If Biden squeaks by, does it bother you that a pandemic was required to unload the albatross from our necks?

Is the reference too obscure?

It bothers me that so many people have voted for Trump regardless of everything he has done or not done.

In addition to the reference, it’s not clear what you’re implying.

I think maybe you’re implying that without the pandemic, Trump would have won reelection, but I think that’s such a large change to all the circumstances of the last year, that many things about the primary and other circumstances, including who the candidates would have been, may have been different.

But like @anniereborn wrote, it does bother the bejeebus out of me that so many people would continue to support Trump.

My feeling is a little like this newscaster, though less reserved:
https://imgur.com/account/favorites/1jG0qYQ

It absolutely bothers me.
After the mountains of shit and unbridled corruption, then 250,000 dead because he couldn’t do his job well, why the fuck did all these people vote for him?
This really baffles me.

@Zaku Ignore the albatross. You are correct. I am saying that without the pandemic the fool would have been unquestionably re-elected. As for a candidate other than Biden? Forget it. The Democrats crowded the stage of every venue available with 10–12 “top tier contenders” & just as with Hillary the party decided it was Biden’s turn. And the entire gaggle dutifully fell in line after each candidate took the opportunity to “strut their stuff”.

I don’t agree with you that we know that without the pandemic the fool would have been unquestionably re-elected.

I agree the Democratic Party manipulated the primary and wanted Biden and not Sanders.

I just think that we can’t know everything that would have happened if the pandemic didn’t happen. Many things would be different, and would have played out differently, and we don’t know for sure what the differences would be. The pandemic and the BLM events and all the random Trump behavior and who knows what else could have gone differently.

I’m mainly just standing on my revisionist history principles on this point, though. You may well be right that there would be just as much or more Trump support in other situations. I hope not, and also I do share your fear and loathing that that may be the case. And yes, again, it does deeply bother me.

Too many variables. You are forgetting how BLM has motivated Democrats that don’t usually vote to get out and vote. We had a tremendous amount of people on both sides of the aisle ignore pandemic safety suggestions to go march and protest after Floyd’s death and then after the President’s response to peaceful protestors and support of violence from the right. The pandemic motivated those who believed Republicans that the Democrats want to close everything down and starve your babies and raise everyone’s taxes.

There is one aspect that also increased voting on both sides that you can say was due to Covid and that was changing the rules to make mail in ballots easier. That helped a lot of democrats who would usually sit out elections to decide to vote. It also helped a lot of people who didn’t want to miss a few days of work vote. So in that way Covid helped but I think the public really didn’t vote on Covid. I know I didn’t vote on his handling of Covid. I voted on his endorsement of violence to the right and a long list of other reasons. But not Covid. Now if I had personally lost someone to Covid, then it would’ve jumped to my top reason.

I know among most of the Dems I know that Covid did anger them but it wasn’t their main motivating factor.
Then there is of course a bunch of new voters who came of age and increased our voting.
So if anything I think Covid helped Trump more than it hurt. You know he had every anti masker on his side and those who lost work or lost money because of Covid. So I’m not convinced he won because they loved him. I think people are worried about cash flow in these uncertain times. It always comes down to the Benjamin’s.

So the way I see it. It is possible that without Covid Trump may have lost votes because of BLM and his administration racist tones. But also possible without mail in ballots that many dems wouldn’t have voted.

Now with no racist tones and Trump being strong on supporting justice, then he would’ve won for certain, but Trump is his own worst enemy.

I disagree with the premise.

@hmmmmmm you don’t believe Trump would have won outright were it not for the pandemic?

^ I just don’t see any evidence or haven’t heard any line of reasoning that would suggest that the pandemic played a role in Biden (probably) winning.

Here’s my line of reasoning: If the current margin of votes is so razor thin, there is no way in hell Biden might have won had there been no pandemic for Trump to bungle. I find it rather grim that we were subjected to an embarrassing 4 year spectacle of unprecedented turpitude and incompetence with half the country voting for a repeat performance.

