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We have a national curriculum so what I was taught in history was the same as everyone else in this country! And that’s run by a lot of experts from a diverse range of backgrounds so that even if what we’re learning isn’t completely optimal, it’s firmly adequate! Take the L nerds!
No but for real, the US education system is more dire the more I learn about it. It’s such an insane country to have school be both a prison and radicalised right pipeline. Y’all really synthesise having police officers in school to arrest teenagers for smoking weed with teaching students that slaves actually kinda liked being slaves so all this anti-racism stuff is just wild leftist bullshit like it’s normal. No comment on the average US citizen, it’s the societal situation you’re forced into, but on an international scale it’s downright crazy.
But it does intrigue me how “having a national curriculum” isn’t a mission I’ve seen any US people strive for. Perhaps it’s the YouTube algorithm, but the vast majority of states have a national curriculum which not only makes education streaming better (because all university applicants took the same test, for example) but also removes all of the “one teacher can fuck up your life” stuff that I’ve heard from Americans over the years. I am kinda curious if US activists are pushing for some kind of national curriculum tbh.
We have a national curriculum so what I was taught in history was the same as everyone else in this country! And that’s run by a lot of experts from a diverse range of backgrounds so that even if what we’re learning isn’t completely optimal, it’s firmly adequate! Take the L nerds!
No but for real, the US education system is more dire the more I learn about it. It’s such an insane country to have school be both a prison and radicalised right pipeline. Y’all really synthesise having police officers in school to arrest teenagers for smoking weed with teaching students that slaves actually kinda liked being slaves so all this anti-racism stuff is just wild leftist bullshit like it’s normal. No comment on the average US citizen, it’s the societal situation you’re forced into, but on an international scale it’s downright crazy.
But it does intrigue me how “having a national curriculum” isn’t a mission I’ve seen any US people strive for. Perhaps it’s the YouTube algorithm, but the vast majority of states have a national curriculum which not only makes education streaming better (because all university applicants took the same test, for example) but also removes all of the “one teacher can fuck up your life” stuff that I’ve heard from Americans over the years. I am kinda curious if US activists are pushing for some kind of national curriculum tbh.
There have been efforts to standardize education requirements across state lines, such as the Common Core initiative in the 2010s, but results have been mixed. A big part of the problem is that Republicans don't think that public education should be a thing, and they actively work to make the system worse whenever they find themselves in a position to do so. Beyond that, there's only so much that much of the country will accept the federal government imposing on them with regards to education standards; teaching science that contradicts the Bible's creation myth still causes outrage in some districts. Consequently, quality of education varies enormously among Americans who ostensibly have the same degree.
My high school tried to teach economics and finance, but they were only minimally successful. The personal finance teacher had us watching Dave Ramsey, and I don't remember a thing from the economics class. Fortunately, I took a basic economics class in college that was much more informative. Many in here would find the professor appallingly liberal, but he at least seemed to understand communism as it was originally defined by Marx and Engels, rather than conflating it with the Soviet command economy like most neoliberals seem to. I think that all leftists should pursue a basic education on the subject, if only to better articulate their critiques of the current system.
I’m an Econ major but had my political awakening to the left after college— I can’t imagine what it would be like to have my politics without the Econ literacy I had while taking in leftist arguments
I've seen some of the "both sides" posts trying to defend certain right-wing ideas done very poorly. Anchor9 has one good "both sides" post, but I still have a few criticisms of it. I'm not an expert on politics, but I know how to understand and represent a person's ideas properly. I love learning about different viewpoints and ideas and forming my own opinions so I make sure to listen to different perspectives, even far-right ones. And since I am not as heavily biased and influenced as many people when discussing politics, I can represent the right's ideas well without mindlessly supporting or rejecting them. However, I still agree with many people here that certain "sides" and beliefs are better/smarter than others. Still, even though I believe that the right is generally "dumber/more evil/worse" doesn't mean that right-wing ideas should be dismissed, especially when they are so frequently poorly explained. I would show an example on how to properly state and defend right-wing ideas (which also applies to beliefs in general) without resorting to cheap, mainstream political arguments.
But before I start, I want to preface my post with these crucial points you should take into consideration before responding:
1. I would be steelmanning the arguments of the right. Yes many of them are bigoted, some to the point of violence. They also have many dumb people and arguments (though this is not exclusive to the right). I would be fixing and using their best arguments.
