Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General Winning

Let me put it this way, the electorate is made up of all of us. White, black, brown, Asian etc. Republican, Democrats, independents and those who just don't give a coyote's howl at all about politics or who wins or loses. It's made up of the educated, the uneducated and those in-between.

My problem is the painting of the broad brush, throwing the uneducated into the GOP column and the educated into the Democratic column. Although not long ago it was exactly the opposite with the uneducated voting Democratic, college grads, Republican.

Things change, change is constant. From a historical vantage, you have this from 1972 thru 2008 where I get a lot of my historical stats from.

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2008/results/president/national-exit-polls.html

You can see changes in demographics and how they voted.

As for illegals, I'd say your pretty much correct. Most would classify an illegal as not coming to this country with a passport and visa. whether seeking asylum or just crossing over are placed in the same column. But here is where the GOP makes hay, only 27% of All Americans approve of Biden's handling of immigration, 59% disapprove. independents 20% approve, 68% disapprove. Question 67B

https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/ab8vvo6g3z/econTabReport.pdf

there's tons of other information in the poll. Which I would say 99% of folks just skip over and go with the horse race numbers. The perception here, laws don't mean anything for a perception is Biden and company have thrown out the welcoming mat for illegals and are progressing to open borders. now perception doesn't have to be based in fact or the truth. One gleams their perception from a 30 second spot on TV showing thousands of illegals living under a bridge. Why becomes totally irrelevant.

As an aside, I've always wondered how many people vote on stances on issues and policies? I don't think many do. Republicans and Democrats vote for the letter behind the name of the candidate, regardless of who that candidate/s is or are. Independents, a lot of them vote the beauty contest, the popularity contest, for charisma as history shows, usually the most charismatic candidate wins and if not win the presidency, wins the independent vote.

Corroborating my claim. Excellent.

O .... Corroborating my claim. Yes the electorate is as dumb as a box of rocks. But .... that was not what I intimated nor asked. You continue with the worn out line ... the polls say X. If your opinions or beliefs are dictated by the latest polls, welll .... there's not much point in me trying to discuss anything with you. It would be much like trying to discuss anything with a Trump supporter. Your opinion is what the polls say, theirs is what Trump says. And you wonder how you could have missed 1/6 .... ya ain't gonna git it from a poll.

When I say the electorate is as dumb as a box of rocks, that does not mean only Republicans are stupid. I think the electorate includes all parties and independents.

I dunno. I think it is scary people are not as concerned as I am for the future of our country. I am just the mad man from the mountain .... you have heard the message.

I think people are more concerned than you might imagine. But their confidence in government fixing anything has waned over time due to the government's failure to ever fix anything.

Near as I can tell, the next eight years are pretty much a wash and little is going to get done.

Just exactly like the last eight years. I just don't see any chance of this logjam breaking up in the next decade.

My point is to let you know what America is thinking as a whole, all of America.. Not just one's party base or the like. That's what polls do. If I want you to know what I'm thinking, I'll tell you. Most partisans of both stripes don't want to know what America as a whole, the majority of Americans are thinking or even wanting or not wanting. Well, they do want to know if what America as a whole wants or a majority of Americans want if it is what they, the partisan wants. Finally, how this thought, the perceptions might effect the upcoming midterms.

Greger, you hit the nail on the head. Way too many of our problems this nation faces won't be solved because as a problem they're too valuable as a campaign issue. Solve them, then no hot campaign issue to fire up the old base or to use against your opponent. If one can equate confidence to trust in government, you have this.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/public-trust-in-government-1958-2021/

Perhaps it's our political system, our two party system. Neither party wants the other party to solve anything because if they do, then the other party gets the credit and you stay out of power by losing the next election. If you can stop the other party from solving something, then you can use that as a campaign issue to regain power. Again that is the cynic in me.

Or maybe it's us, the voter. We'll give one party complete control, the presidency, the senate and the house in hopes of that party solving our problems. Then two years later we take either the house or the senate or both and return them to the party out of power. Prohibiting any problem solving. Probably because we, the voter have this sense we just gave one party too much power and we need to reign that power in.

We, the voter switch the presidency from one party to the next. From Truman to IKE, from IKE to JFK and LBJ, From LBJ to Nixon and Ford. From Ford to Carter, from Carter to Reagan. From Bush to Clinton, from Clinton to Bush and from Bush to Obama, from Obama to Trump, from Trump to Biden. Only in 1988 did we the voter stick with the party that held the presidency back to back, but for only one term.

We do the same for congress, we elected Bill Clinton and then 2 years later give him a GOP congress. We did the same for G.W. Bush in 2006 giving him a Democratic congress, the same for Obama in 2010 presenting him with a Republican House and in 2014 a Republican senate. We elect Trump and give him a Democratic house 2 years later. Now We elect Biden and chances are the GOP will retake the House in 2022.

Or it simply may be we don't trust government to solve our problems because they never do as you stated. So we just keep on making changes, not giving either party time to solve anything. Just a SWAG.

What about the idea of an impartially programmed super computer making decisions? Of course if that computer made decisions that were contrary to what the other side wanted there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth that the computer had been programmed by the “wrong” people. Or at least people contrary to the desires of that side.

I am beginning to have a queasy feeling in my stomach as to the idea if democracy can survive.

I hope that hypothetical computer would strive to construct laws that benefited most of society. Perhaps an 80/20 split? Not being swayed by the desires of politically powerful lobbyists.

I suppose the response would be “Dream on Ken”. Or should all the powerful Republicans simply want the lower to lower middle class to simply disappear? I believe that to be their goal but if that were to happen who would do all of the dirty work for them?

Then again if the left-wing Democrats could simply bite the bullet and be satisfied enough that our government was working towards a mutualy beneficial direction that would be good enough. IMHO.

They seem to be ready and willing to sabotage the whole shebang thereby leaving Biden to drift about and the idea of any sort of compromise dead.

We are phuqued.

When the government experienced the longest shutdown in history during the Trump Administration, it was pretty hard to tell because the Trump Administration was so incompetent, nothing really got done...

It's really their perception the government has never fixed anything. The US government is actually damned good at fixing things, but there has always been lots of opposition. For example, getting Moderna financed so they could do all the vaccine creation steps at the same time, instead of taking the usual slow low-financial-risk approach? They got the vaccine made in record-breaking time, because of government actions. And that was TRUMP's administration! All of the initial steps toward creating mRNA vaccines were funded by US government grants, and as a result we are that much closer to the biomedical singularity.

I’ll take a SWAG. Perhaps the perception of the government not solving anything is because of problems that have been with us for 50 years or more. The national debt was a topic during Eisenhower, illegal immigration ever since Reagan and probably before. The economy is always talked about, crime also. Especially the Mafia which we don’t hear much about anymore, but under a different name, organized crime. Drugs, drug lords etc. There’s probably many more that off the top of my head I haven’t mentioned. Numerous problems that gets talked about from when one is young to old age. Problems that never go away or are never solved.

It might be we forget about the problems the government solved. They’re not with us anymore. But these other problems remain forever as if the government isn’t doing a thing about them. I think it’s easy to understand folks having a perception the government never solves anything.

Then when we elect a new president, replace those in power with those out of power, we expect him and those who we elected to replace the old to solve all these problems in a matter of months, if not weeks. When they don’t, we get peeved at them and are ready to boot them out. It becomes the same old, same old nothing ever get solved. Just a SWAG.