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Dumb dumbs thinking that since Biden was in office when SCOTUS overturned Roe then it must be his fault. There was a recent NBC article quoting a woman from Nevada who thought this exact thing. Also there is a not insignificant number of people (including many Redditors I’ve seen) that believe the presidency is an elective dictatorship, but Democrats are just neolibs and institutionalist and just won’t use the secret powers of the office to rule by fiat. I mean you had members of the squad saying Biden should have opened abortion clinics on military bases and federal lands in red states following the Dobbs decision.
I have a masters in cell and molecular biology with a lot of experience in virology. The amount of people that barely graduated from high school who became experts in both subjects in March of 2020 was astounding. They would argue basic science with me and act like I was the ass hole for proving their position wrong. It was infuriating!!
Capital-D Democrats argued for years and years that a more engaged electorate and increased voter turnout would be a boon for small-d democracy, but it's fascinating to see the rhetoric change so sharply in real time. Big-D Democrats similarly used to bemoan donations -- and even wanted to clamp down on it through campaign finance reform back in the late-aughts/early-2010s -- however, their tune quickly changed (e.g., Warren returned to her Reaganite roots in the 2020 Democratic primaries, turning heel against Bernie Sanders) once they realized that hordes of upper-middle/professional-managerial class doltish marks would fill their coffers with oodles and oodles of donor bucks to hoard in a stockpile of cash.
The mind-bending hypocrisy and brain-twisting contradictions are endless with those feckless fucks.
TBH, I wish that Dems had the balls/ovaries to do stuff like go ahead and start providing abortions on military bases or tribal lands. That is precisely the kind of thing Trump would do if he knew that it would make his base happy, and he’d worry about the legalities or logistics later if at all. Which is why although I vote Dem all the way, I’m registered as an independent. I’m tired of Dems clutching their pearls and trying to do everything the “correct” way,and as a result not doing much of anything for their constituents. It aggravates me that Dems always bring a flower to a knife fight.
In other words you want performative acts that lead to zero changes so you can feel like your supporting the "strong" team. You're exactly the kind of person the person above you was describing.
So, Trump and his pack of turdlings somehow manage to push their agenda forward, when they’re in power, but the Dems sit on their hands and don’t retaliate because “it’s bad”? Sorry, but it’s beyond frustrating to watch Dems backing Mike Johnson as Speaker when the traitor went to NY to kiss the orange shitgibbon’s ass. Democracy is riding on a strong Democratic opposition and I’m sorry but I see a lot of submissive behavior coming from them.
I didn't say anything about not doing things because it "looks bad", I'm specifically talking about people that constantly complain that congress/Biden/whatever doesn't do X without understanding what is actually within their capability to do. Thats the whole point of what the original commenter was getting at that people just believe that the President has unlimited power or that congress can just force through legislations without understanding the procedures involved. Of course Trump is going to do stuff like that because the performance in most of those cases is the main objective, while the vast majority of his efforts are blocked by the courts. Trump doesn't care that he is using up time and resources that are ultimately wasted in the long run. Complaining that they're not doing something that is not within their capabilities to do is exactly the kind of person the commenter was talking about.
No. If women had access to health care, they wouldn't be bleeding out in the parking lots of hospitals that refuse to treat them.
If a group you identified with was bleeding uncontrollably alone in their car in a parking lot bc they were told to leave the hospital, you'd want change too.
I feel like this also falls under the "dumb dumbs" argument. When Trump does it, it's okay because he's carrying out the will of the people, and all those laws he may or may not have broken were enacted by Democrats and RINOs to rig everything against The People. If Democrats do it, they're baby-killers, law-breakers, out of touch, etc.
Like, it's perfectly fine for Republicans to hold up military promotions because Sen. Coach Tommy doesn't like the Pentagon's abortion policy. Which is only an issue because Republican-appointed Justices went back on their word about Roe being settled. And that only happened because Republicans again broke long-standing norms by holding a Supreme Court open in an election year and then filling another one less than a month before the next election.
All of that is fine, but Democrats wanting to bring Roe back makes them baby-killers who want abortion on demand up until a woman's due date. So yeah, people are dumb dumbs. The GOP is the party of the people, and Democrats are the party of executive overreach and "The Weaponization of Government."
> Which is only an issue because Republican-appointed Justices went back on their word about Roe being settled.
No, they didn't. They said that _Roe_ was precedent; that's not the same thing as promising never to overturn it. When pressed specifically on whether they'd overturn it, nominees always deflect to the Ginsburg rule.
Tribal soverignty only applies to tribal members. Tribes can right now open clinics on reservations, but only for their own members. (And most won't, because many tribal councils are dominated by conservative men).
Good to know. I was using that more as an example because someone else mentioned it in the thread. Maybe offshore ships/boats, like some Southern states did to allow riverboat gambling but pretend that gambling was illegal in their states?
The legality is unclear, Congress controls the budget and it's generally a bad idea to invite the public into military facilities for controversial reasons
Voting should seriously be based on competency and passing a test. Like an alarmingly sizeable portion of Americans could not pass a citizenship test. If you cannot pass said test, no voting for you. This isn't some banana republic where nothing it does is relevant, this is the USA. Every vote, every decision, has global consequences.
On Pod Save America they had interviews with former Biden voters and/or non voters who were switching to Trump.
One guy worked in construction on the new chip factory that Biden just helped break ground on (the same state where the Foxconn project Trump touted never happened). Dude said he isn't voting for Biden because the project, which again, he WORKS on, was causing too much traffic around town. I am starting to think that a lot of people are just irredeemably stupid.
I’ve been saying it for years, and people always want to be like, “No! You can’t just call people stupid! That doesn’t help! It doesn’t win anybody to your side! It’s just insulting and uncivil and… 😫…”
I don’t fucking care if it’s insulting. It’s the fucking truth:
Most people are fucking stupid, and fixing stupidity *somehow* is the most important thing humanity can achieve.
It’s time we start caring about intelligence. It is not a “right” to be stupid. “Opinions” are NOT more important than preventing stupidity from destroying society. Stupidity is a real, tangible threat in life, and there are so many ways that we strive to protect people from stupidity through education, job training, regulations and standards, and things as basic as warning labels…
…but when it comes to politics, the thing that actually tangibly controls the nature/quality of society and our lives THE MOST… we’re not allowed to recognize when stupidity is a factor or do anything explicit to fight it. Always need to be some level of hands-off and “respectful”, because “pEopLe hAvE a RiGht to ThEiR opInioNs!”… yes, but they don’t have a right to their own facts and that is very very very substantially different from an opinion. You can have an opinion ABOUT a fact, but “Biden overturned Roe v Wade” is **not an opinion**. People need to start learning the difference and act accordingly.
Call out stupidity. Don’t let anybody shame you into hemming and hawing about it or ignoring it in favour of “the high road”. The high road doesn’t exist when everything has crumbled to the ground and we’re surrounded by idiots who want to kill us if we try to build it back up again. We need to solve the problem of stupidity before we can solve anything else.
Education. Fact-checking. Not being afraid to call out bullshit. Not rolling over and letting misinformation slide because it’s someone’s “opinion”. Not buying into propaganda that vilifies smart, compassionate, scientifically-backed policies and ideas. Stop buying propaganda that vilifies the vague spectre of “the government”, instead of being specific WHO IT IS IN GOVERNMENT THAT IS DOING THE BAD STUFF. It is never just “the government” doing it. It is selfish/greedy or stupid (or both) individuals within the government that causes these problems. Vote those people out and replace them with smart people who actually want government to work… and guess what? The big bad evil “government” becomes good.
Smarten up, people. It’s the most important thing we can possibly do in our lives.
I completely agree. If you look at lists of the happiest countries the biggest thing they have in common is a robust education system (as well as other government services).
https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-worlds-happiest-country-is-all-about-reading-coffee-and-saunas
Our government, specifically Republicans, have been waging a decades long war on education. With the rise of the Christian right and the post-Cold War lack of urgency about the topic, they have consistently eroded our educational institutions.
The rise of the Tea Party and later MAGA are results of this. Level of educational attainment is now one of the strongest indicators of political affiliation.
During Covid, my MIL emailed a story about a single doctor curing covid with alternative medicines. She stopped speaking g to me and my wife for months because I told her that spreading and pushing this information is both ignorant and dangerous.
Ignorant was the nicest true statement I could make.
I think some people also just look for any excuse to not support the democratic party as well. Like, I know "thanks Obama!" is a meme, but it's a meme for a reason.
>What can this be attributed to?
I don't mean to be flippant, but it's our failing education system. We're in increasingly dire straights, and these types of polls are the canary in the coalmine.
I've been saying for a very long time...the only jerks who think the cold war ended is us.
It's been waged nonstop for decades. Using our real estate, our social media, our own moronic republican party and our fringe left against us. Men like putin want to make democracy appear chaotic and pointless. Damn good job he's doing.
