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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> I reached out to the smartest polling guy I know: David Shor, an independent data analyst who’s a veteran of the Obama presidential campaigns who formerly operated a massive web-based survey at Civis Analytics before leaving earlier this year

Before being fired for pointing out that violent protests alienate people: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/case-for-liberalism-...

Schor’s firing is a tremendous example of how free speech values make people better at their job, and attacks on free speech values can jeopardize organizations and political parties. It’s conventional wisdom now that failure to condemn violent protests earlier cost Democrats votes, including among minority groups. This was quite apparent from polling this summer. (By June, YouGov polls showed that Latinos were more worried about the “breakdown of law and order” than about “systemic racism.”) Creating a culture that makes people afraid to have dispassionate, context-appropriate discussions about what the data was saying made it harder for people to do their jobs effectively.

Obviously what kinds of facts are relevant to an organization’s mission differs greatly depending on the organization! In many contexts Schor’s comments wouldn’t have been relevant and may have been better left unsaid to foster workplace harmony. But in a political organization, obviously some heated issues will come up and people need to be able to have honest discussions about them.

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My heart broke when reading your article. There are some very different kinds of accusations put on Shor. The most hilarious is definitely the "you are not black so shut up" argument. I understand lived experience and how it impacts a person's ability to speak on a matter. that I have never seen a person even attempt at explaining how the author's lived experience corrupted their chain of thought. Also the original paper was written by a non white person. In my view this is worse than an ad hominem attack because in this tactics you feel like a whole community just insulated you. I don't understand what exactly the people restricting speech in this way are trying to achieve.

> I don't understand what exactly the people restricting speech in this way are trying to achieve.

Hegemony.

> I don't understand what exactly the people restricting speech in this way are trying to achieve.

When your ideas can’t be sustained on their merits, your only option is to eliminate people who don’t share your world view. It’s a complete disaster and only breeds fragility.

I will attempt to speak their position, though I disagree with the left on identity politics.

They might respond that, as a nation, US slaves and native americans and their descendants were exploited brutally by white English colonists. Over generations, this disparity was solidified by white male laws like jim crow, voter disenfranchisement, and overtly racist and harmful attitudes.

Where they go wrong, IMO, is what you've stated. I'm a white male posting this, does that matter? Should it? Or is it merely the historical fact that matters? And how fair is our current society?

I my view the problem is these objections (though valid at face value) are used to shut down the conversation, not to advance it. I'm not white, does that matter in this instance? Yes, because my lived experience will be very different from yours. But this whole thing is only valuable if I can explain what's missing from your mental model. Lived experience was supposed to give you cover over not knowing racial conditions upfront and give an avenue and tools for us to incorporate more information.

This argument originated to facilitate nuance but is being used to shut it out. That fucking sucks.

> They might respond that, as a nation, US slaves and native americans and their descendants were exploited brutally by white English colonists. Over generations, this disparity was solidified by white male laws like jim crow, voter disenfranchisement, and overtly racist and harmful attitudes.

Very few people would deny this, and I highly doubt Shor disagrees with any of this.

> I understand lived experience and how it impacts a person's ability to speak on a matter.

I don’t. „Lived experience“ is just experience, but woke.

All "lived experience" means is "anecdotal evidence, but I'll call you a racist if you disagree."

Lived experience is different from experience. But I think its illdefined and widely misused term. The way I see it lived experience differentiates internal and external experiences. For example a white person, black person and an indian person all can have the same police encounter (external experience) but live it in very different ways. Its because the white person and to an extent Indian person do not carry the fear of negative stereotypes because they have not lived the life of a black person who has had these counter multiple times and knows people for whom the exact same encounter turned out really badly.

There is a difference because one party has lived a completely different life so the same exact physical conditions lead to very, very different mental impact. Thus terms lived lived experience are important and the concept is worth looking at. It enables use to think in a more nuanced way and incorporate more information than what is exactly in front of us.