2. I am only looking at their arguments at face value. I will ignore their character, execution, or grift, and instead focus on the core of their ideas.
3. Just because the right has a point on a specific issue, doesn't mean that criticisms and counterpoints aren't any less true, nor does it mean that I support their stance. I am simply stating the right's best arguments worthy of discussion.
There is nothing wrong with a nation wanting to restrict immigration and proritize their citizens. There is also nothing wrong with a nation securing their borders and having specific entry points. That's it. That's the argument. I don't need to expound on this with racist, fearmongering points like "immigrants are stealing our jobs" or "immigrants are criminals" because even though many conservatives say those, not all conservatives use those arguments as those arguments are not necessary in supporting anti-immigration and border security.
Going back to my preface, I don't want to see easily refutable responses like "the wall doesn't work at stopping illegal crossing"¹ or any mentions of Republican racism². Similarly, I won't be dunking on poor pro-immigration arguments like "we need immigrants to do cheap, dirty labor."³
¹It may not completely stop illegal crossers, but it still hinders them the same way anti-theft laws don't completely stop stealing but hinders it. And if the wall is ineffective, other methods can still be explored to protect the border
²Just because there are racist Republicans that are against immigration doesn't mean that racism and anti-immigration aren't separable. In fact, I have seen a few conservatives support a near-complete ban on all immigration, even those from white countries.
³There is nothing wrong with Americans doing "dirty" labor. And whether the worker is an immigrant or not is not an excuse to underpay them.
There are two good ways to respond to this. The first is more of a philosophical response like "what gives nations the right to deny good people that want to live in their land entry? Why should your country of birth/ancestry decide where you can and can't go? Are national borders ethical?" These questions ignore present context and focuses more on the nature of immigration and borders.
The second way to answer it is to factor real-world context. But these are the more difficult questions "both sides" would have to answer and compromise their morals on, meaning neither "sides" are completely right or wrong when taking their best arguments. Those anti-immigration would have to ask themselves: "What about illegal immigrants who managed to make a good life as a citizen of that nation? Or asylum seekers who need protection from their country of origin? Is it right to deport these people back?" For those pro-immigration: "What will happen to our country if we let anyone freely enter our borders? If we continue to accept every asylum seeker and immigrant who wants to live a better life, what happens to their home countries? Is it right for people to leave their families and culture against their will and move to a new country rather than fighting for a better life in their home country?"
And this is just one issue where either the right has a serious point to consider and/or the left ignores or fails at. There are still many topics including, but not limited to abortion (I probably have the best stance on this from a bioethical standpoint), gender, crime, censorship, voter IDs, men's rights, and vaccine mandates. But for the sake of length I would instead continue it in another post if anyone wants to continue this discussion.
Modern politics, together with the people's use of statistics and other "studies" make the average person dumber. The way I see politics from the perspective of a person that doesn't really understand or overvalue the discipline is this. Humanity generally agrees on the same values. For example we can all agree that these four values of personal responsiblity, empathy, discipline, and helping the marginalized are inherently "good." You don't need "studies" to agree with this. But the truth is some of these values may go against each other, and corollary to this, we cannot execute all these values at the same time to the highest level. "Compromise" is then necessary. I placed compromise in quotation marks because if you are choosing between two values or "goods", are you really compromising when none of your morals are being violated? The right generally values personal responsibility and discipline more while the left values empathy and helping the marginalized more. Neither are wrong. Knowing when to apply personal responsiblity/discipline and empathy/helping the marginalized is what politics should be, at least for the masses. But instead a good chunk of politics has degenerated into "should we compromise with a senile, human rights violator to stop another senile, human rights violator fascist" or "how can x party/candidate secure more votes/positions of power" or "x,y,z is racist and leads to fascism".
