In election after election, tinier slices of ever-more-specific demographic groups in fewer battleground states determined the outcome. Finally, A.I. narrowed down the process to the perfect precision of a single person.
A.I. Finds the Ultimate Swing Voter
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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It’s very zen, isn’t it? In 2016, the election was by a razor-thin number of essential votes. It was just about as close in 2020. Just a few tens of thousands of votes, out of tens of millions of counted votes, decided the whole thing. If the dems simply went to the horizontal layer rather than the vertical silo, they’d be able to pass all the things they’ve been promising for decades. (Penny drops.) Ohhhh! That’s why they keep playing identity politics. (Still, as long as Nancy Pelosi is rich — and totally not from insider trading — that’s all that matters, amirite?)
If/when Harris loses, the post-mortem will reveal that “yeah, going after that crucial 2% of the population that’s trans? Turns out, they’re not as important as going after everyone who has student loans they can’t pay because their bogus degrees don’t get them interviews, let alone jobs that pay a living wage.”
> going after everyone who has student loans they can’t pay
The Democrats are far from perfect, but in this case they are already with the program. It’s stymied by Republicans who keep fighting it.
> That’s why they [the Democrats] keep playing identity politics.
I’m going to need help understanding this. I am seeing that the Democrats welcome people who are Black, Latino, white, …, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, …, English speaking, Spanish speaking, …, professional class, working class, …, cis-gendered, transgender, …, citizens, asylum seekers, …. The Democrats don’t always get it right, but they do work at it. On the other hand, the party that incessantly brings up identity politics is the one that claims that “they” are trying to replace “us.” Republicans constantly repeat that the big-tent Democrats are trying to exclude white, rural, working class people, but it is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who are dividing people into an “in” and “out” group in this way.
Nah…if Harris loses, the Dems’ post-mortem will be that Jill Stein, with help from the Russians, stole the Muslim vote and cost Harris the election, and the Dems will double down on their hostility to the Greens.
A pretty good assessment, brother martin. If Trump wins in 2024, I think the Greens might actually be able to leverage it to claw their way onto the national stage. Of course, they’d have to, well, actually get organized. (Seriously, take a look at some of the websites that Green candidates and Green state organizations have. It’s like something out of 1997.) And they’d have to take a few pages from the ACT UP playbook.
Look at how the MSM took this recent hurricane and used it to distract everyone from Kamala Harris not being able to put this election away. It’s 20-odd days, and I’m sorry, dems, but the fish is starting to rot. She’d better stick the landing on disaster mitigation on this thing. And pray there isn’t another hurricane this season.
Well, we don’t have the money to hire the professional help that the Democrats use, so I’m sure that explains some of what you’re seeing. However, we do seem to have finally found a “core constituency” that is actually an extensive, deeply connected community–Islamic Americans. Grassroots organizing generally doesn’t get much attention until it busts up the sidewalk, but, presuming things hang together well enough that there will be future elections, that will be happening. And yes, ACT UP is in our playbook.