There is no such thing as "external experience", this is just called reality.

Experience = reality + human filter (mood, prejudice, ...)

Experience is a human concept, therefore it is necessarily subjective. Humans are not machines. Thus "lived experience" is just an empty phrase, invented to give a virtuous appearance to prejudice.

I see what you are saying but the connotative meaning of experience is not that. At least not in the media I consume. Usually experience means "I have been in that situation" but it does not take into account how the person arrived there. It's like trying to do a simulation without knowing any starting condition

It's a totally normal thing in english to add redundancy to emphasize. Global pandemic isn't wrong and nobody has to pay more to use two words instead of one. Lived experience is the same thing. Nothing wrong with emphasis.

Sadly typical of HN today that a topic that is interesting technically and politically neutral (the challenge of accurate polling) is derailed up top with an inaccurate culture war comment (there is no correlation between when a Dem condemned violent protest and whether they won their election).

FWIW, Shor’s theory about poll respondents is shared by Robert Cahaly at Trafalgar, but Trafalgar polls missed badly too in 2020 but in the opposite direction. So either that’s not actually the critical factor, or it’s not possible to control for this factor in any sort of reliable way. I find that far more interesting than Shor’s personal HR problems.

Agreed. HN is going the way of Slashdot.

Oh wow, I'm so happy I'm not the only one thinking this. I noticed this transition over the past few years on these forums and I even commented about it in the past.

It is the path of things on the internet that are interesting and then become popular. Same for Usenet :) Kuro5hin escaped by becoming uninteresting. Our descendants may find a solution.

Things change over time. Also note that HN used to be over-run by libertarians that would make Ayn blush. Kuro5hin escaped by dying. There is lobsters, but it has almost zero discussion and overly focuses on "the rules".

I think norms are better and more powerful. Be the norm you would like to see in the world.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609308

I should qualify my statement as I get voted down into oblivion. Hn still has higher quality comments and I'd ever seen it slashdot. However those high value comments usually come on particular subjects that lie within the hn community's zone of expertise. However for political topics or for science articles, hn comments usually lack expertise or neutrality. They're all falls into whether hn thinks of itself more as a repository of expertise or a forum for individuals to discuss topics where those individuals have expertise in some topic ie a professional which by and large the community is composed. Please excuse any strange typos I am voice typing this as I walk.

The truth hurts.

> there is no correlation between when a Dem condemned violent protest and whether they won their election

You got a source on that? It's clear that democrats lost ground, despite the Republican party's abject failure to control the coronavirus. This should have been the easiest win in world history, and somehow, the Democrats barely escaped with the presidency. There is pretty clearly something to explain here.

Every single demographic went further red than 2016 besides white men.

There’s a reason for that.

You’ve got data to back that up?

https://www.essence.com/news/politics/55-percent-white-women...

This is based on exit polls.

Exit polls only interview people who vote in person, which may be generally be useful, but in this election are an enormously systematically biased slice of the electorate.

You really can't base any generalizations beyond the in-person voting segment based on them.

> This is based on exit polls.

Are there some other measurements based on something else, or is it something we now can never know as a result of mail in ballots having no polling and an expected different statistical distribution?

I suggest looking at states like Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Utah, etc. that only do mail in voting and see how they measure what used to be measured by exit polls.

Exits aren't great in the best circumstances, but early unweighted exits are widely believed to be almost completely useless.

> Are there some other measurements based on something else

For 2016 and 2018, Pew had validated voter datasets, based on people in their American Trends Panel who were matched against voter databases and thus known to have voted. Assuming they do the same thing (or some other reputable firm does something similar, or ideally both) for 2020, that would probably be the best data source.

At least with the NYT exit polls, they included phone interviews to account for mail in voters. Here is a more systematic post-election analysis, based on a huge survey (100,000+ respondents), from Fox/Associated Press/U Chicago: https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2020/general-results/voter...