When I say that politics should be for the masses in the previous paragraph, it is parallel to the "science for the people" movement. Apart from politics being used to serve the interests of the people, this also means that the average person's values should be mostly sufficient in making political decisuons and that the most relevant political concepts should be easily grasped by the average person. The average person shouldn't have to spend hours reading studies on why America is still racist and why many black communities are still struggling or have degrees to understand climate change or economics, especially when most media are extremely biased. The average person should instead intrinsically value helping the marginalized, reducing pollution, and working a job with a just wage. In fact, the average person who isn't that knowledgeable in politics should be asking political experts "why is it so frequent that we end up with two candidates with a realistic chance of presidency and how did it reach the point where Biden and Trump are the top 2 candidates for 2024?" Honestly, politics experts could better spend their time answering questions like this. Or focus on explaining to the masses what needs to be done by appealing to the average person's base values rather than "proving" to them that America is still racist or expanding tbe definition of racism. It doesn't matter if the average person believes that America is still racist or not, you can at the very least convince them that "struggling communities that happen to be mostly black" need more assistance to be self-sustaining. Let the political experts be in charge of the studies the same way scientists are in charge of researching climate change. Intervention is only necessary when one's beliefs lead to action that actively violates another person's rights (ex. one person believes that racism is good and starts attacking black people or one person believes that fossil fuels is good and burns fossil fuels purely for the sake of releasing harmful emissions in the air).
Philosophy, logic, and ethics > politics and handpicked studies/statistics. If you noticed the arguments I listed on immigration, they don't need sources to defend nor attack them. I did not need to research the effects of immigration of every country at every time period and understand the context of these nations to raise these points. A nation "prioritizing their own citizens" or "protecting their borders", or "is it immoral to deny entry to people" can be argued with axiomatic statements we agree on, unlike "immigrants are criminals", "the wall doesn't stop illegal crossing", or "immigrants make the economy better" which require empirical evidence and long hours of research and reviewing.
I would also love to make another more chill "politics" thread more suited to tackling political topics at a philosophical level. This thread is too application-focused and learning about modern politics is unnecessarily complex. There is a lot of human factors that affect a person's stance on an issue such as a politician's flawed character, propaganda through cherry-picked stats and resources, or playing the "political game" with leftists arguing over allying with Biden/Harris (even though I understand both "sides" of the issue). That way we can see "right-wing" ideas represented better and leftists would tone down the infighting. I would much rather discuss my views on abortion in a thread like that than in here because if I discuss it here, I might receive responses like "denying abortion would kill many women in need of it for medical reasons", which are important points to discuss in the real world, but takes away from the discussion of the morality of abortion itself. But I understand now may not be the best time with the election approaching. Having to moderate this thread with a semi-"political" thread, especially if this thread gets locked and people migrate over to the new thread, is not something I want to burden the mods with.
a couple things that i feel are worth engaging with here
~ your proposal of approaching politics from an abstract ('philosophical' in your wording) approach, itself is taking a specific philosophical/ideological position: 'idealism' over 'materialism'. according to the 'idealist' position, which you presuppose here, cognition is prior to physical reality ("i think therefore i am"). in descartes' meditations, the entire existence of the material world is only "proven" by his individual cognition. by contrast, materialism treats the physical world as primary, then comes sense perception of the physical world, and only from accumulating sense perceptions do we develop cognition.
idealist political philosophy is very dangerous because it invalidates the knowledge that comes from lived experience and instead prioritizes people who separate themselves away from material reality and spend time debating abstract arguments writing books etc. for hundreds of years, idealist philosophy centered around debates over whether various indigenous peoples had souls and therefore whether their material lives have value. now ofc one could argue that idealist philosophy didnt inherently entail justifying centuries of genocide, but what cannot be denied is that it was 'logically consistent', and the fact that we can observe the phenomenon of the defense of genocide by idealist philosophers for centuries, and respond that it is dangerous regardless of its logical consistency because of its political outcomes, itself demonstrates that we cannot allow abstract cognition to operate independently of analysis of the material world.
idealist philosophy cannot prove that colonialism and genocide are bad in the abstract. rather, the knowledge that colonialism and genocide are bad comes from the hundreds of millions of people over 500+ years who survived, who perceived and experienced the violence with their own eyes ears etc and who then organized cumulative perceptions into cognition, and then integrated that cognition with material practice, doing everything they could to change the situation, to protect themselves / their communities and to defeat the system(s) of oppression that were responsible, learning from what worked and didnt work and responding accordingly. and this is how 'materialists' understand political knowledge in general, knowledge comes not from academics but is developed through people struggling for their liberation, trying something analyzing failures and successes and synthesizing those analyses into new strategies etc to try again and so on.
so tldr, from the point of view of dialectical materialism, your proposal of discussing politics at the level of abstract beliefs values etc without reference to actual situations in the material world can only result in 'talking nonsense', because political knowledge can only come from perceiving material reality, analyzing accumulated perceptions and synthesizing a plan to attempting to change that material reality.