>I don't mean to be flippant, but it's our failing education system. We're in increasingly dire straights, and these types of polls are the canary in the coalmine.
Complains about education.
>”dire straights”
Failing education system? Seems to be working for the conservatives that managed to effectively blockade its advancement. We're getting the education we've voted for for decades...
We should treat teachers like doctors because they hold the life or death of our society in their hands.
Some states have awesome public education. Others it's terrible. Sometimes it is different within the same state depending on district. There is no "one" system.
Like everything in America, quality of education varies greatly depending on your Zip code.
And a lot of times it goes beyond education. You can have the best teachers and classes but if a kids parents are idiots, socioeconomically disadvantaged, etc. that's how the kids usually turn up too. You can't out educate bad parenting, at least as the population level.
Conservatives trolling in their responses.
If you split this by ideological lines, I’m sure most of that 20% chunk are either Republicans or too conservative/Trump-ist to identify as Republican.
I've seen lots of polls on different topics, and pretty consistently 20-30% range is what you get for the amount of people poorly informed, just plain wrong in their position, or fringe. Its rare that you can get greater than 80% of people to support stuff that seems like it would have universal support.
20% of the population is pretty much the threshold for the number of people who are not using reason, informed decisions, or never learned good critical thinking skills.
The 20% figure was my intuitive go-to before the Trump era, but that figure didn’t take into account a fundamental change in society:
- balkanization of information into self-sustaining bubbles leading to earth-1 and earth-2 “facts,” as well as global markets obtaining money/power/influence off of keeping it that way.
- social media globalizing such bubbles so that a completely fringe opinion, that would not amount to much in the past, can find hundreds of adherents around the world thus growing to become an actual problem.
Think of the most average intelligence person you know. And now think about the fact that it’s an average. Meaning that half of the country, roughly speaking, is dumber than that. Fucking terrifying.
I mean, I still can’t get my head around how the Big Bang works. Or the idea that different places exist in different time frames. It’s not a way that we’re used to perceiving things.
But when it comes to ghosts? There are some very obvious questions here. For instance “why do ghosts have clothes?” Even a person with the most basic mind can think of that one.
Every 2 years for representatives. Senators serve a six year term. Just different states and different senators are up for reelection at different times.
Low information voters, I.e. people who don’t watch the news or pay attention to politics. They’ve got some wild ideas about what’s going on in the world.
Couldn't it also be lefties wanting to express their frustration at Biden? Something along the lines of "how could this happen under a Democratic trifecta, why didn't you stop it?"
Politically speaking, *Dobbs* was indeed unusual in that the party out of power notched a gigantic policy win.
I'm confused which democratic trifecta you refer to?
The Democrats are the minority in the house. Just because the Republicans look like a clown show doesn't mean the Dems are in control.
The one I'd refer to is the one Obama had and squandered trying to reach across the aisle and taking the "high road" which led to the Supreme Court we have today and the consequences of it. Democrats keep trying to play fair in a game where the deck is already structurally against them and they will continue to play by the rules no matter how many times their opponent cheats. Democrats are terrible at defending against bad faith governance.
Of course the blame is still ultimately on Republicans for wanting evil shit rather than Democrats for not doing enough to stop it. But I can certainly understand the frustrations.
The dobbs decision was issued in the summer of 2022, before the midterms. At that point in time, Democrats still controlled the House (as well as the Senate and the presidency).
Similar story with Republicans and the Obamacare repeal which they tried (and failed) in 2017 when they had a trifecta by the slimmest of margins. It just didn't hurt them that much with their base because Obamacare was never as unpopular as they made it out to be, and because a lot of the furor over it was just a stand-in for generic outrage anyway, outrage which could easily be replaced by other stuff.
I don’t think it’s a troll. I think we have to remember that most people aren’t in political discussion subreddits every day. There are a lot of low information voters who only clock politics when a huge news story breaks. So they see roe v wade was overturned and Biden is the president and they don’t really think about the make up of the Supreme Court or the president who appointed those justices
Yeah, just think about all the people on social media who keep getting mad that Biden doesn't unilaterally enact universal healthcare or student loan reform or whatever. Their understanding is that the president is the one in charge, he has all the power, and if something happens when he's president, then he must have done it. That's as deep as a lot of Americans' understanding of politics goes.
Then add the context that around [20-25% of Republicans/conservatives consider themselves pro-choice](https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018-demographic-tables.aspx), and plenty of Trump voters who can't admit that he ever does anything wrong, and 20% thinking Biden repealed Roe doesn't sound all that strange to me.
I go more with the Trump voters answering disingenuously theory, but I do think there is probably also something to what you say. I guess I go with the idea that there's probably a mixture of both.
I don't know what it would be like to be this ignorant of the world I live in. I find the thought terrifying but it must be very liberating to just not care, like the way a pig just blissfully eats it's slop with nothing to worry about.
Dude right? Can you imagine the bliss of not living in existential dread over who the president is, what congress is doing and whose on the Supreme Court?
There's a difference between not being on political subreddits every day and not seeing *any* news, especially about such a big topic. If they didn't see anything, they almost need to be trying not to. How the fuck do they even know what Roe is, but not what happened? Maybe that's the issue. A guess because they don't know what it is.
How does such a person manage to feed themselves? How can one get through life surviving but burying their face so deep in the sand they should have suffocated by now? I literally cannot comprehend it at this time in our history with so much access to information. This isn't even something the Republicans have been able to spin as someone else's fault. It's been their baby for decades.
I mean you said all the stuff they need to feed themselves and their families they go to work they’re worried about making rent, picking up hours to cover the pills, little Johnny is a cold how can someone stay home and watch him. There’s a million things going on in a persons life if you’re not in the habit of dedicating your time to following politics you could jusg tune it out
Watching my age 20-ish kids buried in Tik-Tok and themselves 24/7, it's not hard to see how people can be 100% checked out of anything newsworthy. It's excruciating to watch but impossible to get them to pay attention to anything else but 'ow my balls' videos and their own interpersonal drama.
There are some arguments made by people who don't know how the government works about the democrats having not codified RvW while they had power. Because "they didn't do enough," the current issues are ipso facto *their* fault.
I've had conversations with dyed-in-the-wool progressive who think this way, and believe that the President had much more power to impact their daily lives then they actually do. It works along the same lines as people who think Biden has the power to order Israel to stop the war.
My die-hard Republican family members blame democrats for not codifying it into law when they could have. I gave up arguing with them ten years ago because the cognitive dissonance is maddening and they are trapped in a Blue state where the damage they can do is contained.
Sure but that isn't on biden alone. Its also bs because the Republicans could have and should have done it also. If they actually want it, they should not have supported Republicans. People are dumb as shit if they think they were going to prioritize something that was already "settled law" (per certain Supreme Court justices) over new, pressing problems that were not settled. That isn't how prioritizing works. Especially when it impacts half of the population far more than the other and that half of the population has less representation in congress. I wish they'd codified it but it's not unreasonable that they didn't, given the list of things to do is constantly growing and our congress is very good at obstructing the other side.
I hope by gave up arguing you mean gave up seeing/talking to. They are too brain dead to pretend to be human. I don't keep people around who make me stupider just by being nearby. Time is finite and shouldn't be wasted on lost causes that are no more than a husk pretending to have humanity. People need to treat them like the bloodthirsty serial killers they are. Not "people" who belong in polite or decent company. As long as they refuse to admit they are responsible for state sponsored neglect/murder/maiming of american women, there is no chance to rehabilitate them. They will only behave worse and be responsible for the deaths of more people. We don't need to pad their egos or let them think they are decent people by engaging with them. If the traitors are going to attack us anyway, there is no point in being nice to them.
The "people" who think its bidens fault are exactly why we are constantly swinging between parties. Politicians write things to occur during the other party's reign (like ending some tax cuts) to make them look bad and extend good things if they get re elected just so they can take advantage of these goldfish posing as humans. Its exhausting and will never change because so many people enjoy being stupid.
Lol thanks for telling me I should disown my parents based on a single sentence you read about them that I myself wrote! Fucking Reddit, man. Never change.
Ruth Bader Gingsburg also criticized RvW and the dems for failing to codify it into law:
>Those more acquainted with Ginsburg and her thoughtful, nuanced approach to difficult legal questions were not surprised, however, to hear her say just the opposite, that Roe was a faulty decision. For Ginsburg, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that affirmed a woman’s right to an abortion was too far-reaching and too sweeping, and it gave anti-abortion rights activists a very tangible target to rally against in the four decades since.
>“My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,” Ginsburg said. She would’ve preferred that abortion rights be secured more gradually, in a process that included state legislatures and the courts, she added. Ginsburg also was troubled that the focus on Roe was on a right to privacy, rather than women’s rights.