This one shows significantly lower Black vote for Trump than the Essence article (12% of men, 6% of women) but an even higher Latino vote (39% of men, 32% of women). Both sets of data show Trump losing support from white men slightly. (Which is consistent with pre-election polling.)

The votes haven't even been fully counted (NY has barely started with their mail-ins), so the exits aren't weighted yet. There are, so far as I know, no valid takes to be made from current exit data.

I posted this elsewhere in the thread but even without exit polls we can make some reasonably solid conclusions from geographical voting data: https://sweep.thedispatch.com/p/the-sweep-dont-trust-the-exi...

At this point it seems pretty clear that Trump made big gains among Latinos compared to 2016; with other demographics the jury is still out (I think.)

You don't need exits to know that; there were sharp swings towards Trump in majority-Latino south Texas counties.

Um... that's exactly what the post you're replying to says?

It's what the exit polls say, although the main lesson we've learned this year is not to trust polls.

What's clearer is that Trump made big gains in areas of the country with a high Latino and Hispanic population - e.g. Santa Ana county, CA, which is 77% Hispanic, saw a 13-point swing to Trump, and there are many similar datapoints from across the country. It's pretty clear Trump carried Florida on the strength of the Latino vote in that state. There's also similar evidence that Trump made big gains this year among Asians.

https://twitter.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1326190869163225090

https://sweep.thedispatch.com/p/the-sweep-dont-trust-the-exi...

So to summarise: Trump definitely made gains among Hispanics and probably made gains among Asians according to voting data; he made gains with every demographic except white men according to exit polls; the former data is more reliable than the latter.

Preelection polling was also showing Trump gains among Asians: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-asian-americans-are...

I'm aware of that. But I don't see what that has to do with my point.

I was more reinforcing your point to the person you responded to.

> the Democrats barely escaped with the presidency

not yet

306 electoral votes is not "barley getting by", that's the exact same margin as Trump in 2016 minus two faithless electors. That's pretty much the definition of a rebuke.

Biden won by razor-thin margins in the swing states, underperformed his polls by 5 to 10 points across the country, and got crushed in several states which pollsters had said were competitive (e.g. Texas). Meanwhile the Democrats lost seats in the House and (probably) failed to take the Senate despite favourable polls and optimistic predictions of a "blue wave".

Happiness = Reality - Expectations. Expectations were very high and the Democrats have a lot of reasons to be unhappy.

> Biden [...] underperformed his polls by 5 to 10 points across the country

While the votes are still being counted and this may change a little bit, he underperformed the last 538 forecast by 2.7 points at current vote count (not 5 to 10 points), just on the edge of the 80% confidence interval (noted because that's what 538 publishes as its uncertainty measure). Note that in social science, the standard cited uncertainty window is the 95% confidence interval, which would be significantly wider.

Now, you might point out that the results were outside of the 95% CI of the polls, which is true, but polls don't predict voting behavior, they measure sentiment. The cited confidence interval of polls addresses only sampling error, but even if as a sentiment measure a poll has no nonsampling error, it has additional known source of error as a measure of voting behavior beyond its sampling error. Notably, polls are typically of either registered voters (which are very different population than "people who will vote") or likely voters (which are still a different population than people who actually will vote, based on some model of the pollster of who will probably vote.) The reason poll based forecasts like 538 exist is because polls, while they are useful inputs for predictions, are not themselves predictions.

On the Senate and House the results are similarly non-extreme outliers compared to the forecasts. The 80% CI for the Senate forecast ranged from 55 D to 52 R. The potential outcomes now have reduced to the range of 50/50 to 52R. The 80% CI for the House forecast was 225D to 254D. Current results are 218D with 16 seats uncalled. Its expected that deviations from the center of the predicted range on these will be correlated, and it looks like they are all hitting at or near the edge of the 80% CI.

Yes, Democrats underperformed the midpoint of the predicted range. But not by enough (and it didn't happen at all in the 2018 midterm) to think that the models are radically wrong.