~ imo one inevitable consequence of idealist philosophy that shows up in some other places in your post, is that political issues become 'flattened' in order to be more accessible to abstract/mathematical/symbolic logic. for example, your starting point on migration is 'does x country have a right to regulate its borders and in what ways.' this inherently means viewing migration from the point of view of that country, rather than in the context of a global socioeconomic system (imperial capitalism). i rly dont know how u intended to proceed further from here but to me, it can only lead to nonsense because u are trying to develop abstract beliefs or values about migration without actually referencing what migration looks like in the real world.
from a dialectical materalist point of view, we would instead start with observing and describing global migration patterns and analyzing the primary forces that lead to migration. so what are the primary causes of migration? one is war or other political violence, eg refugees from eg ukraine and syria in the past decade, refugees from iraq and afghanistan in the prior decade, refugees from palestine in every decade since the nak'ba. often this is violence perpetrated directly by one or more of the dominant imperialist powers, eg the US or Russia, and in many/most other cases those powers bear at least some indirect responsibility, but ofc each situation of war / mass violence can be analyzed more precisely than these generalities. the other primary cause of migration is ecomomic, migrants fleeing from countries that have become impoverished, 'primarily' due to the global economic system in which the imperial powers steal and/or exploit the resources of the rest of the world but again one can analyze economic conditions in each country more precisely.
so, as myzozoa's post also alluded to, we can then understand migration as primarily people fleeing countries that have been / are being devastated by imperialist violence, to reach one of the nations that is responsible for that violence and which now holds much of the wealth that was stolen/exploited from the countries from which they fled. given that context, it is pretty absurd for the u.s. or any of the other states that are directly responsible for the primary conditions that are forcing people to migrate in the first place, to then claim sovereignty over their own borders (and when the us never respected other countries' sovereignty over the course of war after genocidal war, various coup attempts and other interventions across central and south america etc). furthermore, working to enable migrants to share equal access to the resources of the 'host' countries can be a small form of reparations, redistributing a little of the stolen/exploited wealth back to the peoples from whom it was taken.
i hope this 'example' helps illustrate why it is necessary to take a materialist approach and actually investigate the details of a political phenomenon, rather than abstract 'philosophizing' about "whether or to what extent countries have the right to regulate their borders" or whatever.
~ i do agree with you that a lot of what passes for political discourse is very silly and useless, but i disagree on some key particularities. for example, i actually agree that discussions abt "is america 'still' a racist country" are not infrequently dead-ends, but thats not because it is a bad question to ask (tho one might argue for choosing a different wording and/or narrowing the scope a little), rather bc of specific ways that such discussion is typically framed. eg sometimes it gets turned into this weird metaphysics where like either amerika has a pure or impure 'soul' and is either innocent or guilty of xyz form of racism. and even when the determination is 'guilty' there either are no clear changes proposed or the changes are totally nonsensical, eg claiming that mandatory body cameras (which the police departments themselves operate and fully control who gets to see body camera footage) are somehow going to prevent or limit police violence against black and indigenous people.
a materialist analysis of police violence would instead look at things like the historical development of policing, as well as how various police departments operate on a day to day basis eg what are the geography schedules etc of patrol routes, which laws are the ones that constitute the basis for most of the arrests tickets stops and other police actions, and so on. then u can organize various aspects of that info to develop 'low-level' analyses, eg that the vast majority of police actions are 'petty' property crimes, or that some neighborhoods have much higher levels of police patrols etc than others. and then in combination with historical aspects eg that amerikan policing began from slave catchers, one can reach a 'deeper' level of analysis eg seeing that policing rly primarily orients toward protecting rich people's property and the imperial-capitalist economic system. and again any analysis is continuously tested through practice by those directly impacted, families and communities who have lost ppl to police violence fighting to improve the conditions of their lives; an 'analysis' is ultimately only useful to the extent it is integrated with 'praxis'.
