re: #181 Ming5000

It’s weird.

Had Trump done a halfway competent job of handling the pandemic, he would have won reelection handily. His disastrous handling of the pandemic, the body count, and the wrecked economy all ran against him.

Even then, a handful of states had close calls in Biden’s favor - again because of the pandemic and turnout favoring Democrats.

GOP intend to make that more difficult by suppressing turnout. They don’t want people voting, because when they do, they aren’t voting for the GOPers.

The other thing is that the GOP and right wing exist in a media bubble. It’s a pocket universe where down is up, right is wrong, and morality is irrelevant - power is the sole motivating thing and imposing pain and cruelty on their enemies is their way of reminding people of their place. When all these people hear and see are Trump rallies with 1000s of people, they think he’s got the support that it takes to win.

And polling is showing itself to be as sketchy as always. GOPers have also called into question the very act of voting and tabulating those votes because they know how timing of those counted votes matter. We can get in-person voting tabulated quickly, but mail ballots take longer, and more people voted by mail in 2020 than at any point in our history. So, early counts went GOP because they voted in person to a greater degree in key states, but the mail in ballots overwhelmed that early advantage.

GOP pollsters and leaders knew this, but sought to cast the mail ballots as somehow illegitimate. So, they were fine potentially disenfranchising millions in the process.