D'oh. My "5 to 10 points" was off the top of my head based on some numbers I saw being thrown around last week but I didn't bother to double-check. Thanks for keeping me factual.

I wouldn't say "the models are radically wrong" but I think it's still fair to say that last week was disappointing in several ways for the Democratic Party, even with Trump losing.

Yeah, exactly. People who want to scream about how Shor got cancelled have zero interest in actually discussing anything Shor writes.

That said, and to be perfectly clear: Civis should not have fired Shor. It was very bad. (To be fair in the other direction: the guy is a known genius in leftie political circles and my understanding is that he's done very well for himself since termination as an independent consultant.) But really it's the only good example of the "Cancel Culture" paranoia, so right wingers feel the need to trot out the argument every time his name comes up.

> Civis should not have fired Shor. It was very bad.

Why, because you agree with his politics? That doesn't seem like a very objective way to determine who we should or shouldn't cancel.

No, because what he said was a factual analysis and the outrage was about its conclusions. I very much agree with his politics.

> it's the only good example of the "Cancel Culture"

Here's a few more: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1282404647160942598.html

It astonishes me that anyone can think "cancel culture" is a right-wing myth.

What? Trafalgar was one of the only polls calling a close race. In Trumps favour but close nonetheless. IIRC they were the only ones calling Florida going red. You’re being intentionally disingenuous saying they were equally as bad as the rest of the field predicting a blue wave.

Trafalgar almost certainly got more states wrong (counts aren't all finished, but we do know likely winners in all states). Other sites like 538 predicted all states correctly, except NC and FL (50.5%/48.8% and 50.9%/48.4% respectively, both predictions wrongly favoring Biden [1]). Meanwhile, Trafalgar's polls put Trump up in NV, GA, PA, AZ, and MI (from their website, all late Oct / early Nov polls [2]). Once counts are final, we can more accurately compare margins and errors more specifically, but Trafalgar does not have a good record for 2020. Comparing models to a single pollster isn't completely even, but it's important to note that the Trafalgar polls were mostly outliers, disagreeing with the consensus in many states [3].

[1]https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/

[2]https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/

[3]https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general... https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

Number of states that you get wrong isn’t a great measure though right? If I call if for trump at 51-49 and you call it for Biden at 75-25 and Biden wins by 51-49 I was more correct than you were, to count “states called” is the wrong way to evaluate analysis in the same way that fptp is unrepresentatove of the popular vote, ironically.

I agree with you, and that's why i made effort to differentiate between margins vs winning. In my opinion, 2020's polls were a lot worse than 2016's, but because of Biden's much bigger lead (in the polls and in key states), the polling errors did not cross the threshold to be "wrong" in the winner take all system. Finally, there is an argument that even a Biden 75-25 call gives the correct outcome because each state is a winner take all system (with the exception of NE and ME, iirc). From a stats standpoint, the delta in that example make it very inaccurate, but from a model/communication standpoint, getting each state "right" (in binary terms) is very valuable.

Trafalgar had completely different results than the rest of the consensus, and once counts are more finalized in non swing states (places like CA and NY take forever, but we don't pay attention because they are always blue), we can accurately compare the polling and real results between different pollsters and polling methodologies. Some experts have cautioned against using exit polls for this purpose (what is usually done for a quick read of polling accuracy), because exit polls are only measuring election day in person votes, and thus trend really red this year. Trafalgar had unconventional methodologies like a "shy trump voter" bias where they arbitrarily shifted their numbers to the right, with weirdly consistent results of Trump +3 in a bunch of close/blue states. Perhaps there is more complicated justification of these numbers in the background, but I'm concerned that even if their deltas end up better than the "normal" pollsters, they are generating an inferior product with overbaked data.

They didn't just add a "shy Trump voter" factor:https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/another-pollster-sees...

