Discussion: Poll: Trump's Numbers Haven't Improved Since Mueller Ended Investigation

The people who “tend to never be motivated”? Yes, for the most part, I don’t see how they can ever be motivated. (Maybe a few here and there, but not enough to make a difference.) As I have stated elsewhere, the Achilles Heel of Democracy is that people are basically stupid, especially in large numbers. (In this statement, I am including those who just cannot be bothered to vote.)

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I have no empirical knowledge of what or who drives turnout, but I do think we who’ve been paying attention now see what happens with low turnout, and in 2016 it was about 57%. There will always be a certain die hard number of people who don’t vote because they think their vote doesn’t matter and political leaders carry on regardless of what voters want.

But a more reliable bloc of voters are probably people like us here, concerned and aware of why voting matters. Or as the bumper sticker I saw the other day said, vote like your life depends on it.

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Oh yeah…I know. I know some of them. They can’t even go on vacation and leave their Trump politics at home. Sooner or later they figure out I’m not interested and they start looking for someone else to try to convince. I don’t even acknowledge that they’re saying anything.

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On the other hand…I’d like to hope that I’m not stupid and as a young woman I very often didn’t vote. My best guess is that the millennials aren’t all that much different than I was. So they’re a good example of a very large non-voting block that we could reach with the right candidates. And they could make a difference.

You can’t really say that only the stupid stay home on election day. They young really do it for very different reasons, some of them idealistic.

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I think I can say it for 2016. Idealism did not elect Trump.

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Me, I’d go further: it would be stupid to say that.

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If it makes you feel better . . . but I think the evidence is clearly on my side.

I was feeling pretty good until you said that!

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Maybe not your idealism, or mine now at this point, but the young are different in many ways. Surely you can remember. Or maybe you were always a good soldier. That’s commendable and I’m not being tongue in cheek on that. But some of us were and are not quite that mature at 21.

Oh yeah.

So called because they all trust that one of the others is keeping the single brain they share between them (which was unwittingly lost in the Water Hazard Incident of '93)?

I have voted in every election since I was eligible to do so. (Sadly, my first vote was for Jimmy Carter, when he lost to Ronnie Reagan. That was a discouraging start, but I persevered.) I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary, and Hillary Clinton in the general election. She was not my preferred candidate, at least in some ways, but I understood what the alternative meant. And yes, I sneer at those who did not understand what should have been obvious, and certainly is now. As the old saying goes, for evil to succeed, the good need merely do nothing at all.

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So you are and were a good soldier. I already said it’s commendable. I don’t know what else you’d like me to say.

Then don’t say anything. VOTE!!

Now you’re getting to be offensive. My youth is a looooong way behind me and you don’t need to tell me to vote.

Beyond that, if you need to be a rule and a law on what you think in the way you’re seeming to, and you need to maintain your right to dismiss whatever percentage of voters you choose to dismiss because they’re “stupid,” I daresay you might be part of the problem. Especially when you dismiss the young in that wholesale manner.

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I am dismissing non-voters (assuming that they are eligible). Age is not part of any of my comments.

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It’s been a major part of mine. Can you read? I normally assume people who aren’t “stupid” can, but perhaps you’re an exception.

Then you are not included in the problem part of the population, and should not be offended by a comment that does not apply to you.

It really must be the Internet that makes communication even on simple points so strangely difficult.

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Now you’re not even making sense. I was talking about the train of thought in my comments, which had to do with young voters primarily. The train of thought that you’ve been superciliously responding to so please spare me the attempt to dodge it now.

Have a good evening. An argument is clearly what you’re after and I’ve got better things to do than argue with someone who doesn’t even bother to understand a linear train of thought. It’s not the internet, friend. It’s you.

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