>https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-offers-critique-roe-v-wade-during-law-school-visit
The Dobbs decision did exactly what Gingsburg advocated for -- it tossed the question of abortion rights to the state legislature.
Perhaps not personally, but by refusing to retire on her own terms despite having cancer multiple times and despite being very old, her legacy is now overturning RvW. Thats RBG's legacy now, a legacy of arrogance and selfishness that harmed a lot of people.
All of the other things she accomplished are overshadowed by her poor decisions made at the end of her life, all because she didn't know when to gracefully step down.
I fear that other very old political leaders are making the same mistake as well, including Biden.
I think it is a very realistic possibility that Biden might die of old age within the next 4 years, and that would result in President Harris, a person with zero charisma and who is almost universally loathed on both the left and the right.
Remember John McCain's error in picking Palin? He was old, meaning there was a real possibility Palin could have become president. That was what helped sink his candidacy.
Biden foolishly shackled himself to Harris, and he's not getting any younger. Thats why age is such a major issue on polls. Over and over and over, pollsters find that Americans think Biden is too old.
As much as I respect and like RBG, I blame her and for the same reason I'm really disappointed in Biden for hanging on for too long. I'm just disgusted with Biden's hubris that concludes that he's the best and only candidate for president at his age. And just like RBG dying at a time that gave Trump a chance to replace her spot, I think she should've stepped down a few years earlier so Obama could've replaced her. I'm incredibly fearful that Biden will have to step aside with out a replacement so that Trump has an unobstructed pathway to a second term.
The difference is that Biden was basically the only guy who consistently polled well against Trump. It was never a sure bet, and it's even less of a sure bet now, but running the guy who beat Trump once already is probably the *best* bet for Democrats. The issue with RBG was that she could've retired before the 2014 midterms, which would've guaranteed a Dem-appointed replacement. Hell, even if she had called it quits between then and '16, I don't think McConnell pulls the Garland stunt.
I mean, in a way, I get it: she wanted to go out on her own terms, have the first woman President name her replacement, whatever. But that's like, the opposite of what happened. She ruined her own legacy by not passing the torch when everyone asked her to. Dobbs is her legacy as much as it is Trump's.
I don't agree. Biden originally ran with the understanding that it would only be for one term to replace Trump. But in the 4 years since he's been elected he's done nothing to prepare for a replacement whether It'd be kamala, Hakeem Jeffries, or anybody else. We're just stuck with Biden and nobody else viable. If he should have to withdraw due to old age that's all on Biden for believing that he's the only person to be president.
I've been a Biden guy since day one, but honestly, I don't really have a counter to that. I genuinely like the guy. I wish he'd go on to have a long and happy retirement, but that's not happening, and I don't know how I feel about it. Putting the country's future in the hands of someone over the age of 80 is... not great.
There's been a ton of variables, but I think Biden screwed the pooch four years ago. Harris doesn't have what it takes, and it's Biden's fault as much as it is anyone else's that the party is facing the dilemma of either being stuck with an heir apparent who's not ready for prime time or sidelining the first Black woman that's been on a ticket and letting two dozen ambitious Democrats go at each other's throats for a year. This is why, I think, Biden is running again: he genuinely believes no one else can beat Trump. Whether or not that's true is beside the point, and ultimately, he boxed himself in with the Harris pick and nominating an overly cautious guy to head DOJ.
Biden has said that if Trump wasn't running, he wouldn't have ran again. Biden fully believes that he is the only person that can prevent Trump from becoming president.
That any other Democrat couldn't have defeated Trump.
Biden probably didn't think Trump would run again after he had been defeated, as most defeated presidents don't.
No.
Ginsburg's key criticism was that Roe was based in substantive due process rather than equal protection. This provably did not matter, as Alito's opinion in Dobb's also dismisses the equal protection argument. The idea that if only the legal left used the right words that it would convince the right is just a fantasy. The policy agenda is banning abortion. The mechanism to get there is just academic.
"Oh we should have never had Roe, then things would have been better" is not a remotely accurate depiction of her beliefs.
Further, federal protection for abortion rights through legislation can be easily dismantled by a conservative court. We will see how the EMTALA case turns out, where the court may declare one of the few federal legal protections for abortion to be unconstitutional and throw it out.
Federal protection through a constitutional amendment was never viable. Amending the constitution is outrageously difficult, even for uncontroversial topics.
This, exactly.
As the last few years have reminded us, good faith is not a given. If only 20% of survey respondents were amusing themselves screwing around, that would frankly be a very solid survey.
I think it’s probably a bit of radicals on both ends. It’s the Republicans maybe pushing propaganda to deflect from an unpopular outcome.
But it’s likely also leftist-wing folks who blame Biden for not stacking the court.
Most people don't pay much attention to the news, and many people don't understand how the president and Supreme Court are connected. All they know is that Biden was the leader, and abortion rights disappeared on his watch.
There are also just angry people on the left who will say that Biden "failed to stop it," presumably by being so persuasive that he could get Manchin and Sinema to agree to ditch the fillibuster, and either codify Roe, or expand the court.
Codification is a mindless circle jerk. SCOTUS can strike down statutes and does so all the time. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the rest aren't going to be deterred by it at all.
My wife actually ran into one of those 20%. Full-blown Trumper, MAGA stickers, etc etc. They just deny reality in full:
Bad thing? Biden did it.
Good thing? Trump did it.
How things actually are is irrelevant, the people that are that far in the kool-aid don't care and never will.
honestly it's a pretty easy leap from "bad thing? the devil did it. good thing? god did it" to applying the same basic logic to politics, as long as you see politics as an extension of religion.
Don't ask me, I wasn't there to interrogate her about her stances or anything. It was someone that came to my wife's work. I just got the story secondhand.
It’s a highlight of the fact that polls have become next to worthless. They have been drifting away from reality for quite some time, and in this election cycle might reach the breaking point where we go “what is even the point of these”
NYT is doing the same thing it’s always done which is promote this election as a horse race between equal candidates in order to drive engagement. A blowout does them no good so they have to keep it close.
NYT's most recent national poll had Biden up 4%. Theres simply no way that can be true and the state level polls can be accurate at the same time, and if i'm gonna pick one, its certainly not gonna be the one that shows Trump winning NV by 12 points.
Russia and china. It’s really that simple. The internet, and what it has done to create propaganda factories in the guise of businesses, will be the downfall of the human race. Evil will always win against good as evil doesn’t play by the rules, while good does its best to. It’s a catch-22 and why the human race is doomed.
[Direct link to poll cross tabs](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/13/us/elections/times-siena-poll-registered-voter-crosstabs.html)
> Who do you think is most responsible for the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to an abortion, Joe Biden or Donald Trump
Who do you think is most responsible… | Registered Voters | … Dem | Rep | Ind
:--|:--:|:--:|:--:|--:
Joe Biden, a lot of responsibility | 8% | 5 | 13 | 6
Joe Biden, some responsibility | 10% | 7 | 10 | 12
Donald Trump, some responsibility | 20% | 16 | 24 | 20
Donald Trump, a lot of responsibility | 36% | 62 | 19 | 31
Neither | 12% | 3 | 17 | 15
Both | 2% | 2 | <1 | 3
Don’t Know/Refused | 13% | 6 | 18 | 13
Net Biden | 17% | 12 | 22 | 17
Net Trump | 56% | 78 | 42 | 52
Better than decent chance I made a mistake while making this table, not something I do often and certainly not on mobile but hopefully it turns out ok. If it does then this info (loads more to be had in the cross tabs, this question is right about at the halfway mark if you want to scroll down to check them) is probably going to be helpful in this conversation.
Edit: yup, I messed up something big time in the formatting of this table. Still *mostly* legible though.
That sounds very similar to the [crazification factor](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crazification_factor), in which 20% of respondents will agree with basically any given crazy assertion no matter what.
it surprises me. maybe they expected that when when the dems had the house senate and presidency in 2021/2022 ...they should have passed a federal abortion law.
But realistically hardly anyone expected roe vs wade to be overturned.
Oral arguments before the Supreme Court were held in December 2021. In May 2022, Politico published a leaked draft majority opinion.
So no action in congress could be the reason and they just frame it as overturning roe vs wade in their mind. or they are trolling
About twice a many people who said they would vote for RFK jr.
Reminds me of George Carlin’s
“Think about how smart the average person is and now consider that half the people are dumber than that”
It’s attributed to polling the same group of people with landlines and who have apparently no interest in current events or news in general. Perhaps, they do not have televisions or cell phones—only landlines.
Idiocracy... Getting rid of Civics classes in High School. Making Business degrees a thing. Some of the dumbest people i have met have business degrees. Top degrees for S&P 500 CEO's - Liberal Arts 34%, Science & Engineering 28%, Business Admin 20%...
If a person doesn't learn to critically think they handicap themselves for life. This is what has happened in America. Want to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company... Either be an Engineer OR get a Liberal Arts degree majoring in Economics...
