What got Trump elected was a combination of Hillary being a lame duck and Trump's willingness to let his campaign manager use technology. They basically hired a bunch of nerds and said "figure this shit out", and they did. One of the vehicles they used was identity politics, but that's a function of the reason he got elected, not the underlying reason, IMO.

it's virtually impossible to calculate "well they arent HRC" vote counts, but i'd say a noteable percent of trump voters did it just because it wasnt a vote for Hillary.

then there's the uninformed "i just dont want my taxes to go up" vote, with almost no idea of trumps platform, and no foresight as to what havoc that tiny bit lower tax costs brings.

these two factors moving from 2016 to 2020 could be nominal or massive. or stated another way Biden may get a huge boost just by not being HRC, and 4 years of trump madness may have tax minded voters thinking twice.

2 excuses for a trump vote i heard IRL from people i know:

"well we knew our neighbors were voting for HRC so we voted trump to cancel it out"

"i had no idea of what he even wanted to do once potus, i just didnt like the tax raise from universal healthcare HRC wanted"

i think in 2020 people are far more informed by default, 4 years of wall to wall coverage adds up.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Jun 24 2020 11:18am

The wrong identity politics. Biden's strength is that he polls better than the rest of the Dem field in states that are key to Trump's electoral strategy.

Hillary Clinton alienated white working class and middle class voters. She did well among well-to-do suburban whites, a trend that has continued to develop into this election cycle. Her problem was that the white working / middle-class demographic is still extraordinarily powerful, especially in the Midwestern states that Democrats have traditionally taken for granted. It was still far too early for her to pivot to a coastal-minority coalition, sacrificing in turn the hard-won gains the Democrats established during the Clinton years. She overestimated how much her "cultural support" in Hollywood and other media outlets mattered. She racked up historic gains in coastal states where her victory was never in doubt, and lost states that haven't been close in decades.

They are just WWJD.

ALL false idols must come down.

Thats what you get for voting in Democrats

I know you're being sarcastic, but the more I think about this statue situation, the more my opinion has been drifting that direction. Perhaps statue-izing people is a fundamentally bad practice. Statues last hundreds of years, but bultural norms can change much more quickly than that.

The lump of metal/stone doesn't confer enough value to society to offset the potential danger it poses. It gives people something to destroy and fight over. In contrast, a rowdy group of kids can't attempt to go destroy every copy of a history book that is being used to teach about the lives of these people. If we decide that we should change the curriculum (and thus the books), that decision can be weighed with careful thought.

This post was edited by Kayeto on Jun 24 2020 10:12pm

Great point 💯

What dangers do statues pose?

Statues serve as physical reminders of the past, both to commemorate those worth commemorating and to recall pivotal moments in our history.

If mobs of vandals want to destroy public property, they should really just be rounded up and arrested. For some reason it has become controversial to enforce the law.

It gives people something to fight over.

In the time leading up to the removal of Joe Paterno's statue, you had people with differing viewpoints at the statue fighting over it. Some were attempting to tear it down, others were camped out to protect it. Eventually, it became too much work for campus security to deal with, so the university made the decision to remove it.

Based on growing unrest around statues today, it seems likely that we could be setting ourselves up for potential incidents. As it becomes more accepted for people to tear down statues, more people are going to start doing it. Some of the people aren't even going to do it for a reason, it's simply become a matter of "well I guess no one is going to stop me from doing it, so let's go have some fun." Eventually an opposing group is going to decide that there's a statue they want to protect. The statue gives them a physical location to fight for, a place to draw the battle lines.

Statues also venerate, and serve to define the values of a culture. Removing statues and replacing them as values change is normal.

Books and museums serve as physical reminders of the past. Statues and monuments venerate and celebrate

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jun 25 2020 01:00am