4 ms·

Forgive me for the political ignorance, I'm Swedish: Won't a centrist Biden have a much better chance of winning against Trump compared to a super-leftist (eve

by tpmx 7y ago

Forgive me for the political ignorance, I'm Swedish: Won't a centrist Biden have a much better chance of winning against Trump compared to a super-leftist (even compared to Swedish mainstream politics) Sanders? Isn't the whole point of your upcoming presidential election (I mean for the 80-90% or so non-republicans here on HN) to get rid of Trump and to get back to some kind of normalcy?

jeffdavis 7y ago
In theory, everyone left of Biden will vote for him anyway, so being just a tiny bit left of Trump is the ideal winning strategy. But in reality, it's more complicated. There is no clear political spectrum on which everyone falls. Not everyone has the same enthusiasm about politics. Not all candidates are equally competent/likeable/trustworthy. People get disillusioned with their own party or excited about a new party or platform.
- tpmx 7y ago
  Ah, I get it - the hope was that Sanders would get young people to vote, and they wouldn't have done so otherwise. It's kinda different here. People vote. Maybe you should consider making it illegal not to vote, like in Australia. (Yeah, I know, it's an eh.. stretch goal.)
  - jeffdavis 7y ago
    Sanders said he could do that but didn't show a lot of evidence. It's really a lot more complicated than that. People don't like coronations. If you take someone's vote for granted and act like they have no choice, things will not go well for you. You have to make the case every damn election. To your most loyal supporters and the swing voters and every other constituency.
brodouevencode 7y ago
> Isn't the whole point of the upcoming election to get rid of Trump? For approximately half of the country, yes. For approximately the other half, no. It's that tiny slice of true independents in the middle that have been deciding the results for a few cycles by now. The DNC does not like Sanders because he's too far to the left.
op03 7y ago
Biden wont make a dent in the Trump base if you have seen a Trump rally. Normalcy is going to take a long time to restore. We have to just wait for a politician who can connect and build trust with that base. And hope the size of that base doesn't grow as all kinds of frustrations mount.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Nobody will make a dent in the Trump base. If Trumps misconduct to date doesn't sway them then no outsider ever will. Very few of them will change sides, there was actually an example on HN here a few days ago. But that's definitely not representative of what is happening in Trumps base as a whole.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    I think the Trump base knows all that (about Trump's, ah, questionable ethics and, um, distance from the truth and so on), and they don't care, because Trump's appeal was never that he was ethical, or that he was telling the truth. His appeal was that he would do what they thought needed done. And he has more or less done that. They didn't think that open borders were a good idea. Trump has pushed fairly hard to close them. They didn't think that shipping jobs to China was a good idea. Trump not only paid lip service to stopping it, he put tariffs on China. And so on. Now, if you want to get rid of Trump, you almost certainly have to appeal to those people. You aren't going to do it by telling them how stupid they are, or how racist they are. You aren't even going to do it by telling them how much of a liar Trump is. You have to do it like this: "You're worried about jobs going to China? Yeah, we understand. That's a real concern. And you don't just want a welfare check when the factory closed, you want another job. Here's what we're going to do about that, and here's why it's better than what Trump is doing." And you need to be right - your approach has to be beter than Trump's, and they have to see yours as better. You can't get rid of Trump by looking at half the country as backward hicks who just need to be stomped into political oblivion. You have to care about their problems, and you have to help with their problems. Then you can make a dent in Trump's base.
    - 7y ago

by tpmx 7y ago

jeffdavis 7y ago

In theory, everyone left of Biden will vote for him anyway, so being just a tiny bit left of Trump is the ideal winning strategy. But in reality, it's more complicated. There is no clear political spectrum on which everyone falls. Not everyone has the same enthusiasm about politics. Not all candidates are equally competent/likeable/trustworthy. People get disillusioned with their own party or excited about a new party or platform.

tpmx 7y ago
Ah, I get it - the hope was that Sanders would get young people to vote, and they wouldn't have done so otherwise. It's kinda different here. People vote. Maybe you should consider making it illegal not to vote, like in Australia. (Yeah, I know, it's an eh.. stretch goal.)
- jeffdavis 7y ago
  Sanders said he could do that but didn't show a lot of evidence. It's really a lot more complicated than that. People don't like coronations. If you take someone's vote for granted and act like they have no choice, things will not go well for you. You have to make the case every damn election. To your most loyal supporters and the swing voters and every other constituency.

brodouevencode 7y ago

> Isn't the whole point of the upcoming election to get rid of Trump? For approximately half of the country, yes. For approximately the other half, no. It's that tiny slice of true independents in the middle that have been deciding the results for a few cycles by now. The DNC does not like Sanders because he's too far to the left.

op03 7y ago

Biden wont make a dent in the Trump base if you have seen a Trump rally. Normalcy is going to take a long time to restore. We have to just wait for a politician who can connect and build trust with that base. And hope the size of that base doesn't grow as all kinds of frustrations mount.

jacquesm 7y ago
Nobody will make a dent in the Trump base. If Trumps misconduct to date doesn't sway them then no outsider ever will. Very few of them will change sides, there was actually an example on HN here a few days ago. But that's definitely not representative of what is happening in Trumps base as a whole.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  I think the Trump base knows all that (about Trump's, ah, questionable ethics and, um, distance from the truth and so on), and they don't care, because Trump's appeal was never that he was ethical, or that he was telling the truth. His appeal was that he would do what they thought needed done. And he has more or less done that. They didn't think that open borders were a good idea. Trump has pushed fairly hard to close them. They didn't think that shipping jobs to China was a good idea. Trump not only paid lip service to stopping it, he put tariffs on China. And so on. Now, if you want to get rid of Trump, you almost certainly have to appeal to those people. You aren't going to do it by telling them how stupid they are, or how racist they are. You aren't even going to do it by telling them how much of a liar Trump is. You have to do it like this: "You're worried about jobs going to China? Yeah, we understand. That's a real concern. And you don't just want a welfare check when the factory closed, you want another job. Here's what we're going to do about that, and here's why it's better than what Trump is doing." And you need to be right - your approach has to be beter than Trump's, and they have to see yours as better. You can't get rid of Trump by looking at half the country as backward hicks who just need to be stomped into political oblivion. You have to care about their problems, and you have to help with their problems. Then you can make a dent in Trump's base.
  - 7y ago