obv police violence is only one dimension of racism and im sure that what i wrote above about that has flaws, i am rly not in the position to do such an analysis im j trying to illustrate a rough example; and also to explain how the problem that u were reacting to rly is not talking about amerikan racism but that instead of attempting a materialist analysis of xyz type(s) of racism and trying to understand how it developed and why it continues with the goal of developing responses/solutions toward liberation, a lot of discourse in mainstream media and such is filled with abstract moralizing, mythologizing, fantasizing etc. and tbc this doesnt apply uniquely to racism, u can see a similar phenomenon when it comes to most 'topics', lots of abstract moralizing but very little substantive material analysis; but because there is such an intense mythology about the us as the greatest country in the world etc and therefore the necessity to continuously whitewash the central role of genocide and slavery in the nation's founding, material analysis gets discarded in favor of moralizing mythologizing etc even more than usual when it comes to 'the topic of race'.
~ imo one inevitable consequence of idealist philosophy that shows up in some other places in your post, is that political issues become 'flattened' in order to be more accessible to abstract/mathematical/symbolic logic.
I would also love to make another more chill "politics" thread more suited to tackling political topics at a philosophical level. This thread is too application-focused and learning about modern politics is unnecessarily complex.
Emphasis mine. I understand where the sentiment comes from, but I'm wary of it. Political issues are necessarily complex when situated in material context because we inhabit a complex material world. It can be tempting to disengage from that complexity in favor of abstract philosophical argument, but I think that we ought to resist that temptation. As the post above mine rightfully points out, we are prone to emerging from such abstraction with conclusions that aren't especially useful; furthermore, we must always remember that it is a privilege to be able to retreat into abstraction in the first place. I can have an abstract philosophical argument about immigration because it doesn't personally affect me, but I would have more pressing material concerns if I was trying to gain American citizenship.
Sorry to rant again - but - politics isn’t complex.
Most of the major conflicts can be summed up by a few simple words:
Racist Supremacism
Colonialism
Asset Stripping
Asset hoarding
Religious Supremacism
Even in the context of Palestine/Israel, the ICJ advisory opinion from last week showcases how utterly simple the whole current conflict is. One country is occupying and subjugating another.
The resolution is simple: stop the occupation, withdraw forces, end apartheid.
The complexities arise out of parties not wishing to abide by agreed international law, preferring instead to continue with actions that have been clearly and supremely slammed down internationally.
The solutions to solving the simple problem are wide ranging and complex but can be summed up by BDS, which is the same set of actions taken by the international community with apartheid South Africa (which is still suffering from the effects of that long colonial occupation, but is by every measure improving year on year).
For me as an outside observer to the USA, the problem seems pretty simple to me. You have outside influences unduly undermining your first amendment rights and your democracy. Your first actions should be to address that through political means.
Apparently the short-list for Kamala Harris VP pick is between Josh Shapiro, Mark Kelly and Tim Walz. Two of them are currently State Governors and the other (Mark Kelly) is a Senator for Arizona. Personally i don't know enough about any of these guys to really judge who of them would be the best pick.
Tim Walz would be the definitive pick of the left. (Bashesr would probably be 2nd.) Waltz is an extremely successful Governor who’s accomplished a lot of social and economic progressive policies for his constituents. If she picked Tim the hold-outs of the base would come roaring home, but the donors might hate it.
Josh Shapiro almost assuredly locks in Pennsylvania, and has some strong record for standing up to big corporations— but choosing him will immediately lose her ALL of the “Vote Uncommitted” movement and a great deal of youth/arab/muslim American voters that might give her a chance since he’s an avid Zionist who called the demonstrators the KKK.
Mark Kelly is pretty milk-toast uninspiring/unimpressive, and he puts a contentious state’s Senate seat into play so I’d tell her hard NO. Only pro is he’s an astronaut(?)
Apparently the short-list for Kamala Harris VP pick is between Josh Shapiro, Mark Kelly and Tim Walz. Two of them are currently State Governors and the other (Mark Kelly) is a Senator for Arizona. Personally i don't know enough about any of these guys to really judge who of them would be the best pick.
The VP choice is electorally irrelevant. What is most important is that she finds a suitable governing partner and someone who can step in at any time for the next eight years. Vice Presidents are also a shoe-in contender at the next open election, which would ideally be 2032.
