Comment by mikkupikku 5 days ago
Protest votes are probably overstated, I think most of it comes down to people staying home. Everybody in America already knows what side they're on, and they either vote for that side or not at all. Virtually all political messaging is either trying to moralize your side or demoralize the other, to manipulate the relative ratios of who stays home on election day.
> Obama was able to get people motivated. Neither Biden nor Harris had anywhere near that
How do you explain Biden getting so many more votes than Obama even while Trump improved with black and Hispanics over past Republican candidates?
> How do you explain Biden getting so many more votes than Obama
US population in 2008: 304 million
US population in 2020: 332 million
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...
Barring enormous turnout differences, pretty much every US election gets more raw votes than the last.
Interesting theory, explain 2024 when the total went down.
Simple enough explanation… 2020 was a massive outlier.
If you forgotten, the topic is GP saying Biden didn’t motivate voters. Well, that does not seem correct.
Newsom is an extremely strong candidate. Vance has several critical vulnerabilities that can demoralize right wing voters if the election is handled properly, and the Republicans really don't have anybody else. Rubio maybe, but Rubio won't be able to get ahead of Vance.
> Newsom is an extremely strong candidate.
For what office? President? Do you live in California?
Trump was able to moralize his voters, despite his weaknesses, by using a kind of charisma that Vance utterly lacks.
I think Vance isn't planning on using charisma, but violence.
> I think most of it comes down to people staying home
Obama was able to get people motivated. Neither Biden nor Harris had anywhere near that motivating ability. I don't know that the Dems have anyone as motivating as Obama line up. The Dems seem to be hoping that enough people will be repulsed by the current admin to show up.