They tried to come up with approaches to get around the very effect the article talks about: Trump voters don't answer survey questions. The main differences in methodology were making fewer assumptions about Republican turnout, larger sample sizes, and different survey techniques.

Trafalgar clearly missed some things: traditionally republican collar counties breaking hard for Biden. (My county didn't vote for Obama either time, but voted for Biden by 12, after voting for the republican governor a couple of years ago by 38.) But 538 had some insane misses this year in critical states like Wisconsin (off by 7.7), Ohio (off by 7.3), Florida (off by 5.9), etc. Finalizing counts in NY and CA isn't going to change those numbers--and Trafalgar wasn't analyzing them anyway.

Like I said in an earlier comment, comparisons between polls and a model aren't completely fair. Part of the model's calculation is that 8.8 points or whatever requires an enormous polling error to swing for trump. I do agree that other polls should get criticism/improve their methodologies to avoid the ~5 point margin in FL, or the 7.7 margin you listed. And, I even think that they may not get as much criticism as their errors warrant because many of these states were off by 6+ points but still went for Biden. Still, Trafalgar has a unique methodology that should be understood better before they are extolled as the "best pollster". And, Trafalgar is not immune to similar polling errors, just in the other direction, and with a wrong result. The delta may be more important from a statistical methodology standpoint, but these polls are measuring winner take all states, and "The Trafalgar Group’s Robert Cahaly is an outlier among pollsters in that he thinks President Trump will carry Michigan, Pennsylvania, or both, and hence be reelected with roughly 280 electoral votes" is a pretty poor prediction based on their data. Does this mean that their data is necessarily poor? No, but it isn't a good sign.

You're not looking at the deltas.

> but it's important to note that the Trafalgar polls were mostly outliers, disagreeing with the consensus in many states

Well, yeah?

We can't measure the deltas with as much confidence, because counting is far from finalized in many states (especially non swing states). But if trafalgar is the only group putting out polls where trump is ahead in several states, and then those states are lost, isn't that meaningful? Trafalgar was putting a "shy trump voter" bias into their polls, basically shoving the polls arbitrarily right. Some of that may have helped with polling errors that hurt other pollsters, but its clear they went too far, especially with many midwest states that ended up going blue.

Trafalgar got the margin much better than 538 in key states. Your list excludes several that 538 thought would be close but weren't: Ohio and Texas, and which ended up being close but 538 thought would be a blowout: Wisconsin. Putting those states in, you get Trafalgar erring in favor of Trump by 1.76 points, while 538 erred in favor of Biden by 4.37 points: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSulsnjJ96c2...

The final count will change these numbers a little bit, but I think Trafalgar will have gotten closer to the final result in these key states by 2.5 points on average.

I'll be interested to see the final count and compare on all states, but Trafalgar's issues are deeper than just deltas in my opinion. They had an arbitrary "shy trump voter" factor, which may be justifiable, but any "shy voter" effect is tautologically immeasurable (and thus just a guess on Trafalgar's part). They had weirdly consistent results where Trump was up by 3 points in lots of purple/blue states, which doesn't line up with the differences we saw in other polls and in the results (so far). I agree that the polling errors are significant in many of the mainstream models, even in the states that were called correctly. These deltas so far are worse than 2016, and should be looked into. But _if_ Trafalgar ends up with a lower delta over all 50 states when this is all finished, they still gave the wrong result in most of the key states that matter for the election. That's significant, because the polls are measuring 50 winner take all systems, and 538 told us 90% chance Biden win, while Trafalgar told us that Trump was favored in almost any state that was worth watching this year. That was wrong, and Trafalgar deserves criticism for it.

They didn't have an "arbitrary shy Trump voter" factor. That's not how they did it. They observed that Trump voters were less likely to answer polls and tried to get at the data other ways.

Also, who cares about 50-state results? One of the key points Trafalgar's founder has made is that polling is a state-by-state exercise. All pollsters use data to estimate e.g. turnout among different demographics. National pollsters use things like exit polls, but Trafalgar digs into state-level voter registration data.