My vote was for Andy Beshear. Since he’s not a finalist I think she has to go Josh Shapiro. Since America showed how deeply ageist we are, Shapiro would be the youngest (59) / “most viable” 2032 candidate.
I think she should avoid any candidate who’s likely to be extremely devisive to the Democratic voters this close to the election. Locking up Pennsylvania would be good, but you’re definitely underestimating again how politically active and on edge the Pro-Palestine factions are. She doesn’t need explosive protests against her at and in the convention after coming in to unite and pull us forward. Seems very unwise.
Even if most Americans are not invested, it’s a situation where a vocal minority can cause a lot of problems— and I wouldn’t underestimate their willingness to blow things up.
The VP choice is electorally irrelevant. What is most important is that she finds a suitable governing partner and someone who can step in at any time for the next eight years. Vice Presidents are also a shoe-in contender at the next open election, which would ideally be 2032.
My vote was for Andy Beshear. Since he’s not a finalist I think she has to go Josh Shapiro. Since America showed how deeply ageist we are, Shapiro would be the youngest (59) / “most viable” 2032 candidate.
She's choosing Tim Walz if shoring up a swing state isnt a concern, also means he's not risk of having his spot taken over by the GOP if he's gone. Fits a "progressive ticket" while also giving off non-threatening moderate white guy vibes and doesn't have baggage like Shapiro does.
Also while I'm here, I wanted to share a website with you guys that I'm going to go on a limb and assume most of you have already seen before anyways. I remember back in 2020, me and my roommates were browsing this sight on Election... Day? I guess it technically would have been "Election Night" as America waited for the results, but you get my point. This website contains daily updated statistics on voting polls in every state and distract, an interactive map, and even its own voting simulator. Apologies in advance if I am not allowed to post links here, I can remove this if need be. The link is: https://www.270towin.com/
Edit: if anyone is curious, the interactive map as of the time of posting this currently lists voting projections of 251 for Republicans and 226 for Democrats based on the most up-to-date polling information and the website's daily simulation data. Notably, Pennsylvania is now listed as a must-win state for the Democratic Party, as the highest amount of (currently projected) electoral votes Democrats can earn with a Republican win for Pennsylvania is 268. Pennsylvania joins Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan here as currently projected battleground states on the interactive map.
She's choosing Tim Walz if shoring up a swing state isnt a concern, also means he's not risk of having his spot taken over by the GOP if he's gone. Fits a "progressive ticket" while also giving off non-threatening moderate white guy vibes and doesn't have baggage like Shapiro does.
Forget the polls. I just completed tracking the state-by-state presidential voting trends via excel. The data is.... different than one would expect. I modeled each Presidential election since 2000, when the modern two-party horse race close election era started. I plotted each state's result compared to the national result, and extrapolated the trendline into 2024.
A few important observations on the battleground states: Arizona has trended hard towards the Democrats since 2012, so much that we can assume 2008 was an outlier because John McCain was on the ballot. I had to manually account for this and track midterm and state level data to make sure that it checks out (and it does).
Georgia and North Carolina are trending blue as well. Georgia was solidly Republican (approximately R+12) until 2012, and like Arizona has broke hard towards the Democrats. Georgia should only be about R+2 this cycle. North Carolina has gone from R+14 in 2000, to a projected R+3 this cycle.
Colorado and Virginia trended hard towards the Democrats for the last two decades and are no longer competitive in any capacity despite what some polls say. Nebraska-2 is closer, but has the same rapid trend towards the Democrats
Nevada, New Hampshire, Minnesota are stable Lean Democrat states. It is not crazy for Trump to campaign in any of these, but the Democrats should be favored. There are no discernable trends.. they just tend to lean slightly blue.
Florida and Ohio are not competitive. They have trended hard towards the Republicans and are not coming back. Florida is about as Republican as Texas now.
Texas should be competitive in 2032. Democrats should come closer than they ever have, but it is still R+8 or so.
The "Blue Wall" of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are unfortunately trending away from the Democrats. If you subscribe to the VP choice influencing votes, this is a strong case for Josh Shapiro. Pennsylvania despite being seemingly critical state has the worst outlook by pure voting trends. Hopefully I am wrong.
Now for the fun parts- The map!