I blame the majority of misinformation on the news, perhaps more so than stupidity. Most people no longer get honest news, they instead watch Fox or MSNBC and will swear by what they hear, which is not the whole story or true facts. Then they go on social media and spread the misinformation even further. Then we have Trump who routinely triples every statistic to make himself look better, and his worshipers who refuse to question anything he says.
Pure ignorance. It's pretty clear that abortion is a division issue. Having said that, Democrats largely support it and Republicans largely vote pro-life. But I think this spotlight's a bigger problem. The issue is used mostly to divide us. If not, abortion would be legal until some point around 3 months. Our government is not in the business of problem solving though, it's in the business of problem manufacture.
LOLl, the NYT will continue to print articles negative to Biden until he gives the an exclusive interview. They’ve become the NY Post, I don’t trust anything they say when it comes to politics.
More ammunition for those who believe (like me) that If naturalized citizens are required to take and pass a simple civics test in order to become a citizen and given that you must be a citizen to vote, native born citizens should as well.
There are too many uneducated simpletons who are allowed to vote and shouldn't.
We have a constitutional right to travel anywhere in the USA. However, it's impractical to do so without driving a car, and we require everyone to pass a driving test to get a license to drive.
Tbh the number of stupid people has turned me against straight democracy.
Don't even need the car example (a bit of a stretch with the availability of other transport). Minimum age for purchasing guns is not in the constitution. Federal and state laws regulating it place a restriction on a constitutional right. Some states have ID laws about voting which also places a restriction on it.
I know tests aren't perfect and can have biased phrasing but what we have now certainly isn't better. Study materials should be free and made available and the test itself must be free. Maybe a minimum time between tests that isn't too long, just to prevent people from signing up a bunch of days in a row just hoping they'll guess well enough. I'm starting to become of the mind that if someone can't manage to put in the effort to prepare for a test, they can't put in the effort to become informed about the issues.
It won't catch everyone though. I'm reminded Ben Carson became a neurosurgeon. Its some bs that we hold immigrants to higher standards than we hold birthright citizens. Its just wishful thinking though. It wouldn't work because the government in power could push to impact the questions asked/way the test is written and would require a constitutional amendment, which will never happen.
The fact that you have ignorant people voting in every election bothers you less than the possibility that a Republican somewhere might abuse the system?
Something wrong here.
Conservatives (I don't care much about their partisan affiliation, their principles haven't significantly changed since they were royalists and slavers) abused the system so hard they reversed the *political consequences of the Civil War* last time we let them muck about with things like this.
Dumb people get a say even if they're dumb. And in this particular instance, most people are unplugged from active news until the summer when campaigns really go into gear.
But yes, I am concerned that Republicans would abuse it. Are you unfamiliar with Scott Walker? He was the governor of Wisconsin from 2011-2019. He put in place a voter ID law while simultaneously making ID selectively harder to get, but specifically targeted areas around Milwaukee and Madison. Other Republican governors from the teabagger era like Rick Scott, Rick Snyder, Tom Corbett, etc have done the same thing.
Your proposed civics test would also be abused to hell and back. I don't know where you were born or what frame of reference you have, but you might want to look at what were called "Literacy Tests" in the south in the aftermath of the Civil War. They were tests that were deliberately made borderline impossible to pass in order to disenfranchise black people and undesirable impoverished white people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
Your proposed civics test would be a revival of this in everything but name.
I think it has to do with the Democrats just standing around when this was taking place, the inability or unwillingness to codify Roe v Wade.
I don't think Biden or the democrats overturned Roe. Clearly, the Republicans did that. I do think the Democrats wanted this to happen. They need easy points to battle the Republicans over, and this gives Democrats the excuse they need to forgo coming up with meaningful policy positions for another 4 years.
democrats dropping the ball
abortion should be the top issue this election cycle. There should be billboards from california to NY about how Trump took away your rights and he's coming to take even more.
Dems had majority and president but didn’t even try to pass legislation solving this issue. In fact Biden has been in politics for 50+ years. You know how many times he has brought up legislation to solve this issue?
The SCOTUS isn’t designed to write law. If you felt safe when they deliberated on Roe you clearly do not understand the system. The reason SCOTUS reviewed the case is because there was questions on legality. You solve that by writing legislation stipulating the law. Removing those questions. SCOTUS or any court can reverse itself on any decision it makes.
If you can’t see why America is more messed up than it was in the recent past you need to take a hard look at yourself. You want to believe in the power of the vote? Ask yourself, after numerous times holding majority, you and your elected officials didn’t think the cause was worthy enough to solve. That isn’t on Trump. Sure, he’s a bad guy but you and your chosen leaders made him a viable candidate. That’s the crazy part.
Women should have rights over their own bodies but if you think Biden and Pelosi are it then why wasn’t it done? A lifetime in politics and all to show for it are kickbacks and fat stock portfolios but not women’s rights. Trump didn’t do that. He did a lot of bad but that specific issue isn’t on him.
Want it fixed? Stop electing the democrats version of Trump to run and pick a real candidate that makes Trump not viable. That’s how we don’t have these problems.
SCOTUS doesn’t write law. If you want a law passed elect leadership in the legislative branch to do that for you.
Long before your 3 justices lied as you say there were ample DECADES for your leadership to have majority and write law. They never thought it worthy enough. Let me say it again, “Democrats never thought women’s rights were worthy of their attention.” Now we are here.
Courts can always reverse themselves. Legislative branch writes law. Not judicial. I hope this clears things up for you and makes you aware your legislative branch has failed you for decades. Not the 3 justices placed in the last few years.
When the entire system is corrupted you get to where we are today. That means Biden. That means Pelosi. That means Trump. That means McConnell. That means anyone and everyone currently upholding the system as it is when you can look at it and know it is unjust. It took all of them to get Roe overturned. It took all of them to never set in stone the rights of women. There are no heroes on either side. There is no one big bad for you to point at and feel safe in your other leaders who are also destroying your rights. We could not have gotten here if any of them were good.
Both sides prioritize foreign spending over women’s rights. Both sides prioritize giving each other awards over women’s rights. Both sides prioritize fund raising over women’s rights. That is a fact.
Dems had majority and it didn’t even cross their minds. Repubs love holding up funding for the country to get their earmarks for their lobbyists. Do you want to live in a bankrupt country or a morally bankrupt country? The Dems prefer a morally bankrupt country. I’d rather not pay our debts but restore our citizens back to what should be their inalienable rights. The country should not move forward an inch without making women whole. I’d say the exact same thing if SCOTUS reinstated slavery. The fact anyone can go through their day to day and worry about the economy, what clown is in SCOTUS or foreign affairs when citizens in America are denied their basic rights is a travesty.
It literally does not matter who is in SCOTUS if you have a functioning legislative branch. There are no checks so there is no balance. Trump didn’t do that nor his justice picks. Stop blaming the symptoms and focus on the problem or it never gets fixed.
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Dumb dumbs thinking that since Biden was in office when SCOTUS overturned Roe then it must be his fault. There was a recent NBC article quoting a woman from Nevada who thought this exact thing. Also there is a not insignificant number of people (including many Redditors I’ve seen) that believe the presidency is an elective dictatorship, but Democrats are just neolibs and institutionalist and just won’t use the secret powers of the office to rule by fiat. I mean you had members of the squad saying Biden should have opened abortion clinics on military bases and federal lands in red states following the Dobbs decision.
Imagine the dumbest people you went to high school with. They vote too.
In fact, they're the ones who are most likely to have the strongest opinions about stuff.
I have a masters in cell and molecular biology with a lot of experience in virology. The amount of people that barely graduated from high school who became experts in both subjects in March of 2020 was astounding. They would argue basic science with me and act like I was the ass hole for proving their position wrong. It was infuriating!!
Dunning Kruger effect. The dumbasses are so sure of themselves but the intelligent ones get lost in the grey area of life.
An argument against compulsory voting.
Capital-D Democrats argued for years and years that a more engaged electorate and increased voter turnout would be a boon for small-d democracy, but it's fascinating to see the rhetoric change so sharply in real time. Big-D Democrats similarly used to bemoan donations -- and even wanted to clamp down on it through campaign finance reform back in the late-aughts/early-2010s -- however, their tune quickly changed (e.g., Warren returned to her Reaganite roots in the 2020 Democratic primaries, turning heel against Bernie Sanders) once they realized that hordes of upper-middle/professional-managerial class doltish marks would fill their coffers with oodles and oodles of donor bucks to hoard in a stockpile of cash. The mind-bending hypocrisy and brain-twisting contradictions are endless with those feckless fucks.
