The race is significantly tighter than in 2016, at least per the polling. Mostly, people are excited because its such a vast improvement from the Biden polls that had Trump winning in a landslide.

But folks on Lemmy don’t realize how hard-in-the-paint rightwing talk radio is currently going for Trump. The degree to which “Haitian migrants eating your dog!” and “Venezuelan terrorists have seized a condo in Colorado!” rhetoric has inundated the discourse can’t be overstated. People are taking this shit seriously and sincerely thanks to the breathless bombardment of migrant panic stories crashing over the news networks like a tsunami.

If I didn’t know better, I might suspect there’s a collaboration among arch-conservative megadonors and media organizations to saturate news networks with this fearmongering. I can’t think of any instance in which a news network spewing anti-immigrant sentiment to whip locals into a panicked frenzy has ever happened before, or what the consequences were, but I’m sure that’s not what is happening this time and even if it is everything will be fine.

Yeah. 2016 was traumatic AF. Let’s be careful out there!

Do Americans even realise that in other countries that isn’t north korea or russia, the president or representative of the country isn’t treated like a popstar?

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. Donald Trump was illegitimately placed into power by a corrupt and broken electoral system. That was the real stolen election. Same with Bush v Gore.

The Republicans have won the presidency three times this century, but have only won the popular vote once, on George W. Bush’s second campaign in 2004. The Electoral College screwed us over in 2000 (Bush vs Gore) and 2016 (Trump vs Clinton).

The Deomocrats have also won the presidency three times this century, but also carried the popular vote every time they did. (Also, every time they won, Joe Biden has been on the ticket…)

It’s not dumb. The EC is working exactly as designed.

The EC is the fulcrum that allows the rich and powerful to bypass the will of the people by applying only minimal effort and expense.

Built to appease a former slave state, oppressing us all through the amplification of like 18 fucking red necks in one rural Georgia county…

Yes and No. Yes she won the popular vote, by close to 3 million, but No not in the “swing states” that had been considered “safe”. A margin of 10,000 votes in Wisconsin Michigan? Something like that. Anyway, part of that was Democrats seeing she’s a shoo-in and not bothering to vote.

You Could Fit All the Voters Who Cost Clinton the Election in a Mid-Size Football Stadium

This latest number comes from Decision Desk’s final tally of Pennsylvania’s votes, where Trump won 2,961,875 votes to Clinton’s 2,915,440, a difference of 46,435 votes. Add that to the official results out of Wisconsin, where Clinton lost by 22,177 votes, and Michigan, which she lost by 10,704 votes, and there you have it: 0.057 percent of total voters cost Clinton the presidency.

Electoral College is absolutely the Fuckery Factor though, that’s true.

Yeah, by less than 3 million. 2016 was the biggest presidential punt of all time. Think of how different the world would be now if she hadn’t taken that victory for granted.

That’s not getting better anytime soon. Best we can do for now is to mobile voters and squelch apathy.

At local levels find candidates that support RCV reform if you want real change.

Remember Remember the 5th of November, So there’s hopefully no gunpowder treason or plot

You’re making it sound like one of the candidates wants to dismantle the american quasi-democracy and rule as a dictator, where on earth did you get that idea?

What, just because one of the candidates has loudly and proudly proclaimed that they indend to start their term by ruling as a dictator?

And because that same candidate has said “In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”?

Only if you’re in one of the 6 or whatever states where it makes a difference. The electoral system is so fucked up.

That was apparent to my unqualified eyes. You could see it where she was campaigning. Trump was all over contested states. She stuck to the sure things.

“Hilary/she…”

She was the candidate and made the final call but a lot of people work on a presidential campaign. There was plenty of blame to go around but she didn’t personally make all those decisions. Certainly not alone…

Hillary wasn’t focused on the electoral college, she cared about beating Obama’s vote totals to “prove” she should have beat him.

She came up about 8M votes short from Obama’s big 2008 win. If she’d been aiming for that high bar, she missed it by miles.

Ironically, it was Biden who cleared it handily (with Trump coming in at historic-high second place) in 2020 thanks to mail-in voting boosting turnout nationally by nearly 20M votes. Of course, both parties immediately shut that shit down, lest Americans get used to the idea of convenient, accessible popular voting. The Trump/Biden Post Office under DeJoy has been dismantling the very idea of mail-in voting for the last four years.

I suspect 2024 turnout will be significantly lower across the board.

We need to get rid of all those people who haven’t understood American politics for decades

I totally disagree. We could use a lot of new blood, with people who aren’t resigned to the cynicism of the bi-annual election cycle. The folks who don’t simply submit to the psychic pressure of this heavily propagandized and chronically demoralized election waves are exactly the kinds of people who could break it.

Trump’s biggest triumph in 2016 was bringing out conservatives who had otherwise never voted. People who were too depressed by the duopoly to show up came out in droves during the GOP Primary to support their Big Wet Boy. That kept Ted Cruz out of the White House (which I’d argue would have been far worse for the country in the long run) in 2016.

Sander almost replicated the feat against Hillary that same year, but got kneecapped by a media that was hostile to the very idea of Socialism. But if you want any kind of progressive change in America in your lifetime, you need to see Democrats undergo the kind of change that the GOP has undergone, but from the left.

You need more people who aren’t consigned to voting Joe Biden mechanically every four years, even as he’s falling apart in front of your very eyes. You need more people who want to shake up the party establishment and vote out the rotten incumbents. You need people who actually believe what these candidates are saying, rather than accepting a basket of lies at face value and shrugging when the candidates fail to deliver.

But we can’t go into 2030 with a population of voters who just accept the status quo as the best they’ll ever do.

Comey is from an era where upholding institutions was considered paramount. In that moment, that’s what he was trying to accomplish and he felt that it was in the nation’s greatest interest to do that.

Obviously it backfired. Comey is not a fan of Donald Trump and he later said that he was likely subconsciously influenced by Clinton’s win was a near-certainty.

He shouldn’t be criticized for his attempt at being impartial and promoting transparency.

“Get out to vote” is a direct instruction. It means you personally should go and vote.

“Get out the vote” means you should get everyone else out to vote. “Vote” is being used as a mass noun that you want to make as large as possible -by getting it out and making sure people turn up.

hawk tuah the polls and vote on that thang

See above I posted the article to the Bloomberg poll from October 16th that showed Clinton up 9 points.

That was before Comey “re-opened” the hEr EmAiLs case though.

This says October 19th 2016

Clinton Has 9-Point Lead in Bloomberg Politics National Poll