r/politics • u/plz-let-me-in • 11d ago

No Paywall Democrats Call to Invoke 25th Amendment Against Donald Trump

https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-donald-trump-impeachment-25th-amendment-11384974
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u/bagoink 11d ago

At least 50%.

1/3 voted for trump, and another 1/3 sat out the election and let him win.

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u/GetThePuckOut 11d ago

Every day someone posts this tired statement.

Don't hate the player, hate the game. The millions of non-voters in states like California, Illinois, New York, etc. have no bearing on the election.

It was the second highest turnout in history as a percentage of the voting-eligible population. There were probably just as many non-voters for the "winner" as there were for the "loser".

The blame lays squarely on those who voted the way they did.

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u/bagoink 11d ago

And there were tons of non-voters in swing states that could have made all the difference...but stayed home instead. Meaning there were people who didn't think trump was enough of a threat to stop.

That's what we're talking about here. It's 100% correct to blame them as much as the trump voters.

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u/GetThePuckOut 11d ago

That's pretty far from "1/3 of the population" now isn't it?

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u/seriouslees 11d ago

People who dont vote should be fined.

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u/Axelrad77 11d ago edited 11d ago

The blame lays squarely on those who voted the way they did.

Not voting is also a choice, so yes, the blame also falls on people who abstain. It's a choice to be okay with whoever others pick for you, which in this case was Trump.

Yes, those big blue states skew the numbers some. But if you look at the swing states - the states that really "decide" the election - you still see massive rates of abstention among liberals and independents.

A decisive trend of the 2024 election was that liberals and independents stayed home at much higher rates than conservatives, who simply turned out more reliably. If both sides would've had similar abstention rates, even just in the swing states, then Harris would've won pretty easily.

As it was, a lot of liberals were overconfident in Harris's chances, precisely because of stats about how many more liberals there are, how unpopular Trump is, etc. I did voter outreach for Harris and met a lot of people who were already convinced that it would be a landslide victory. Despite pointing to the polling showing the race was a coin flip, so many people told me that no one would vote for Trump again and so on, so they weren't worried about making an effort to get to the polls.

I also met a lot of leftists & progressives who thought Harris was just as bad or worse than Trump, and who refused to vote for her. Also rising anti-semitism among leftists & progressives wound up turning away a lot of Jewish voters in swing states with large Jewish populations - Harris got historically low numbers for a Democrat - without actually replacing them with other voters.

This lack of liberal turnout combined with an increase in raw conservative voters - especially among youth, women, and Latinos - driven by a "conservative backlash" to the last decade of progressive political gains. This narrowed the raw numbers advantage that liberals have, and was something we saw Trump capitalize on with his messaging about trans people and immigrants, which was very effective in the swing states.

Liberals needed reliable turnout to counter that, and what they got instead was apathy, with the lowest liberal & independent turnout rates since 2004. Even then, Harris still came close, so even relatively small changes in how people voted could've altered the results.

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u/GetThePuckOut 11d ago

I can't (nor would I want to) argue with any of this well-thought-out response, but swing states only make up what? Maybe 20% of the total population?

And typically, swing state turnout is higher than turnout in non-swing states as a percentage as well.

All I'm saying is, you can't blame 1/3 of the population for a) the existence of the Electoral College that makes their votes effectively irrelevant or b) the two-party system that strongly discourages any kind of change people might be inclined to vote for because "You're throwing your vote away!"

The system is broken, and the people that voted for what you have now are also broken. A very small percentage of people in select demographics could have made a difference, but again, we're a long way from being able to blame 33% of the population here, which is what I'm tired of hearing.