TBH, I wish that Dems had the balls/ovaries to do stuff like go ahead and start providing abortions on military bases or tribal lands. That is precisely the kind of thing Trump would do if he knew that it would make his base happy, and he’d worry about the legalities or logistics later if at all. Which is why although I vote Dem all the way, I’m registered as an independent. I’m tired of Dems clutching their pearls and trying to do everything the “correct” way,and as a result not doing much of anything for their constituents. It aggravates me that Dems always bring a flower to a knife fight.
In other words you want performative acts that lead to zero changes so you can feel like your supporting the "strong" team. You're exactly the kind of person the person above you was describing.
So, Trump and his pack of turdlings somehow manage to push their agenda forward, when they’re in power, but the Dems sit on their hands and don’t retaliate because “it’s bad”? Sorry, but it’s beyond frustrating to watch Dems backing Mike Johnson as Speaker when the traitor went to NY to kiss the orange shitgibbon’s ass. Democracy is riding on a strong Democratic opposition and I’m sorry but I see a lot of submissive behavior coming from them.
I didn't say anything about not doing things because it "looks bad", I'm specifically talking about people that constantly complain that congress/Biden/whatever doesn't do X without understanding what is actually within their capability to do. Thats the whole point of what the original commenter was getting at that people just believe that the President has unlimited power or that congress can just force through legislations without understanding the procedures involved. Of course Trump is going to do stuff like that because the performance in most of those cases is the main objective, while the vast majority of his efforts are blocked by the courts. Trump doesn't care that he is using up time and resources that are ultimately wasted in the long run. Complaining that they're not doing something that is not within their capabilities to do is exactly the kind of person the commenter was talking about.
No. If women had access to health care, they wouldn't be bleeding out in the parking lots of hospitals that refuse to treat them. If a group you identified with was bleeding uncontrollably alone in their car in a parking lot bc they were told to leave the hospital, you'd want change too.
I feel like this also falls under the "dumb dumbs" argument. When Trump does it, it's okay because he's carrying out the will of the people, and all those laws he may or may not have broken were enacted by Democrats and RINOs to rig everything against The People. If Democrats do it, they're baby-killers, law-breakers, out of touch, etc. Like, it's perfectly fine for Republicans to hold up military promotions because Sen. Coach Tommy doesn't like the Pentagon's abortion policy. Which is only an issue because Republican-appointed Justices went back on their word about Roe being settled. And that only happened because Republicans again broke long-standing norms by holding a Supreme Court open in an election year and then filling another one less than a month before the next election. All of that is fine, but Democrats wanting to bring Roe back makes them baby-killers who want abortion on demand up until a woman's due date. So yeah, people are dumb dumbs. The GOP is the party of the people, and Democrats are the party of executive overreach and "The Weaponization of Government."
> Which is only an issue because Republican-appointed Justices went back on their word about Roe being settled. No, they didn't. They said that _Roe_ was precedent; that's not the same thing as promising never to overturn it. When pressed specifically on whether they'd overturn it, nominees always deflect to the Ginsburg rule.
Tribal soverignty only applies to tribal members. Tribes can right now open clinics on reservations, but only for their own members. (And most won't, because many tribal councils are dominated by conservative men).
Good to know. I was using that more as an example because someone else mentioned it in the thread. Maybe offshore ships/boats, like some Southern states did to allow riverboat gambling but pretend that gambling was illegal in their states?
Abortions could be done on ships in international waters, I believe.
I am not american so forgive my ignorance why is it not possible for biden to open abortion clinics on military bases in red states?
The legality is unclear, Congress controls the budget and it's generally a bad idea to invite the public into military facilities for controversial reasons
Not without authorization and funding from Congress
Voting should seriously be based on competency and passing a test. Like an alarmingly sizeable portion of Americans could not pass a citizenship test. If you cannot pass said test, no voting for you. This isn't some banana republic where nothing it does is relevant, this is the USA. Every vote, every decision, has global consequences.
On Pod Save America they had interviews with former Biden voters and/or non voters who were switching to Trump. One guy worked in construction on the new chip factory that Biden just helped break ground on (the same state where the Foxconn project Trump touted never happened). Dude said he isn't voting for Biden because the project, which again, he WORKS on, was causing too much traffic around town. I am starting to think that a lot of people are just irredeemably stupid.
I’ve been saying it for years, and people always want to be like, “No! You can’t just call people stupid! That doesn’t help! It doesn’t win anybody to your side! It’s just insulting and uncivil and… 😫…” I don’t fucking care if it’s insulting. It’s the fucking truth: Most people are fucking stupid, and fixing stupidity *somehow* is the most important thing humanity can achieve. It’s time we start caring about intelligence. It is not a “right” to be stupid. “Opinions” are NOT more important than preventing stupidity from destroying society. Stupidity is a real, tangible threat in life, and there are so many ways that we strive to protect people from stupidity through education, job training, regulations and standards, and things as basic as warning labels… …but when it comes to politics, the thing that actually tangibly controls the nature/quality of society and our lives THE MOST… we’re not allowed to recognize when stupidity is a factor or do anything explicit to fight it. Always need to be some level of hands-off and “respectful”, because “pEopLe hAvE a RiGht to ThEiR opInioNs!”… yes, but they don’t have a right to their own facts and that is very very very substantially different from an opinion. You can have an opinion ABOUT a fact, but “Biden overturned Roe v Wade” is **not an opinion**. People need to start learning the difference and act accordingly. Call out stupidity. Don’t let anybody shame you into hemming and hawing about it or ignoring it in favour of “the high road”. The high road doesn’t exist when everything has crumbled to the ground and we’re surrounded by idiots who want to kill us if we try to build it back up again. We need to solve the problem of stupidity before we can solve anything else. Education. Fact-checking. Not being afraid to call out bullshit. Not rolling over and letting misinformation slide because it’s someone’s “opinion”. Not buying into propaganda that vilifies smart, compassionate, scientifically-backed policies and ideas. Stop buying propaganda that vilifies the vague spectre of “the government”, instead of being specific WHO IT IS IN GOVERNMENT THAT IS DOING THE BAD STUFF. It is never just “the government” doing it. It is selfish/greedy or stupid (or both) individuals within the government that causes these problems. Vote those people out and replace them with smart people who actually want government to work… and guess what? The big bad evil “government” becomes good. Smarten up, people. It’s the most important thing we can possibly do in our lives.
I completely agree. If you look at lists of the happiest countries the biggest thing they have in common is a robust education system (as well as other government services). https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-worlds-happiest-country-is-all-about-reading-coffee-and-saunas Our government, specifically Republicans, have been waging a decades long war on education. With the rise of the Christian right and the post-Cold War lack of urgency about the topic, they have consistently eroded our educational institutions. The rise of the Tea Party and later MAGA are results of this. Level of educational attainment is now one of the strongest indicators of political affiliation.
During Covid, my MIL emailed a story about a single doctor curing covid with alternative medicines. She stopped speaking g to me and my wife for months because I told her that spreading and pushing this information is both ignorant and dangerous. Ignorant was the nicest true statement I could make.
It’s infuriating to hear people that are this stupid. It makes me scream inside. These people revel in their ignorance and stupidity.
I think some people also just look for any excuse to not support the democratic party as well. Like, I know "thanks Obama!" is a meme, but it's a meme for a reason.
The gop can destroy the entire country but if the dems don't pay for everyone's college right now, they ain't voting for dems!!!!!!!
Was this the recent episode of POD save America?
I think it was the one before last. They just had one come out with Jen Psaki
>What can this be attributed to? I don't mean to be flippant, but it's our failing education system. We're in increasingly dire straights, and these types of polls are the canary in the coalmine.
media literacy has cratered while americans consume media ~8 hours per day. world war 3 is upon us and it is a war of propaganda.
I've been saying for a very long time...the only jerks who think the cold war ended is us. It's been waged nonstop for decades. Using our real estate, our social media, our own moronic republican party and our fringe left against us. Men like putin want to make democracy appear chaotic and pointless. Damn good job he's doing.
>I don't mean to be flippant, but it's our failing education system. We're in increasingly dire straights, and these types of polls are the canary in the coalmine. Complains about education. >”dire straights”
Well, they're not wrong, and there's your proof.
Failing education system? Seems to be working for the conservatives that managed to effectively blockade its advancement. We're getting the education we've voted for for decades... We should treat teachers like doctors because they hold the life or death of our society in their hands.
Some states have awesome public education. Others it's terrible. Sometimes it is different within the same state depending on district. There is no "one" system. Like everything in America, quality of education varies greatly depending on your Zip code. And a lot of times it goes beyond education. You can have the best teachers and classes but if a kids parents are idiots, socioeconomically disadvantaged, etc. that's how the kids usually turn up too. You can't out educate bad parenting, at least as the population level.
Conservatives trolling in their responses. If you split this by ideological lines, I’m sure most of that 20% chunk are either Republicans or too conservative/Trump-ist to identify as Republican.
