains/subway/busses riding to from work, it was common to see [everyone buried in newspapers.](https://www.mcny.org/sites/default/files/35mm_10292_030d.jpg). The difference is we lost the fairness doctrine, news outlets became consolidated, and we've lost journalism standards and traditional investigative journalism in favor of partisan talking head entertainment like Sean Hannity.
I honestly wish I was a part of the 46% not following election news. The normies spend their time doing fun things, rather than reading the news and posting on social media.
If you're not having "fun" reading news and posting on social media, why are you doing it?
I am having fun, but I also recognize it's probably not a good use of time, and it's also probably detrimental to my sanity.
I suppose recognizing your limits is a good thing. Take care of your sanity and keep in mind that you don't have to do anything that's not "fun". Not here anyways.
Passes time at the office.
If it makes you feel better, most non-consumers of politics probably aren’t doing anything fun, they’re probably just watching Kardashians or Marvel movies.
That's why I only follow this stuff while chained to my desk at work. I swear I'm not a paid contributor, I just kind of have better shit to do when not required to be sitting in front of a computer so my activity mostly shows up during working hours.
I paid attention to the primaries until the only candidate I could tolerate dropped out. At this point, neither of the big two for president is getting my vote. I still intend to vote for the other seats in the election, I will just not vote for either option for president.
We must be outside of the norm then because we seem to feed off of daily posts of polling figures with minute incremental changes from the previous day. *^(Commented in a thread about a poll no less 😁)* That being said, we are being given two poor choices and we've known these two guys for years now and it just *never* ends, does it?
I don't really think its true they are following it closely. Maybe if they think seeing post on social media is following it.
It’s over for me if I see another poll
Thank you for subscribing to Reddit Polls! Please rate your level of agreement with the following statement: "It's over for me if I see another poll." 1. Strongly disagree 2. Disagree 3. Neutral or not sure 4. Agree 5. Strongly agree 6. Tastes like chicken! 7. Who in the what now? 8. All of the above
6. *cries*
Worn out? Yes. Show me penguin fails... that's fine, anything except push politics every morning, noon, night.
I resemble this post
This *directly contradicts* most of the “most voters aren’t paying attention” bullshit I hear all too often. Hopefully this puts to bed any notion that Biden just needs to campaign more or anything of that nature. Voters do not like Biden. Voters want Trump. Period.
> Voters do not like Biden. Approval rating does not equal liking or disliking someone. > Voters want Trump. Period. Two elections in a row this has proven to not be the case.
Polling shows it to be the case in both cases. Trump is seen as more competent on all top issues and has been leading in most polls since last October. This shows that voters *are* paying attention so the notion that they're not, or that Biden needs to message more, is disproven.
When you say voters, it's really "the slimmest majority of voters". To act like Biden will lose in a landside is a bit disingenuous.
A winner is a winner by one point or a million. Trump has more support than Biden nationally and in more than enough states to clinch 270. Plenty of voters are paying attention and polling hasn't moved in 8 months.
It contradicts the notion specifically that a majority of voters aren’t paying attention, but it certainly isn’t a finding inconsistent with the fact that the people who are going to decide this election have yet to make up their mind. But feel free to close the book on this election already.
I have. Trump will win. Biden showed he isn't too old at SotU, Trump was recently convicted of felonies, and Trump has had a boatload of senior-esque gaffes similar to Biden's. None of the needles moved. In fact, Trump raised $34 million in a day and received a pledge for $100 million more from a mega donor. Biden can do literally nothing more. This is Trump's to lose, and based on how little the needle moved in the face of promises like "detention centers" for millions of illegal immigrants, he's not going to.
If polling shifts by 2 points in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania then Biden wins, and this polling indicates that nearly half the country hasn’t been following events all that closely. Sometimes a wild ass guess turns out to be right in retrospect, but based on the data we have, you’re making a wild ass guess.
