America III: Going Deutsche

[Dogg Thang]

How is there such thing as a moderate Trump voter? Serious question - what kind of person is that?

[MartyG]

A moderate is someone who is in the centre in their political views. Not everyone who voted for Trump sits in the extreme right on the political spectrum.

[Dogg Thang]

That feels like it's dodging the question. I understand what moderate means, which is why the term being applied is problematic here. I asked what kind of person is it? What I'm asking is how can someone considered 'moderate' be okay with the racism, with the white supremacists in the White House, with the corruption, with the scandals, even with just the twitter account? There is no moderate conservatism in the White House right now. So how is there a moderate person who votes for that? What does that person look like?

[MartyG]

Exactly what the chart shows - people who have moderate/mixed political views who voted for Trump. That 30% of the electorate, 48% who voted for Trump, 42% who voted for Clinton.

If it was just extremists that voted for Trump, his chances of winning the Presidency would be close to zero, unfortunately that's not the case.

[Dogg Thang]

I don’t believe it. I guess that’s my bottom line. You can call yourself a moderate in a poll. You can tick the boxes for moderate policies. But I don’t honestly see a genuinely moderate conservative being able to bring themselves to vote for Trump and his White House now after all we’ve seen. This is why I was asking about the person, not the chart.

[MartyG]

I'm not sure why. There are plenty of Conservatives voters who don't like Johnson and their more extreme policies who still vote Conservative.

I suppose it's more comforting to believe only gun totting, anti-abortion, racist misogynistic biggots could vote for Trump - but then you'd also need to believe that there are 62,984,825 extremists in America.

[Dogg Thang]

Or morons. Extremists or morons. And yeah, I can believe that.

What I don’t believe is that any amount worth talking about would vote for Biden because, regardless of what they or you call them, they have to be mentally okay with all those things to consider voting for Trump and what they are then is quite clear. And they won’t be swayed by a middle of the road Democrat.

The Republicans I can see voting for Biden are those who went with the party line last time and bought the checks and balances narrative and were horrified within the first year at what the White House has become. I don’t see those people being on the fence in 2020. They have made their choice.

[Brad]

I see what you’re saying Jay and it makes no sense to me either; same as when people say labour are 2 points ahead, I’m like how is that number not 100?

[Neon Ignition]

The key difference between 2016 and 2020 at this point is the track record. It was easy for moderates to sway to Trump in 2016 because it was all about the anti-Hillary drive and Trump was still seen as something of a joke protest vote. At this point there's no escaping the full horror of destruction to the US that he represents and so any moderate voting for him this year is moderate only in name because a vote for Trump is a vote in support of all that is vile. It's an outright endorsement of some of the very worst in man. It's often hyperbolic rhetoric but genuinely the weight of importance on the outcome of this vote is unprecidented in their country. And that outcome will also be staggeringly important to out country too and what Boris and Cummings carry out in the next few years.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/27/new-york-times-publishes-donald-trumps-tax-returns-election

The New York Times has published.... Trump's Tax Returns!



In the year he was made President he paid on $750 in federal income tax. The returns expose years of tax avoidance, huge sums of lost money, that he paid zero tax in 11 of the 18 years reported, his businesses have been losing tens of millions, he has over $400m in personal debt due within the next four years and that he pays Ivanka to avoid paying sums in taxation. The paper has said more stories will also be released in the coming weeks

[teddymeow]

And that news will, probably, do absolutely nothing to stop him being re-elected.

[Dogg Thang]

Exactly. There really isn't anything he could do any more. If you supported Trump yesterday, or a week ago, or a year ago, you have no moral threshold that will suddenly be crossed today.

[Neon Ignition]

If you supported Trump before I don't doubt that such voters won't be moved by this but for the fence sitters who swung it for him last time, he's literally taking the **** out of a system where he pays $750 and Nurses, struggling families etc in a pandemic are paying thousands more. It's got to make that critical part of his campaign hugely harder because it doesn't reflect on or affect anyone outside of the US. He can't make it about the EU, about Mexican border crossers, about Chinese virus attacks, about Russian bot falsehoods, about Democrats feeding off childrens blooded etc it's directly him screwing over his potential voters.

[Family Fry]

I saw an amazing quote which I will share here, regarding Trump’s tax avoidance.

“Racists don’t care how much tax the grand wizard hasn’t paid.”

Hilary Clinton said Trump paid no tax in a debate and his reply to that was “because I’m very smart” it’s always been there, people just chose to ignore it.

[Dogg Thang]

people just chose to ignore it.

Yep. They don't care. The only people who have ever cared about Trump's tax returns are those who would never have voted for him.

Edit: There is one part of this story that might swing some people if spun correctly - the fact that he seems to have suffered huge losses. Now while this also seemed to be pretty common knowledge, having it 100% confirmed means that, to those who worship the almighty dollar, Trump is fraud. A failure. That might swing some of his sociopathic base who idolised his empire.