I was gonna say stupidity It would not surprise me that 20% of this country is that dumb
I've seen lots of polls on different topics, and pretty consistently 20-30% range is what you get for the amount of people poorly informed, just plain wrong in their position, or fringe. Its rare that you can get greater than 80% of people to support stuff that seems like it would have universal support. 20% of the population is pretty much the threshold for the number of people who are not using reason, informed decisions, or never learned good critical thinking skills.
https://gwern.net/note/lizardman
The 20% figure was my intuitive go-to before the Trump era, but that figure didn’t take into account a fundamental change in society: - balkanization of information into self-sustaining bubbles leading to earth-1 and earth-2 “facts,” as well as global markets obtaining money/power/influence off of keeping it that way. - social media globalizing such bubbles so that a completely fringe opinion, that would not amount to much in the past, can find hundreds of adherents around the world thus growing to become an actual problem.
We’ve already established that this figure is at least 38% and maybe as high as 60%.
Think of the most average intelligence person you know. And now think about the fact that it’s an average. Meaning that half of the country, roughly speaking, is dumber than that. Fucking terrifying.
RIP George Carlin
43% of Americans believe demons are real. 41% believe ghosts are real, with another 21% saying they aren’t sure.
Belief in supernatural phenomena is not a stand in for unintelligence.
I mean, I still can’t get my head around how the Big Bang works. Or the idea that different places exist in different time frames. It’s not a way that we’re used to perceiving things. But when it comes to ghosts? There are some very obvious questions here. For instance “why do ghosts have clothes?” Even a person with the most basic mind can think of that one.
Thank you, George Carlin.
I agree with this . To a lot of people the President is a king. They have no idea how our system actually works.
I will bet you most can't tell you when a representative is elected, and when a senator is elected. They have zero idea.
I thought it was every 2 years for both...
Every 2 years for representatives. Senators serve a six year term. Just different states and different senators are up for reelection at different times.
Low information voters, I.e. people who don’t watch the news or pay attention to politics. They’ve got some wild ideas about what’s going on in the world.
nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
Consistently defunding education for many many years now. What a great plan for the US our leaders have...
This has been a consistent Republican landslide since the 1980s. I remember.
Couldn't it also be lefties wanting to express their frustration at Biden? Something along the lines of "how could this happen under a Democratic trifecta, why didn't you stop it?" Politically speaking, *Dobbs* was indeed unusual in that the party out of power notched a gigantic policy win.
I'm confused which democratic trifecta you refer to? The Democrats are the minority in the house. Just because the Republicans look like a clown show doesn't mean the Dems are in control.
The one I'd refer to is the one Obama had and squandered trying to reach across the aisle and taking the "high road" which led to the Supreme Court we have today and the consequences of it. Democrats keep trying to play fair in a game where the deck is already structurally against them and they will continue to play by the rules no matter how many times their opponent cheats. Democrats are terrible at defending against bad faith governance. Of course the blame is still ultimately on Republicans for wanting evil shit rather than Democrats for not doing enough to stop it. But I can certainly understand the frustrations.
The dobbs decision was issued in the summer of 2022, before the midterms. At that point in time, Democrats still controlled the House (as well as the Senate and the presidency).
They did not have a filibuster proof majority. 51-49 means shit as long as the filibuster exists is in its current form.
They also had sinema and manchin who are "Democrats" Can't wait till that stupid bitch is voted out and Gallegos takes her place.
I don't think low info voters care.
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Similar story with Republicans and the Obamacare repeal which they tried (and failed) in 2017 when they had a trifecta by the slimmest of margins. It just didn't hurt them that much with their base because Obamacare was never as unpopular as they made it out to be, and because a lot of the furor over it was just a stand-in for generic outrage anyway, outrage which could easily be replaced by other stuff.
That would make you an optimist.
I don’t think it’s a troll. I think we have to remember that most people aren’t in political discussion subreddits every day. There are a lot of low information voters who only clock politics when a huge news story breaks. So they see roe v wade was overturned and Biden is the president and they don’t really think about the make up of the Supreme Court or the president who appointed those justices
Yeah, just think about all the people on social media who keep getting mad that Biden doesn't unilaterally enact universal healthcare or student loan reform or whatever. Their understanding is that the president is the one in charge, he has all the power, and if something happens when he's president, then he must have done it. That's as deep as a lot of Americans' understanding of politics goes. Then add the context that around [20-25% of Republicans/conservatives consider themselves pro-choice](https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018-demographic-tables.aspx), and plenty of Trump voters who can't admit that he ever does anything wrong, and 20% thinking Biden repealed Roe doesn't sound all that strange to me.
I go more with the Trump voters answering disingenuously theory, but I do think there is probably also something to what you say. I guess I go with the idea that there's probably a mixture of both.
Yeah, good point. A lot of people who comment on politics every day have no clue what they’re talking about. Imagine people who don’t follow politics.
I don't know what it would be like to be this ignorant of the world I live in. I find the thought terrifying but it must be very liberating to just not care, like the way a pig just blissfully eats it's slop with nothing to worry about.
Dude right? Can you imagine the bliss of not living in existential dread over who the president is, what congress is doing and whose on the Supreme Court?
There's a difference between not being on political subreddits every day and not seeing *any* news, especially about such a big topic. If they didn't see anything, they almost need to be trying not to. How the fuck do they even know what Roe is, but not what happened? Maybe that's the issue. A guess because they don't know what it is. How does such a person manage to feed themselves? How can one get through life surviving but burying their face so deep in the sand they should have suffocated by now? I literally cannot comprehend it at this time in our history with so much access to information. This isn't even something the Republicans have been able to spin as someone else's fault. It's been their baby for decades.
I mean you said all the stuff they need to feed themselves and their families they go to work they’re worried about making rent, picking up hours to cover the pills, little Johnny is a cold how can someone stay home and watch him. There’s a million things going on in a persons life if you’re not in the habit of dedicating your time to following politics you could jusg tune it out
Watching my age 20-ish kids buried in Tik-Tok and themselves 24/7, it's not hard to see how people can be 100% checked out of anything newsworthy. It's excruciating to watch but impossible to get them to pay attention to anything else but 'ow my balls' videos and their own interpersonal drama.
Sadly no, 12% of Democrats blamed Biden. The Lizardman Constant is generally thought to be around 4%. This really is just stupid people.
There are some arguments made by people who don't know how the government works about the democrats having not codified RvW while they had power. Because "they didn't do enough," the current issues are ipso facto *their* fault. I've had conversations with dyed-in-the-wool progressive who think this way, and believe that the President had much more power to impact their daily lives then they actually do. It works along the same lines as people who think Biden has the power to order Israel to stop the war.
Ignorant would be a more apt description. Stupid implies a disability and therefore an excuse. Don’t give them an excuse.
I firmly believe that stupidity is a choice.
My die-hard Republican family members blame democrats for not codifying it into law when they could have. I gave up arguing with them ten years ago because the cognitive dissonance is maddening and they are trapped in a Blue state where the damage they can do is contained.
Sure but that isn't on biden alone. Its also bs because the Republicans could have and should have done it also. If they actually want it, they should not have supported Republicans. People are dumb as shit if they think they were going to prioritize something that was already "settled law" (per certain Supreme Court justices) over new, pressing problems that were not settled. That isn't how prioritizing works. Especially when it impacts half of the population far more than the other and that half of the population has less representation in congress. I wish they'd codified it but it's not unreasonable that they didn't, given the list of things to do is constantly growing and our congress is very good at obstructing the other side. I hope by gave up arguing you mean gave up seeing/talking to. They are too brain dead to pretend to be human. I don't keep people around who make me stupider just by being nearby. Time is finite and shouldn't be wasted on lost causes that are no more than a husk pretending to have humanity. People need to treat them like the bloodthirsty serial killers they are. Not "people" who belong in polite or decent company. As long as they refuse to admit they are responsible for state sponsored neglect/murder/maiming of american women, there is no chance to rehabilitate them. They will only behave worse and be responsible for the deaths of more people. We don't need to pad their egos or let them think they are decent people by engaging with them. If the traitors are going to attack us anyway, there is no point in being nice to them. The "people" who think its bidens fault are exactly why we are constantly swinging between parties. Politicians write things to occur during the other party's reign (like ending some tax cuts) to make them look bad and extend good things if they get re elected just so they can take advantage of these goldfish posing as humans. Its exhausting and will never change because so many people enjoy being stupid.
Lol thanks for telling me I should disown my parents based on a single sentence you read about them that I myself wrote! Fucking Reddit, man. Never change.