^ I’m still confused (maybe I’m missing something). Are you saying that Biden won because there was x percentage of Republicans/Trump supporters that would have voted for Trump had he handled the pandemic differently? Or is this a discussion of a reduction in voters due to large death counts?

I hadn’t considered Republican covid deaths, but that will be an interesting comparison when the disease has run its course. With Trump worshipers defying precautions, I would expect the predictable consequences, but 240,000 deaths spread nationwide renders the GOP percentage of expired voters
negligible. No, it is both his arrogant ineptitude in handling the disease, his failure to understand its threat, the fact that he consistently lied about every aspect of the disease from the moment of its arrival; and the resulting economic upheaval. All of this must undeniably cost the fool votes, yet here he sits with results too close to call. In view of these facts, I see no way around the premise that the plague saved Biden’s bacon.

@stanleybmanly: “No, it is both his arrogant ineptitude in handling the disease, his failure to understand its threat, the fact that he consistently lied about every aspect of the disease from the moment of its arrival; and the resulting economic upheaval. All of this must undeniably cost the fool votes”

I disagree that this is the case, but I’d be open to data showing that this played a role. Not trying to be difficult, I just haven’t seen anything other than Trump increasing his support among Republicans.

And while we’re speculating, it could be said that the pathetic Biden (and Dem) response to the pandemic hurt them. Biden didn’t have a alternative way of handling the pandemic. His “listen to the science” nonsense is tone-deaf (and if he actually listened to science, he would’ve embraced the GND for starters). Biden could have easily proposed an alternative – monthly payments to everyone, etc. Instead, the Biden/Dem approach smacks of elitist nonsense that ignores the reality that if the “economy” is closed, people lose their ability to live and house themselves.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to give you a hard time about the premise. I just wanted to make sure I understood what you were asserting.

No no. You aren’t giving me a hard time at all. I welcome this discussion. But I disagree with your take on Biden and the Democrats failure to address the pandemic. It doesn’t matter what Biden and the Dems have to say or propose to do about the disease. With Trump at the wheel, nobody gives a shit what Biden or any other Democrat has to say about the disease, other than the fact that Trump dismissed and still claims the outbreak trivial. The fool wears this disease 100%. It’s his alone. Were this situation anything but a rolling disaster, I would be laughing my ass off. The glory of Trump and the great fun in watching him is that he is an unbelievable moron magnet. The spectacle of the orange buffoon at those super spreader death rallies with those brain dead mobs crowded like cattle behind him chanting “Fire Fauci”.

Just my opinion but another possibility is that people were getting tired of Trumps behavior

that cast doubt of him as a mature leader to look up too.

It took Trumps immature behavior during this Election for “all” to wake up and see the glaring

reality that it is..

Now the whole World views this menace and wonders what kind of country is the U.S. ?

Definitely NOT United at all until today they are coming together to vote in a much better

mature calm Resident that in some way represents the “Father/Grandfather” figure that is

equipped with maturity and shows it and its about time!
————————————————————————————————————-

Note: Another loser mentality Trumps team “asking” for donations to fight this Election results???

( and just watch those funds disappear in the next few months under Trumps management too).

Are you kidding? As close as this election is, do you really view these results as a healing or proof of conservatives coming to “see the light”. As for the world view of America, the moment the fool was elected the rest of the world correctly surmised that we are insane and our tasteless joke of a President has striven mightily over these 4 years to advance and further augment that initial diagnosis. It’s almost too perfect. This election and its results must for any external observer be proof positive that we’ve lost our minds, as the leader of the free world declares before the world that the votes should not be counted.

^ I utterly agree with Stanley here. Sane intelligent caring people in and OUT of the USA have been horrified by Trump as President from the beginning. Him NOT being quickly rendered a lame duck or thrown out, and possibly getting RE-elected, means that the US could easily have some other madman as chief executive in four years, or some variation on xenophobic fascist nationalist nastiness.

Thanks to the Trump years and the degree of support it got from Congress, our media, and far too many of the voters, the rest of the world is rightly much more horrified by the USA than it was before.

I fear that we have yet to appreciate just how profound a signpost Trump is in defining our country. The fool was the green light for future nonsense that most of us would deem intolerable.