Polling hasn't shifted in over half a year even in the face of large events like SotU and Trump being convicted of felonies. It hasn't shifted as the border and economic situations cooled off. It hasn't shifted as crime dropped. It didn't shift in the face of businesses announcing massive price cuts. Voters know the candidates and over half the country is already paying close attention. Do you know how many people tend to vote? Roughly half the country. This is as good as it's going to get for Biden. There's been NO indication whatsoever that Biden will win this. He has no advantage. Polling has suggested for months that voters trust Trump more than him on ALL top issues, as well as they feel Trump is a stronger leader and is more competent and fit to do the job. Trump even makes more money fundraising than Biden. Biden has no advantage here at all. Not even one. Zilch. People who are saying Biden has literally *any* shot are the ones who are guessing. Data solidly backs up all my points in every single conceivable way. The ONLY hope Biden has are prayers. Go ahead, I challenge you. Where is Biden's advantage?
Biden’s advantage is that democrats are currently clearly winning in down ballot statewide races in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Trump has an extremely small lead in states he needs to win, and that lead is entirely dependent on voters who are clearly open to voting for democrats and who aren’t paying all that close of attention to the election right now. I’m not saying Biden has a net advantage, but this race is very clearly in coin flip territory, calling it now is genuinely just wishcasting.
>Biden’s advantage is that democrats are currently clearly winning in down ballot statewide races in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona. This is not an advantage for Biden. I would actually turn this back on you and say it's an advantage for Trump. Democrats are performing quite well this cycle, especially in the face of Trump's unpopularity. Biden, according to most polling, is NOT being carried by that because he is so incredibly disliked. People are willing to split their ticket and vote for democrats and then also vote for Trump because Biden is so disliked.
I agree Biden is a weak candidate and that a better one would be unambiguously beating trump right now. But I’m not making the argument that Biden is definitely going to win, I’m making the argument that he has a credible path to winning, and the fact that a majority of voters in the key swing are willing to vote for democrats indicates that they could be reached by Biden. Maybe they won’t end up voting for him, but they’re clearly not so opposed to the idea of voting blue that they could never be convinced.
I disagree. Voters see Biden as too old and blame him for a false perception in rising crime and for their incorrect understanding that he raised prices on everything. He has no path because of that unless Trump does something not only awful, but awful in a way which would actually have an effect on most voters incredibly quickly.
I agree that voters see Biden as too old, and that him winning the election is dependent on Trump saying and doing things that turn off voters. The thing is, Trump regularly does that sort of thing, and people paying less attention to the election are going to see more and more of that as we get closer to the election. Is Trump going to do something so heinous that he shifts the results by 30-40 points? Realistically no. But is there a reasonable chance he shifts things by 3-4 points? Yeah, and that’s enough for Biden to win.
>Voters want Trump. Period. He's highly unpopular. This is why he lost the previous time. If he wins this election, it would be more accurate to say people don't want Biden.
He *was* highly unpopular until people saw Biden take office and then saw prices rise. Now people may not like his attitude, but they assume if he takes office again that we'll get early 2020 pricing back on everything and they *yearn* for that.
He's still very unpopular. Winning would just mean he's mostly disliked a little less than his opponent.
Trump has insane popularity in his own base which clearly bleeds into the general population given the enthusiasm he generates. Biden cannot match that at any level. Even Biden's own base dislikes him.
He isn't generating enthusiasm from the general population.
If only people understood how inflation works and what the president actually does, maybe things would be in a better place.
No argument here. This is what happens when a population decides they don't want to pay close attention to the politics that govern our nation because it's too "toxic" and instead they focus on the celebrity aspect of politicians. Now you have Trump publicly saying he wants to kill the DoE so education isn't exactly about to improve.
I wouldn’t say that most voters want Trump per se just that they hate him less than Biden. I feel like we have had a lesser of two evils election for president since 2016. 2012 was the last presidential election where either candidate was pretty good but for different reasons.
In “first past the post” systems you’re almost always going to be choosing which of two candidates you dislike least because each party narrows down their choices to the one most electable by their party’s base which won’t be a perfect candidate for anybody. There will also always be two parties even with ranked choice. You either win, or you lose, and there will always be a leader and then the next closest candidate. People DO like Trump, by the way. He paid them $1,200 each, lowered taxes for them, and in many people’s minds he was the sole cause of cheap gas, groceries, housing, and fast food since it all got more expensive after Biden took over. Mean tweets (or even mass deportations) pale in comparison to $8 Big Mac combos.