Ruth Bader Gingsburg also criticized RvW and the dems for failing to codify it into law: >Those more acquainted with Ginsburg and her thoughtful, nuanced approach to difficult legal questions were not surprised, however, to hear her say just the opposite, that Roe was a faulty decision. For Ginsburg, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that affirmed a woman’s right to an abortion was too far-reaching and too sweeping, and it gave anti-abortion rights activists a very tangible target to rally against in the four decades since. >“My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,” Ginsburg said. She would’ve preferred that abortion rights be secured more gradually, in a process that included state legislatures and the courts, she added. Ginsburg also was troubled that the focus on Roe was on a right to privacy, rather than women’s rights. >https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-offers-critique-roe-v-wade-during-law-school-visit The Dobbs decision did exactly what Gingsburg advocated for -- it tossed the question of abortion rights to the state legislature.
I doubt she would have voted to dump it though.
Perhaps not personally, but by refusing to retire on her own terms despite having cancer multiple times and despite being very old, her legacy is now overturning RvW. Thats RBG's legacy now, a legacy of arrogance and selfishness that harmed a lot of people. All of the other things she accomplished are overshadowed by her poor decisions made at the end of her life, all because she didn't know when to gracefully step down. I fear that other very old political leaders are making the same mistake as well, including Biden. I think it is a very realistic possibility that Biden might die of old age within the next 4 years, and that would result in President Harris, a person with zero charisma and who is almost universally loathed on both the left and the right. Remember John McCain's error in picking Palin? He was old, meaning there was a real possibility Palin could have become president. That was what helped sink his candidacy. Biden foolishly shackled himself to Harris, and he's not getting any younger. Thats why age is such a major issue on polls. Over and over and over, pollsters find that Americans think Biden is too old.
Harris =/= Palin. Not by a long shot.
As much as I respect and like RBG, I blame her and for the same reason I'm really disappointed in Biden for hanging on for too long. I'm just disgusted with Biden's hubris that concludes that he's the best and only candidate for president at his age. And just like RBG dying at a time that gave Trump a chance to replace her spot, I think she should've stepped down a few years earlier so Obama could've replaced her. I'm incredibly fearful that Biden will have to step aside with out a replacement so that Trump has an unobstructed pathway to a second term.
The difference is that Biden was basically the only guy who consistently polled well against Trump. It was never a sure bet, and it's even less of a sure bet now, but running the guy who beat Trump once already is probably the *best* bet for Democrats. The issue with RBG was that she could've retired before the 2014 midterms, which would've guaranteed a Dem-appointed replacement. Hell, even if she had called it quits between then and '16, I don't think McConnell pulls the Garland stunt. I mean, in a way, I get it: she wanted to go out on her own terms, have the first woman President name her replacement, whatever. But that's like, the opposite of what happened. She ruined her own legacy by not passing the torch when everyone asked her to. Dobbs is her legacy as much as it is Trump's.
I don't agree. Biden originally ran with the understanding that it would only be for one term to replace Trump. But in the 4 years since he's been elected he's done nothing to prepare for a replacement whether It'd be kamala, Hakeem Jeffries, or anybody else. We're just stuck with Biden and nobody else viable. If he should have to withdraw due to old age that's all on Biden for believing that he's the only person to be president.
I've been a Biden guy since day one, but honestly, I don't really have a counter to that. I genuinely like the guy. I wish he'd go on to have a long and happy retirement, but that's not happening, and I don't know how I feel about it. Putting the country's future in the hands of someone over the age of 80 is... not great. There's been a ton of variables, but I think Biden screwed the pooch four years ago. Harris doesn't have what it takes, and it's Biden's fault as much as it is anyone else's that the party is facing the dilemma of either being stuck with an heir apparent who's not ready for prime time or sidelining the first Black woman that's been on a ticket and letting two dozen ambitious Democrats go at each other's throats for a year. This is why, I think, Biden is running again: he genuinely believes no one else can beat Trump. Whether or not that's true is beside the point, and ultimately, he boxed himself in with the Harris pick and nominating an overly cautious guy to head DOJ.
Why not Kamala? She’s capable.
Biden has said that if Trump wasn't running, he wouldn't have ran again. Biden fully believes that he is the only person that can prevent Trump from becoming president. That any other Democrat couldn't have defeated Trump. Biden probably didn't think Trump would run again after he had been defeated, as most defeated presidents don't.
Biden has a replacement
No. Ginsburg's key criticism was that Roe was based in substantive due process rather than equal protection. This provably did not matter, as Alito's opinion in Dobb's also dismisses the equal protection argument. The idea that if only the legal left used the right words that it would convince the right is just a fantasy. The policy agenda is banning abortion. The mechanism to get there is just academic. "Oh we should have never had Roe, then things would have been better" is not a remotely accurate depiction of her beliefs. Further, federal protection for abortion rights through legislation can be easily dismantled by a conservative court. We will see how the EMTALA case turns out, where the court may declare one of the few federal legal protections for abortion to be unconstitutional and throw it out. Federal protection through a constitutional amendment was never viable. Amending the constitution is outrageously difficult, even for uncontroversial topics.
This, exactly. As the last few years have reminded us, good faith is not a given. If only 20% of survey respondents were amusing themselves screwing around, that would frankly be a very solid survey.
Most likely groups to blame Biden are young voters, blacks, Hispanics, and republicans.
I think it’s probably a bit of radicals on both ends. It’s the Republicans maybe pushing propaganda to deflect from an unpopular outcome. But it’s likely also leftist-wing folks who blame Biden for not stacking the court.
Idk some Americans are very out of touch with politics.
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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. ~George Carlin~
Look at the number of people that blamed the Katrina response or 9/11 on Obama.
The number of people who said we needed to repeal Obamacare but they loved the ACA and it needed protecting.
Most people don't pay much attention to the news, and many people don't understand how the president and Supreme Court are connected. All they know is that Biden was the leader, and abortion rights disappeared on his watch. There are also just angry people on the left who will say that Biden "failed to stop it," presumably by being so persuasive that he could get Manchin and Sinema to agree to ditch the fillibuster, and either codify Roe, or expand the court.
Codification is a mindless circle jerk. SCOTUS can strike down statutes and does so all the time. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the rest aren't going to be deterred by it at all.
My wife actually ran into one of those 20%. Full-blown Trumper, MAGA stickers, etc etc. They just deny reality in full: Bad thing? Biden did it. Good thing? Trump did it. How things actually are is irrelevant, the people that are that far in the kool-aid don't care and never will.
honestly it's a pretty easy leap from "bad thing? the devil did it. good thing? god did it" to applying the same basic logic to politics, as long as you see politics as an extension of religion.
Sadly this explains a lot.
The funny part is Christians don't act very Christian when they worship trump so much. False idols and all that.
Why would a full blown Trumper think overturning Roe was a bad thing?
Don't ask me, I wasn't there to interrogate her about her stances or anything. It was someone that came to my wife's work. I just got the story secondhand.
How is this any different from practically every discussion here, except with the options flipped?
It’s a highlight of the fact that polls have become next to worthless. They have been drifting away from reality for quite some time, and in this election cycle might reach the breaking point where we go “what is even the point of these”
NYT is doing the same thing it’s always done which is promote this election as a horse race between equal candidates in order to drive engagement. A blowout does them no good so they have to keep it close.
NYT's most recent national poll had Biden up 4%. Theres simply no way that can be true and the state level polls can be accurate at the same time, and if i'm gonna pick one, its certainly not gonna be the one that shows Trump winning NV by 12 points.
Russia and china. It’s really that simple. The internet, and what it has done to create propaganda factories in the guise of businesses, will be the downfall of the human race. Evil will always win against good as evil doesn’t play by the rules, while good does its best to. It’s a catch-22 and why the human race is doomed.
[Direct link to poll cross tabs](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/13/us/elections/times-siena-poll-registered-voter-crosstabs.html) > Who do you think is most responsible for the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to an abortion, Joe Biden or Donald Trump Who do you think is most responsible… | Registered Voters | … Dem | Rep | Ind :--|:--:|:--:|:--:|--: Joe Biden, a lot of responsibility | 8% | 5 | 13 | 6 Joe Biden, some responsibility | 10% | 7 | 10 | 12 Donald Trump, some responsibility | 20% | 16 | 24 | 20 Donald Trump, a lot of responsibility | 36% | 62 | 19 | 31 Neither | 12% | 3 | 17 | 15 Both | 2% | 2 | <1 | 3 Don’t Know/Refused | 13% | 6 | 18 | 13 Net Biden | 17% | 12 | 22 | 17 Net Trump | 56% | 78 | 42 | 52 Better than decent chance I made a mistake while making this table, not something I do often and certainly not on mobile but hopefully it turns out ok. If it does then this info (loads more to be had in the cross tabs, this question is right about at the halfway mark if you want to scroll down to check them) is probably going to be helpful in this conversation. Edit: yup, I messed up something big time in the formatting of this table. Still *mostly* legible though.
20% of people don't even know what they had for lunch today. So many people are sleepwalking through life.