Vox euphemized Schor’s departure in a way that was highly relevant to the subject of the article. The issue isn’t that pollsters couldn’t quantify the problem, it’s that they didn’t even realize the problem existed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/11/02/shy-trump-...

> Trump voters are not liars. As a Democratic pollster and campaign strategist, I feel strange typing these words. But it is required to debunk the “shy Trump voter” myth.

This was written days before the election.

My post isn’t about “Shor’s personal HR problem.” It’s about a culture that caused very smart people to misperceive the facts on the ground, and misallocate funding as a result, in the middle of a high stakes situation.

People in Silicon Valley should understand better than anyone that culture matters and bears on organizational and institutional effectiveness. Often these are pretty theoretical and abstract debates. But here is a case study that elucidates culture that works versus culture that doesn’t work.

I’m not weighing in on the larger cultural issue. As I caveated, this is context sensitive. Political polling, news, academia, and the like are areas where free discourse with respect to sensitive issues is particularly important for the effectiveness of the institution. This is less true if you’re running a food delivery business.

I have a hard time believing your musings on culture are relevant to the topic of accurate polling when GOP-aligned pollsters, who firmly believed that Trump voters are less likely to answer polls and built that into their models, also missed badly.

Were there any other than Trafalgar? And did Trafalgar miss as badly as their competitors? My understanding was no.

I think you missed the point: if people feel like their opinions will be held against them, they will not share their true opinions, and polling will fail.

The comment seems on-topic to me regardless of whether the culture war represents reality or not

There has never been such a thing as a politically neutral HN. It's just that there wasn't until recently a userbase to counteract the liberal tech groupthink.

That's more recent, to be honest. When I started reading HN, it was very very libertarian (but mostly non-political).

As it's grown bigger, it's started to reflect the demographics of software/data/professional people, with a bias towards the West Coast of the US.

That's presumably what you mean by the liberal tech groupthink (note that disliking Trump does not make one a liberal, which is a mistake a lot of conservatives have made over the past four years).

>That's more recent, to be honest. When I started reading HN, it was very very libertarian (but mostly non-political).

Interesting. I came here a bit late.

How long ago was the dominant libertarian scene? I've been reading for about 7 years and it's definitely been heavy liberal with the occasional libertarian belief even back then. Since 2016 it's been full throated liberalism though.

2011 is when I started lurking here. i originally had disgruntledphd, but lost my password and there was no way to recover it (apparently you could contact paul graham, but I didn't know that) so I became disgruntledphd2.

> there is no correlation between when a Dem condemned violent protest and whether they won their election

The tweet shor got fired for was literally giving data for this. Did you see the article about his firing?

Neither that tweet, nor the paper it referred to, attempted to correlate the exact date at which each Democratic candidate condemned violence with their respective election results.

that is such an impossible ask. We can only look at these things in aggregate. Contrary to popular belief a whole country doesn't turn on a time. Also even if that is your standard, this finding is still relevant.

These HR problems have a negative influence on the quality of the work.

To me it looks like "killing the messenger". Listeners want the most accurate data irrespective of the fact that some unknowns can be controlled for or not.

Furthermore to respond to the culture war that you brought up, I think Shor's theory fits my personal experience that some people stopped stating their political opinion in the open. So it is on topic.

That may very well be due to "HR" being a problem or those that play HR on public platforms. The explanation might be correct or wrong, it might resonate with people or not.

Your comment is just a data point here.

>there is no correlation between when a Dem condemned violent protest and whether they won their election

Even assuming this unsupported claim is true, it's not necessarily relevant because correlation isn't the same as causation. For example, it could be that Dems are pretty good at reading their local electorate, and left-leaning areas are more tolerant of violent protest in the name of left causes. So Dems in lefty areas did not condemn violence, whereas Dems in swing areas did condemn violence. If this was true, ceteris paribus you would expect Dems who condemn violence to be more likely to lose, just because they're running more competitive races.