This is my projected "closest Democratic win" map based strictly on state voting trends. Kamala Harris wins once the popular vote margin of exceeds 2.5%, with Michigan being the tipping point state. Arizona and Georgia are projected slightly more Democratic than Michigan. At a popular vote margin of 3.0%, Wisconsin and North Carolina likely fall into Harris' column. Pennsylvania becomes a win at about 4.5% margin of victory. To be reasonably certain of victory, the Democrats need to win the popular vote by 3%.
This is my projected "closest Democratic win" map based strictly on state voting trends. Kamala Harris wins once the popular vote margin of exceeds 2.5%, with Michigan being the tipping point state. Arizona and Georgia are projected slightly more Democratic than Michigan. At a popular vote margin of 3.0%, Wisconsin and North Carolina likely fall into Harris' column. Pennsylvania becomes a win at about 4.5% margin of victory. To be reasonably certain of victory, the Democrats need to win the popular vote by 3%.
There are clear trend lines pointing in opposite directions. Arizona has gone from R+12 in 2012 to R+4 in 2020 where as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were R+3. Pennsylvania in particular has gone from D+5 in 2000 to R+3 in 2020. It’s clear which way the winds are blowing. Arizona has a growing Latino population and is importing Californians. Georgia and North Carolina have a lot of non-white voters and more college educated whites now than Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Hillary Clinton might have been on to something back in 2016… the trend just didn’t materialize completely yet in that election.
Hmm no sorry I don't see it. GOP has been bad in races in those swing-y blue wall states lately, they will probably be blue if Arizona is as well. Also speaking from experience living in Texas, a lot of Latinos and transplants from Cali or the Northeast are very conservative, it doesn't automatically translate to Dem gains
Hmm no sorry I don't see it. GOP has been bad in races in those swing-y blue wall states lately, they will probably be blue if Arizona is as well. Also speaking from experience living in Texas, a lot of Latinos and transplants from Cali or the Northeast are very conservative, it doesn't automatically translate to Dem gains
Hmm no sorry I don't see it. GOP has been bad in races in those swing-y blue wall states lately, they will probably be blue if Arizona is as well. Also speaking from experience living in Texas, a lot of Latinos and transplants from Cali or the Northeast are very conservative, it doesn't automatically translate to Dem gains
Hey I’m just sharing my findings. We probably should not call them the “blue wall” anymore. The Harris campaign should not overlook the recent success Democrats have had in statewide elections in both Arizona and Georgia. They weren’t flukes. There is a path to win without Pennsylvania.
i think this statistical extrapolation stuff is pretty silly but gusanos are absolutely not comparable to migration to arizona. cubans coming to the so called US during the revolution, sometimes literally escorted by the us military, was primarily wealthier cubans who were afraid of the economic changes of the revolution and what might happen to their $$$. obviously, people who supported the bay of pigs and detested the revolution were coming with particular political orientations that are much more likely to go Republican (even if both parties were strongly anti-castro but policies like whether the rich should be taxed, even for those who werent actually that wealthy in the amerikan context but if they still viewed themselves as rich based on their former class position within cuba then not going to be interested in taxes on the wealthy.)
migration to arizona from latinoamérica is as usual based on nogales being a key border crossing + ppl migrate to wherever they have friends or family, maybe u can find one migrant somewhere who chooses a destination based on republican vs democrat but in general there are obv bigger priorities. as far as migration from california to arizona, this is again driven by economic factors bc CA prices are so high especially for housing. im sure u can find some cases of someone fleeing a democratic government or whatever but when in reality the CA state and local government have eg among the most extreme anti-homeless policies in the "country" and bear direct responsibility for the Grants Pass decision with amicus briefs etc, u would rly have to be so deep in mythologies and also no one wants to uproot their whole lives for symbolic nonsense, the CA to Arizona migration is much more younger people who had to move regardless say after getting a degree, not people who lived in their community for decades and now are uprooting evthg bc they dont like the democrats
I’ve no doubt the 2020 election, as beset it was by the issues of Covid, was still far better and more transparent by a very long way than Venezuela‘s.
Speaking as an observer from the UK looking in, the United States in 2020 had a very robust election and the results were entirely robust.
Comparing an obviously hideously corrupt South American country with the United States is a false equivalence.
