The General Election Mirage

Voters have not yet forced themselves to consider the choice that seems likely to await them next year.

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President Joe Biden arrives to hold a press conference in Hanoi on September 10, 2023, on the first day of a visit in Vietnam. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Detroit is on strike, the House is moving toward impeachment, his son is facing three felony counts with more on the horizon, gas prices are up, a government shutdown looms, and following a foreign trip that featured another Mr. Magoo moment, prominent Democrats are now openly debating whether he must drop his presidential bid for the good of the country.

President Biden has been at the center of the action this week, and it’s been … not super.

The White House and the Biden campaign are working hard to shame the press and quell Democratic concerns and get back to treating Biden like a Fabergé egg: fragile, valuable, and impossible to replace. The message is that Democrats should stop agonizing and stay focused on the general election and the threat of a second Trump administration.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Brian

    Who gives a sh*t about polls? They've often proven to be unreliable. If they ever asked me who I'd vote for, I'd fib. What purpose do they really serve other than yet another way for people to make money off politics?

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  2. R. James

    Maybe the parties should give the electorate a better choice? It's not the fault of the undecided 24 percent that the other 76 percent has back terrible candidates.

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  3. Dadgum41

    Many thanks for the Repub poll graph shout-out to my home state, South Carolina. '... too small for a republic, but too large for an insane asylum.'
    We're so lucky.

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  4. James Morphew

    The general election voters are not the same population as the primary & caucus voters. The primaries happen on obscure dates, with a much smaller turnout. And those primary & caucus voters will choose our next candidates. That is one of our many structural problems.

    We have our open primary system because many people disliked the internal politics of what was once known as the "blue smoke rooms". Some of us now miss those private consultations, where hard truths can be faced and possibly remedied.

    A dearth of good candidates for leadership is a sign of a decaying nation -- look at the USSR in the 1980's. 2024 is approaching way too fast to fix it for this round.

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  5. Avatar photo
    C C Writer

    "Voters are not yet willing or able to tell the parties exactly what they want them to do."

    The two parties have worked themselves into a situation where neither one wants us to be able to tell them what we want from them, because they would prefer not to know, because they would rather keep on doing what they have been doing, telling us instead of asking us, to our great frustration. They prefer the stalemate of an awful choice, because it means less work and no need to think. Even though it is obvious to anyone with half a brain, what people with half a brain would like them to do.

    But at some point, something is going to change; there will appear a little crack in the status quo, and then more little cracks, and then things coming through the cracks and little tendrils sprouting and all kinds of things that are surprises to them but not to us. And then we will hear cries of "No fair! We didn't know! You didn't warn us! This is too complicated! This is so unexpected! Now get back in the box and shut up before you ruin everything!"

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  6. Whiskeyman

    Look at the Eastern Shore and St. Michaels getting a shout out...albeit rightly pointing out what rednecks live there lol.

    For history fans google the battle of St. Michaels in the War of 1812. Everyone that grows up nearby goes for a field trip and learns the local legend of "the town that fooled the British".

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  7. Jfan

    There are two errors in the response to the question of what happens if no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes. First, the 12th Amendment changed the rule for which candidates can be considered by the House of Representatives from the top five to the top three. Second, in the event that the House deadlocks 25-25, things do not simply "get wild." The 20th Amendment provides for the outcome: The Vice President takes over until the House can pick a winner. That Vice President would be the one picked by the Senate from among the top two finishers, and the Senate can't deadlock unless there is a vacancy or abstention. Speaking of deadlocks, 25-25 is not the only way the House can deadlock. If a majority of a delegation cannot agree on whom to support, then that state does not cast a vote in the House, so we could end up with 24-24, for example. An absolute majority of 26 delegations is needed to win.

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    Mike B

    On the Polling Roulette, the sample of "South Carolina Republican non-Trump Voters" can't have been very large. I'm thinking 18 - raw numeric count, not percent - and those evenly split between Nikki Haley and Tim Scott.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    OFF-TOPIC:

    I'm disappointed and frankly surprised to see that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — that festering, malignant, pustulated out-of-control lesion on the Texas legal profession — has been acquitted today by the Texas Senate.

    Can anyone doubt that Donald Trump has found his next Attorney General?

    EDIT: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/16/ken-paxton-acquitted-impeachment-texas-attorney-general/

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    1. Avatar photo
      Bill B

      Not all that surprising.

      Beldar, you wide-eyed innocent child, you still have hope? Join us pessimists and cynics in our Stygian despair and you will rarely be surprised or disappointed. 😉

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      Mudskipper

      I was pathetically hopeful that he would be found guilty. It would have really made me feel better about the state of our politics.

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        Bill B

        😂 the final test? That would presume they passed at least a single test prior to this.

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    4. Avatar photo
      Mike B

      "... that festering, malignant, pustulated out-of-control lesion ..."

      And here I had just sat down with my plate. All of a sudden it looks much less appealing. But actually it was the following clause - "has been acquitted today by the Texas Senate" - that really made me lose my appetite.

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    5. Avatar photo
      2sequoia

      Yes, very disappointing. I had my hopes up.

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