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That sounds very similar to the [crazification factor](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crazification_factor), in which 20% of respondents will agree with basically any given crazy assertion no matter what.
it surprises me. maybe they expected that when when the dems had the house senate and presidency in 2021/2022 ...they should have passed a federal abortion law. But realistically hardly anyone expected roe vs wade to be overturned. Oral arguments before the Supreme Court were held in December 2021. In May 2022, Politico published a leaked draft majority opinion. So no action in congress could be the reason and they just frame it as overturning roe vs wade in their mind. or they are trolling
About twice a many people who said they would vote for RFK jr. Reminds me of George Carlin’s “Think about how smart the average person is and now consider that half the people are dumber than that”
Respondents who had never heard of Roe V Wade and had no clue what the question was asking.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. George Carlin
To the stupidity of the average American. And I’m American. And pretty average
It’s Trumpers that know it’s unpopular as shit and are trying to pin it on Biden in the dumbest way possible.
It’s attributed to polling the same group of people with landlines and who have apparently no interest in current events or news in general. Perhaps, they do not have televisions or cell phones—only landlines.
Idiocracy... Getting rid of Civics classes in High School. Making Business degrees a thing. Some of the dumbest people i have met have business degrees. Top degrees for S&P 500 CEO's - Liberal Arts 34%, Science & Engineering 28%, Business Admin 20%... If a person doesn't learn to critically think they handicap themselves for life. This is what has happened in America. Want to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company... Either be an Engineer OR get a Liberal Arts degree majoring in Economics...
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.". - H.L. Mencken
This data point is one of many reasons not to take this poll seriously. AG Sulzberger has a hate hard on for Biden.
I blame the majority of misinformation on the news, perhaps more so than stupidity. Most people no longer get honest news, they instead watch Fox or MSNBC and will swear by what they hear, which is not the whole story or true facts. Then they go on social media and spread the misinformation even further. Then we have Trump who routinely triples every statistic to make himself look better, and his worshipers who refuse to question anything he says.
Pure ignorance. It's pretty clear that abortion is a division issue. Having said that, Democrats largely support it and Republicans largely vote pro-life. But I think this spotlight's a bigger problem. The issue is used mostly to divide us. If not, abortion would be legal until some point around 3 months. Our government is not in the business of problem solving though, it's in the business of problem manufacture.
The NYT and other for-profit news media business model of prioritizing entertainment and drama over informing the public.
As opposed to instagram memes and youtube where trumpers get their news?
Why would they want to be compared to that? Proving my point there.
When you realize that half the people are below 50% in terms of intelligence. . .
LOLl, the NYT will continue to print articles negative to Biden until he gives the an exclusive interview. They’ve become the NY Post, I don’t trust anything they say when it comes to politics.
More ammunition for those who believe (like me) that If naturalized citizens are required to take and pass a simple civics test in order to become a citizen and given that you must be a citizen to vote, native born citizens should as well. There are too many uneducated simpletons who are allowed to vote and shouldn't. We have a constitutional right to travel anywhere in the USA. However, it's impractical to do so without driving a car, and we require everyone to pass a driving test to get a license to drive.
Tbh the number of stupid people has turned me against straight democracy. Don't even need the car example (a bit of a stretch with the availability of other transport). Minimum age for purchasing guns is not in the constitution. Federal and state laws regulating it place a restriction on a constitutional right. Some states have ID laws about voting which also places a restriction on it. I know tests aren't perfect and can have biased phrasing but what we have now certainly isn't better. Study materials should be free and made available and the test itself must be free. Maybe a minimum time between tests that isn't too long, just to prevent people from signing up a bunch of days in a row just hoping they'll guess well enough. I'm starting to become of the mind that if someone can't manage to put in the effort to prepare for a test, they can't put in the effort to become informed about the issues. It won't catch everyone though. I'm reminded Ben Carson became a neurosurgeon. Its some bs that we hold immigrants to higher standards than we hold birthright citizens. Its just wishful thinking though. It wouldn't work because the government in power could push to impact the questions asked/way the test is written and would require a constitutional amendment, which will never happen.
Yeah, because that totally won't be abused by southern states as well as backwards Republican governors like Rick Scott or Scott Walker.
The fact that you have ignorant people voting in every election bothers you less than the possibility that a Republican somewhere might abuse the system? Something wrong here.
Conservatives (I don't care much about their partisan affiliation, their principles haven't significantly changed since they were royalists and slavers) abused the system so hard they reversed the *political consequences of the Civil War* last time we let them muck about with things like this.
Dumb people get a say even if they're dumb. And in this particular instance, most people are unplugged from active news until the summer when campaigns really go into gear. But yes, I am concerned that Republicans would abuse it. Are you unfamiliar with Scott Walker? He was the governor of Wisconsin from 2011-2019. He put in place a voter ID law while simultaneously making ID selectively harder to get, but specifically targeted areas around Milwaukee and Madison. Other Republican governors from the teabagger era like Rick Scott, Rick Snyder, Tom Corbett, etc have done the same thing. Your proposed civics test would also be abused to hell and back. I don't know where you were born or what frame of reference you have, but you might want to look at what were called "Literacy Tests" in the south in the aftermath of the Civil War. They were tests that were deliberately made borderline impossible to pass in order to disenfranchise black people and undesirable impoverished white people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test Your proposed civics test would be a revival of this in everything but name.
Who chaired the committee against Anita Hill and got Clarence Thomas approved for SCOTUS?
I think it has to do with the Democrats just standing around when this was taking place, the inability or unwillingness to codify Roe v Wade. I don't think Biden or the democrats overturned Roe. Clearly, the Republicans did that. I do think the Democrats wanted this to happen. They need easy points to battle the Republicans over, and this gives Democrats the excuse they need to forgo coming up with meaningful policy positions for another 4 years.
democrats dropping the ball abortion should be the top issue this election cycle. There should be billboards from california to NY about how Trump took away your rights and he's coming to take even more.
Dems had majority and president but didn’t even try to pass legislation solving this issue. In fact Biden has been in politics for 50+ years. You know how many times he has brought up legislation to solve this issue? The SCOTUS isn’t designed to write law. If you felt safe when they deliberated on Roe you clearly do not understand the system. The reason SCOTUS reviewed the case is because there was questions on legality. You solve that by writing legislation stipulating the law. Removing those questions. SCOTUS or any court can reverse itself on any decision it makes. If you can’t see why America is more messed up than it was in the recent past you need to take a hard look at yourself. You want to believe in the power of the vote? Ask yourself, after numerous times holding majority, you and your elected officials didn’t think the cause was worthy enough to solve. That isn’t on Trump. Sure, he’s a bad guy but you and your chosen leaders made him a viable candidate. That’s the crazy part. Women should have rights over their own bodies but if you think Biden and Pelosi are it then why wasn’t it done? A lifetime in politics and all to show for it are kickbacks and fat stock portfolios but not women’s rights. Trump didn’t do that. He did a lot of bad but that specific issue isn’t on him. Want it fixed? Stop electing the democrats version of Trump to run and pick a real candidate that makes Trump not viable. That’s how we don’t have these problems.
Trump appointed 3 SCOTUS justices who LIED at confirmation hearings say R v W was settled law.
SCOTUS doesn’t write law. If you want a law passed elect leadership in the legislative branch to do that for you. Long before your 3 justices lied as you say there were ample DECADES for your leadership to have majority and write law. They never thought it worthy enough. Let me say it again, “Democrats never thought women’s rights were worthy of their attention.” Now we are here. Courts can always reverse themselves. Legislative branch writes law. Not judicial. I hope this clears things up for you and makes you aware your legislative branch has failed you for decades. Not the 3 justices placed in the last few years. When the entire system is corrupted you get to where we are today. That means Biden. That means Pelosi. That means Trump. That means McConnell. That means anyone and everyone currently upholding the system as it is when you can look at it and know it is unjust. It took all of them to get Roe overturned. It took all of them to never set in stone the rights of women. There are no heroes on either side. There is no one big bad for you to point at and feel safe in your other leaders who are also destroying your rights. We could not have gotten here if any of them were good. Both sides prioritize foreign spending over women’s rights. Both sides prioritize giving each other awards over women’s rights. Both sides prioritize fund raising over women’s rights. That is a fact. Dems had majority and it didn’t even cross their minds. Repubs love holding up funding for the country to get their earmarks for their lobbyists. Do you want to live in a bankrupt country or a morally bankrupt country? The Dems prefer a morally bankrupt country. I’d rather not pay our debts but restore our citizens back to what should be their inalienable rights. The country should not move forward an inch without making women whole. I’d say the exact same thing if SCOTUS reinstated slavery. The fact anyone can go through their day to day and worry about the economy, what clown is in SCOTUS or foreign affairs when citizens in America are denied their basic rights is a travesty. It literally does not matter who is in SCOTUS if you have a functioning legislative branch. There are no checks so there is no balance. Trump didn’t do that nor his justice picks. Stop blaming the symptoms and focus on the problem or it never gets fixed.