Only sometimes?

I seriously doubt left wingers were the difference in this election. I doubt there are significant enough numbers of far left people in Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin for it to have made any real difference.

Conservatives tend to have more kids than liberals. Maybe that has something to do with it. Seems to me, people are often heavily influenced by their parents when it comes to politics.

People can feel whatever they want about the economy.

Yes, that’s true.

The question is, should they feel that way?

You’re making a normative claim. It’s the is/ought distinction. There is no objectively true way to determine how someone ought to feel. You think they shouldn’t feel that way. Yet, they feel that way regardless. It’s not up to you, you are not an all powerful god who gets to decide how people should feel.

Or to put it another way, if I asked you why you feel the economy is bad, and you can’t point to anything to explain that it is (or flatly refuse to accept any explanation) that I give, then you should rightly be told you’re wrong, because you are.

I’m sure if you asked them they would give you a number of reasons for why they feel the economy isn’t doing well. They might say they feel housing prices are too high, or that they’re struggling to pay their bills, or that they feel pessimistic about their employment prospects, or that they’re worried they won’t be able to save enough for retirement, or that healthcare costs are too high, etc, etc.

Thank you for proving my point better than I ever could.

You’ve proven nothing. Feelings are not hypotheses that can be tested through experimentation or research. There is no objectively right or correct emotional reaction to a situation or experience. If someone feels anxiety or stress about their economic situation, there is no objective, verifiable way of proving that feeling is “factually wrong.”

That’s not a feeling, that’s a claim or an hypothesis. Such claims can be based on feelings, but the claims themselves can be empirically tested. What can’t be empirically proven or disproven, however, is whether or not someone’s subjective feelings about something are “right” or “wrong.” So, if you ask someone how they feel about the economy, and they say, “I don’t feel good about it,” there is no way to prove that feeling is factually “wrong.”

I don’t know what messaging would have worked better, and I don’t know why people chose Trump over Kamala. I don’t believe Trump will make their situations better, in fact I think he likely will make them worse, but a majority of voters didn’t see it that way. Again, I don’t know why that is, other than at some point it became a popular idea that Trump was simply “better on the economy.”

What I really, really want people to understand is that while I don’t understand why people chose Trump that doesn’t mean the economic anxieties that drove them to do it are not real. They are real, and their feelings about the economy should not be dismissed because they don’t necessarily align with what the economic indicators seem to be telling us.

But a person’s feelings about their economic and financial situation is not something that can be proven “wrong” empirically. If a person feels stressed about making rent, or frustrated about higher grocery prices, or pessimistic about their job prospects, there is no study or experiment you can conduct that can empirically prove those feelings or anxieties are “wrong.”

It’s not so much that people are claiming that the economic indicators are false or incorrect, because that is something that can be definitely disproven, it’s that they don’t feel great about the economy DESPITE the indicators being good, which means the economic indicators might not be very good at actually indicating how people are going to feel about the economy.

And how do you explain to someone that how they “feel” about the economy is factually wrong?

There is no such thing as a factually wrong feeling. This is everything that’s wrong with the liberal elites. The people say they don’t feel great about things and the elites simply look down their nose at them and say, “you’re factually wrong.”

all indicators show a healthy economy

Fuck.Your.Indicators.

If a majority of people don’t FEEL like the economy is doing well, then it’s not doing well. Period.

The economy right now is doing very well…

And yet the economy, and people’s fears about it, were the main reason Trump won. Until liberal elites like this guy get it through their thick fucking skulls that how the majority of people FEEL about the economy is INFINITELY more important than what the economic indicators say, they will continue to lose. If people tell you they don’t feel good about the state of the economy, believe them. Don’t ignore them, don’t wave them off, don’t dismiss them as ignorant morons, believe them and listen to them.

What the fuck was the “Trump messaging”?!

I already said:

He asked people if they felt like they were better off today than they were four years ago

The Trump messaging was really pretty brilliant. Despite its simplicity, it was incredibly effective. He asked people if they felt like they were better off today than they were four years ago, a majority said no, and that’s all it took.

Well, there’s still 42% who voted for Harris. What’s wrong with them?

There are a lot of things that are just universally beneficial, like healthcare, environment, education.

Ok, so let’s focus on that stuff, then. My point is, maybe we can’t achieve perfect justice and fairness for everyone, so let’s just try to like make rent more affordable and make it so people don’t have to stress as much about paying their bills and maintaining a decent standard of living.

It’s all too much. The Democratic party wants to be a big tent party, the party of all. That’s just not possible. Every group wants the party to prioritize their issues. Blacks and whites, straight people and gay people, men and women, young and old, religious people and atheists, owners and workers, cops and criminals, leftists, moderates, and conservatives, etc, etc, etc. We can’t give everyone what they want.

I’m sorry, I really am, but we can’t make everyone happy. Especially since a lot of these groups do not like each other. Look, it would be great if all these different groups could come together in one big rainbow coalition of peace, join hands and sing Kumbaya but it ain’t gonna fucking happen. Stop trying to please and appease all these people and instead try to materially improve the lives of as many people as possible.

Stop trying to achieve perfect justice for every identity group and just focus on making housing more fucking affordable for as many people as possible, and healthcare, and a decent education, and so forth.

But this poll indicates that voters were asked specifically which presidential candidate they voted for. They could have lied, but I’m not sure why they would.

The only explanation I can think of is many more men than women voted early/absentee, enough to more than overcome the higher turnout of women than men on election day. Either that or these exist polls just aren’t very indicative.

I can see how that might happen if there were more groups or options, but this is relatively straight forward. There are two possible choices for gender: male or female, and each of the two candidates won their respective gender by 54% to 44%. Since these exit polls indicate that more women voted than men, I don’t see how this could result in Harris not winning more votes overall.

Well, the only thing we can do now is hope it won’t be as bad as we all fear it could be. That and try to come up with a plan in case our worst fears are realized.

I think the rest of the world needs to start isolating the US. The US has too much power and poor leadership. Other countries need to find ways to reduce their exposure to and reliance on the US. I think the best way to do that is for the world to come together and create an independent global reserve currency. As long as the dollar is the world currency, the US will have all the power.

It’s so idiotic to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral system when there is still a chance that he might win. If you convince people the vote is rigged, and then you win, won’t that mean that you won by cheating? I know his supporters don’t care, either because they lack the critical thinking skills to understand how this is illogical, or they don’t care if Trump wins by cheating, but it’s just so god damn frustrating.

It’s a choice between a potentially extremely harmful oligarchy and a hopefully much less harmful oligarchy. I think kind oligarchs are better than cruel ones. Sure, no oligarchs would be best, but that’s not one of our options. You gotta make the best choice of the ones you are given. That’s why I voted for Harris/Walz: they’re better than the only other alternative.