BTW, I think people are unfortunately quite tribal nowadays, and tend to assume that extremists have control of the other side even if that's not the case. And disavowing extremists is only partially effective at changing that perception. Think about it--how much have Trump's many disavowals of the far right shifted your perception that he's in bed with them? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc Probably not much.

>So either that’s not actually the critical factor, or it’s not possible to control for this factor in any sort of reliable way.

One failed attempt doesn't mean that something can't be done.

"How did Trump get so many votes?"

The same people that attacked Schor have undoubtedly also asked themselves this question, without an ounce of self-awareness.

Except instead of recognizing their own culpability, the conclusion most such people are coming to seems to be "well, I guess nearly half of all Americans are bad people".

Not bad people, but gullible people. Anyone that believes QAnon conspiracy theories such as Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey are raping and drinking the blood of kidnapped children in pursuit of the “fountain of youth” is gullible.

Do you think the bulk of voters for Trump believe one of these things? He won a considerable number of votes.

I think a large proportion of Trump voters believe parts of QAnon-pushed conspiracy theories - especially that he is "taking on a Deep State conspiracy", and data indicates some support for that[1][2].

Surely they don't believe the "blood drinking paedophile" part though? It seems outrageous, and yet I know a bunch of people on HN believed PizzaGate back in 2016, so maybe I'm underestimating it.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/22/qano...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-o...

The downvotes on this are very aggressive and I'd love to know why. Do people think my summary of the data is wrong or that I'm underestimating the depth of it?

Troll swarm. Enjoy the ride.

Thanks. The good thing about having been on HN for a while is that I don't really need to care about troll voting.

Also there's often a trend I've noticed in some of my own down voted comments that an initial negative turns positive as curious readers want to see what was so bad, realize it was nothing, and upvote.

In this case I'm still not sure if people are downvoting because they don't like the data, don't like me not being convinced about the blood libel parts, think Pizzagate was real or what.

The blood libel stuff is absurd. Unfortunately, we have blackmailed politicians. So many of them have been caught doing absurd and evil acts that the absurd possibilities become oddly believable. I'm not saying it happened... but I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Pizzagate being "real" is ill-defined. Things happening in the basement of a specific DC pizza place seems unlikely, though not impossible. For example, the claim that it lacks a basement is reasonable but unproven. We'd have to excavate to be sure that there wasn't an unauthorized basement that is now filled-in to hide evidence.

We do know that pizza-related codewords are used by pedos, and that pizza-related codewords are used in the leaked Podesta emails. Are they unrelated? Not many people will rent a specific number of slices of pizza for a specific number of hours, but that is exactly what the emails reveal. The number of slices is commonly thought to mean the age of the children, but it could be the number of children.

Would you consider pizzagate "real" if everything was as stated, except that the actual building was next door to the pizza place? Supposedly a near-by building was owned by Epstein.

Would you consider pizzagate "real" if the pizza place was just a location to meet up, but not where any child was actually harmed?

I didn't downvote you but I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories. I voted for Trump because I like his style. I like that he pushes back when attacked. I like that he hasn't started any wars. I like my tax return. I like that he renegotiated NAFTA and trade with China. I like that he's getting Arab states to make peace with Israel.

What specifically do you like about the USMCA vs NAFTA? Do you feel it was worth the alienation of Canada as an ally? What advantages do you feel have been gained in trade with China? Wouldn't it have been more productive to work with allies on that front, rather than launching a unilateral trade war? Are these really the reasons you like him, or are they justifications?

I agree that not starting wars is good (except potentially when it's the only way to stop a terrible human rights abuse, like a genocide), and Trump certainly has a better record than Bush there. He does also seem to have made progress with middle east treaties. So I am with you there.

