Biden

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Why I am cautiously optimistic about the election

While Biden was not even in my top 5 choices last time, I still voted for him over Trump and will again. And I’m pretty sure he is going to win, for the following reasons:

Trump’s support isn’t as good as it seems. The man lost the popular vote the first time he ran, never even reached a 50% approval rating his entire time as President (unlike every other person who has been President), and lost his second election by an even larger amount. A majority of Americans don’t want him.

And a large percentage of Republicans don’t want him this time, either. As a semi-incumbent, he should be getting the numbers that Biden is getting in the primaries, but instead, quite often, he’s lucky to get more than 50% of the registered Republicans voting for him. Many old-school Republicans (the kind who aren’t part of the Trump cult) can’t stand him, see the harm he will cause, and while they may not vote for Biden, they aren’t going to vote for Trump, either. They’ll probably just stay home.

The Republican party doesn’t have a lot of money. People just aren’t contributing to them in the same way they are for the Democrats. There are stories all over the states where the local parties are going broke. Which leads to the next point:

Trump has taken over the party. The head of the party is now Eric Trump’s wife. You remember Eric, who took money meant for a children’s cancer charity? Well, you can bet that any money the party raises isn’t going to go to the campaign. It’s going to go to Trump (and probably his legal fees, assuming he pays them).

Moreso, these people have no real experience in running a campaign, and they just fired all those who do.

Trump’s legal worries may influence the undecided. The Trump cultists will never change, and as Trump once said, he can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still have their support. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone can be undecided in this election, but apparently there are a lot of clueless folks out there who can’t tell the difference between as a well-meaning old guy and a lying, cheating, raping idiot who wants to be a dictator, but perhaps the more Trump spends time in court, the more these undecideds may think that maybe they don’t want a criminal as President.

Democrats have done better than expected in recent elections. We’ve managed to win quite a few special elections and in those that we didn’t win (in very red areas) we did much better than expected and much better than the polls predicted. Some of that is because we’re angry and pissed, and that gets people to the polls.

And we’re tremendously angry about abortion rights. In red states where this was on the ballot, pundits were shocked to see that even conservative voters voted to keep abortion legal. Many states are putting the issue on the ballots in November, which hopefully will bring more Democrats out to vote to protect this right (and then they’ll vote for the Democrats running as well.)

And, let’s face it, there are still some reasonable Republicans and moderates out there who may come out to vote because while they don’t agree with Democratic policies, they don’t want someone in there who has vowed to be a “dictator on day one.” Some patriots will put the country’s needs over the party’s.

All we have to do is hold the states we won last time. All over the country, purple states are becoming bluer all the time. It’s not that hard. We can lose Georgia, Arizona and Nevada and still win.

There are more of us than there are of them. Democrats have won the popular vote in every single election except one since Bill Clinton, and the only reason Republicans got into office was because of the electoral college. We can overcome that by showing up in huge numbers in the swing states where our votes are tremendously important.

If we lose, it will be because we stayed at home and didn’t vote, or wasted our vote on a third party candidate. And then we can scream and shout all we want as our country moves toward a Putin-friendly dictatorship, but it won’t do any good because it will be our fault.

And now, a caveat: The GOP knows all this, so they plan to use their secret weapon: cheating. They’ll do everything they can to make it harder for anyone to vote; they’ll use the judges they’ve appointed to throw out ballots whenever possible; they’ll lie in campaign ads and use connections in Russia and China whose goal it is to dismantle American power; and otherwise claim to have won if they lose despite all evidence to the contrary (just like they did last time).

cartoon by Patrick Chappatte

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Biden’s low poll numbers can be blamed on liberals

The reasons Biden’s poll numbers are down are not that people are turning away from him and supporting conservatives — it’s largely liberals who are disappointed with him who are causing the downturn.

Biden never had conservatives supporting him. And unlike Trumpies, we on the left are not in a cult. If the President does something we don’t like, we don’t pretend it never happened.

We’re upset that he isn’t doing more. You know as well as I do if the situation was reversed, the GOP would have indicted the representatives involved in January 6th, the President who caused it, and more. They would have removed the Postmaster General, expanded the Supreme Court to 13, and found a way to get all that done through executive orders and the bureaucracy.

So don’t go saying Biden’s numbers reflect a disappointment with liberal politics, because poll after poll shows that our views are the majority ones. It’s a disappointment that we’re not accomplishing them.

Note that Biden remained constantly ahead of Trump’s numbers for the same periods of their Presidency, and the current numbers are within the margin of error. Note as well that Trump, among all Presidents, never even reached a 50% approval rating his entire term.
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Fake polls!

Rassmussen is known for polls that always favor Republicans to the point where legitimate pollsters consider them unreliable — but Fox News and right-wing sources constantly report them as factual despite their variance from every other poll.

So now they’re reporting Biden’s high approval rating. Suddenly, the right wing is claiming the pollster they’ve always loved is “fake news.”

Honestly, I’d be shocked if they had reacted differently. That’s always their response to any news that contradicts their already-held beliefs.

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We’re the majority here

Republicans have done such a good job at pretending they represent America and that we Democrats are just a bunch of liberal extremists that it’s convinced even some Democrats.

The facts are the exact opposite.

Let’s start by remembering that Democrats have won the popular vote in every Presidential election in the last 30 years except one. And then let’s look at the most recent poll results from Yahoo News/YouGov (which gets high ratings from Nate Silver’s 538 page).

The majority of Americans agreed with all of the following, and in some places by huge margins:

  • $2,000 relief checks: 74% to 13% 
  • Increased federal funding for vaccination: 69% to 17%
  • A national mask mandate: 57% to 32%
  • Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour: 58% to 31%
  • Giving all Americans the option of buying Medicare-like public health insurance: 57% to 22%
  • Eliminating tuition at public colleges and universities for families making up to $125,000: 47% to 33%
  • Stopping family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border: 64% to 20%
  • Halting construction on the border wall with Mexico: 45% to 42%
  • Ending the ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries: 42% to 35%
  • Creating a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children: 61% to 23%
  • More federal funding for research and development to assist domestic manufacturing: 65% to 13%
  • Rejoining the World Health Organization: 57% to 28%
  • Rejoining the Paris Climate Accords: 48% to 30%
  • Cutting carbon emissions to zero by the year 2050: 54% to 23%
  • Investing in renewable energy infrastructure: 65% to 17%
  • Reversing the recent tax cuts for Americans making more than $400,000: 50% to 30% 

A majority also supported the House impeachment of Trump, with a plurality supporting a Senate conviction (48% to 41%).

Every single one of these issue is a winning issue for Democrats. Democrats should run with it and stop trying to deal with Republicans who, in the guise of “unity,” want us to do what a minority of Americans want instead.

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A sigh of relief

You know what I’m really looking forward to? Going days if not weeks without thinking about the President. Because he’ll be doing his job competently like he’s supposed to.

For instance, I have no idea what President Biden is thinking right now. Isn’t it grand?