Yeah, home advantage is less and less relevant every year. Once upon a time this would be news, but it’s a new era and he wasn’t even the presidential candidate.

Too true. Listening to Sanders from the 80s is the same as listening to him today. It’s shocking how little his views and rhetoric have changed while being absolutely correct from the beginning.

Sort of, with the major distinction that you can just tell somebody water green tea is and they’ll know what green tea is. It’s a trivial fix. You can tell a Trump supporter that Harris is not a communist, and they won’t believe you for a million years, with all the facts in the world behind you.

Plain ignorance is part of it, but I really don’t think it’s the driving factor. You don’t vote for Trump because you lack some key knowledge, no matter how trivial that knowledge is. You vote for him because you’ve been inundated with conservative media for decades, and you have no grasp on reality anymore. You really believe Harris is going to hold you at gunpoint and replace your gas heaters with electric. You really believe she’s going to sell the United States to China for a hundred bucks. You might even believe there’s a war on men, a war on your religion, a war on everything that brings you meaning to your life. If I truly believed the things that conservative media was saying, I’d vote for him too.

It’s not just ignorance. It’s brainwashing.

Not a bad idea, though I’d tweak it to say election officials can’t release information, since that preserves freedom of press.

Either way, it’s highly unlikely it’s ever affected the outcome of an election.

And I very much recall at least two instances where he said this is the last election you’ll have to vote in. Is he going to find/create a way to suspend the 2028 election and stay in power? Who’s going to stop him?

That’s why I said it’s possible, I just don’t think it’s probable. People are loyal to Trump until they’re not. Nobody’s loyal to him because they like him or they think he’s a good guy, or because they think he’ll bring the country prosperity. They’re loyal because they think they can get something out of it. Most people aren’t in a position where they’re willing to give up literally everything to help this particular asshole become a dictator. Those that are are typically incompetent - see anything and everything related to stealing the 2020 election. They tried a LOT of things, but nothing came even close to working.

So they’ll try again, and I don’t think anybody’s doubting that. And I don’t think our institutions are particularly strong, but they’re probably strong enough to stop that kind of incompetence from leading to a dictatorship.

Let me be clear here. If we have a global nuclear war, that’s not recoverable, because every human on earth will be dead. If we enter a fascist dictatorship with today’s technology, that may not be recoverable, because we may see the permanent end of anything resembling a democracy.

I’m not saying there weren’t horrific atrocities committed during Trump’s reign. What I’m saying is that so far, there’s a chance future generations can live better lives.

Not unusual, and not a bad thing. They called a number of races with less than that. If you’re taking your expected percentages with the voting samples you’ve got and your statistics and calculations say there’s less than a 1% chance the race will flip, you might as well call it. They’re pretty much never wrong when they make a call that early.

It also doesn’t actually matter because the AP isn’t who decides the winner.

The truth is it’s unlikely anything historically big is going to happen in the US. We saw what Trump did last time he was in office, and it was really bad, but it was recoverable. The fear isn’t that it’s likely, but that it’s far from a non-zero chance, and there’s very little we can do about it. That uncertainty is scary when we’ve had a relatively good time in recent decades.

Will we see a sudden shift toward a state where you can get jailed or murdered for being a dissident? Maybe, but probably not.

Will we see an escalation of the wars involving Israel, such that we see a WWIII and/or the first nuclear strike since WWII? Maybe, but probably not.

Will we see economic collapse causing widespread hunger and homelessness that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression? Maybe, but probably not.

The only thing that’s really a guarantee is that we’re another four years away from dealing with climate change, and while that’s massive for humanity down the line, individuals currently living in the US are probably going to be mostly fine. Not to say nobody will be affected - hurricanes, floods, fires, and so on - but it won’t cause catastrophic failure of society in the near future.

They should have given people on the left some reason to be motivated to vote though, not just fear.

This is the massive key that I really don’t think the Democratic party understands. When people are scared, they vote conservative. There are literal studies that show fear is the driving force behind conservative voters. Democrats need to make them feel safe. That’s one of the reasons Obama was so successful - he ran on change and hope. Fear works for Republicans. It doesn’t work for Democrats. But they see fear working for Republicans, so they copy it.

I’m not convinced that’s the reason, but if the country is so misogynistic it’s impossible to elect a woman, we need to stop putting women up for election. That’s shitty, but it’s better than Republicans winning.

The Democrats have managed to field two candidates so unelectable they lost to Donald fucking Trump. That’s how. And we, the Democratic constituents, are failing to either take over or dismantle the Democratic party so we can get a halfway decent candidate in. We fucking suck.

Very true! It’s hard to imagine Israel would be the same today without the particular cultural choices those first immigrants made. Thanks for the addition.

I think Al Jazeera is good for news related to the middle east - Al Jazeera has an Arab bias, the same way US news has a US/Israel bias. When there’s a conflict between US/Israel and the Arabs, I tend to be more sympathetic to the Arabs, so I prefer their news. Somebody with politics different from mine would disagree.

Plus they sometimes put out absolute fire like this: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/9/11/debate-in-nuclear-armed-former-colony-fails-to-reassure-global-community

The North Carolina example is fascinating, I don’t know how I missed that when it happened. Incredibly, Harris is running again this year since he wasn’t among those convicted.

I’d argue the big difference would be if we’re talking the presidential election, since it’s not self-contained within a state or a city. I’d consider it unlikely the powers that be would let the presidential seat go vacant while they scramble to hold another election, but who knows?

Could just get this tattooed for how often it’s true.

This is untrue. It is better to get your vote recorded the first time, of course, but fixing things later is also possible. If regional authorities are made aware of election interference, they can initiate a re-count, refuse to certify the results until a new vote is taken, etc. That’s part of their job.

Is there precedent for casting a vote in the general election after election day in the United States?

I’m extremely nervous and don’t really know what to expect once I’m in my polling place

Understandable to be nervous, but you’ll be fine! There’s always a lot of signage of where to go, and the people will walk you through what you need to do. The process is intentionally accessible to people who are probably much less capable than you are.

I’m actually okay with that not being included as a critical point in Israeli history. My understanding is it was one piece in a long line of antisemitism, and while it was known by the Nazi party, it was known by the leadership to be fictional and wasn’t used seriously as propaganda by them. That’s not to say it didn’t have any effect, just that I’m not convinced it made much difference when it comes to the creation of Israel as a state.

I’m open to alternative viewpoints if you want to provide evidence or just offer some book titles that might change my mind.

I think this might be a semantic argument - it’s not important to me if we use the words “give” or “create.” Happy to use whatever words you prefer for allies having power and control of an area and ensuring that power and control is transferred to their chosen ally.

British Mandatory Palestine was officially ending May 15, 1948. Israel announced its independence on May 14, 1948. The United States officially recognized Israel as a state 11 minutes after it declared itself a sovereign state. It’s strange to suggest these are coincidences rather than planned action with their allies, but there’s plenty of evidence in addition to this to make it very clear that Israel wouldn’t have stood a chance without the backing of their superpower friends.