Many swing voters who opted for Donald Trump told pollsters that they felt that Democratic coastal elites looked down upon them and that they were reacting against the feeling that they were viewed with contempt. After the election, as if to confirm their suspicions, Democrats repeatedly said that people who voted Republican were stupid.
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Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Does anyone know of a quantitative analysis on the impact of swing votes vs 2020 Biden voters who sat this one out?
On a cursory look, it seems to me that the Dems “lost” 10%+ of the Biden votes (which was a historic high to be fair) whereas the Repubs largely retained their absolute vote numbers from 2020 (which was also a historic high for them).
If so, exit polls of voters, even swing voters, while interesting, kind of miss the bigger story – one would have to interview non-voters… (and ask them about inflation, proxy wars, fringe issues like genocide, etc.)
This also indicates that the strategy of “winning” voters “(back?) away from” the Republicans went nowhere and that they should have fought to bring out their base instead (duh?).
Of course, telling potential Republican swing voters that they are stupid may not exactly have helped with that strategy – so we circle back to the cartoon at least. Hindsight is so 2020.
Meanwhile, Ted continues not realizing that Russia is committing war crimes as Israel………………………….but he’s smaht…………………I mean Fredo Smaht, but smaht, nonetheless.
It isn’t that the dem leaders think or say out loud that the voters are stupid or treat them like they are stupid. They ARE stupid. The conservatives spent 40 years setting up a factory system that turns out poor thinkers. Social media perfected the process. In the 1700s, it took six months to grow a chicken large enough for it to be table ready. In the 1950s, it took just under two months. Now? Six weeks.
The big question though? Trump now has four years to basically do everything he wants. In 2026? The Republicans will have had two years of unlimited gorging at the trough. They’ll never let the democrats recapture the House or the Senate at the midterms. And there’s no way the democrats will have their act together.