What on earth do you like about his style though? His style is to lie about everything, making up whatever supposed fact suits him at the moment, launch ridiculous ad hominem attacks at anyone he views as an enemy, and just basically stir up anger and discord. The way he "pushes back" is that of a childhood bully. He has ramped up partisan division and anger to an unprecedented level in modern history, and is in the process of undermining confidence in the democratic process itself. He's also alienated the rest of the world with his narcissism, incivility and pettiness. These do not seem like good qualities in a person, and especially not in a president.

I can understand people who vote for him because they're staunchly pro life. I'm not, but I can understand their ethical position. And I can understand those who have fallen for conspiracy theories. But if you're existing in the same reality I am, reading the things the man writes, and listening to the things he says, I honestly can't imagine how you can support him. I'm not one of these that thinks all Trump supporters are racists, or conspiracy theorists, or Russian bots, but I do find that any I've met who seem reasonable, once I dig deeper, believe things about the world that I don't just disagree with but know to be factually untrue. I've also met some who see the world the way I do, but aren't reasonable - basically those who just enjoy the fact that he makes the other side angry. I would truly like to understand what, besides a genuine belief that abortion is murder, could bring a reasonable, knowledgeable person to vote for Trump.

USMCA plugs a hole in NAFTA. It had been easy for non-NAFTA countries, particularly China, to import things into the USA via Mexico. USMCA mostly stops that. Canada isn't so alienated. The prime minister may be unhappy that his own failure was exposed, but the people got cheaper dairy. Even if Canada were alienated, it just wouldn't matter much.

It is usually best for the USA to act in a unilateral way. This is due to power. Working with multiple other parties is typically a harmful distraction. I get that some people are horrified by this, but it's clearly true, and the president's job is to put the USA first. Coalitions are for the weak.

His style is fun. There is nothing wrong with fun. It's a nice bonus, though hardly a reason to vote for the man. The same goes for getting globalist communists angry. It's a nice bonus. There are far more important reasons to support Trump.

The definition of "lie" has become absurdly biased. It's a "lie" if Trump makes a joke, exaggerates a bit, uses sarcasm, or has a few percent error on a number. Meanwhile, his opponents endlessly repeat proven falsehoods. Partisan division and anger were ramped up by his opponents, particularly in the media. There would be no division at all if people would simply accept the Trump plan for America.

We haven't had a non-narcissist president or candidate since Eisenhower, so clearly that isn't anything that matters.

You say he "is in the process of undermining confidence in the democratic process itself", as if it is his responsibility to sweep flaws under the carpet. His opponents have fought hard against anything and everything that could be used to prove fraud. (suspicious...) How can you support this situation, purposely being unaware of the extent of fraud? Unjustified confidence should be undermined. Unjustified confidence is harmful. We should not blindly trust a supposedly democratic process that would be easy to corrupt.

I'm looking back at you in disbelief. To use your wording: I would truly like to understand what could bring a reasonable, knowledgeable person to vote against Trump. (in either election) Are you in fact knowledgeable? DKIM proves corruption for both Hillary and Biden. The first time I chose Trump, I didn't trust him, but I knew that Hillary despised normal Americans and that she had committed crimes that would put any normal person in prison. I was shocked that Trump actually followed through on most campaign promises, and that earned him my enthusiastic support.

I voted for Trump and I hadn't heard of QAnon until maybe a month ago when I started to see it in the news.

I don't think many have heard of QAnon (I think I saw less than 30% reported?).

But many believe at least some of the theories pushed by QAnon, which include (but are not limited to):

* Trump is taking on a "Deep State" which is trying to take him down

* Trump is combating an international paedophile ring

You shouldn't be downvoted. Trump "taking on the deep state" isn't even a conspiracy theory, he literally made that a major part of his 2016 campaign. If deep state/swamp/etc is interpreted as a vague reference to the Washington/New York professional classes who populate government in huge numbers and tend to share very similar worldviews and beliefs, then calling this a QAnon pushed conspiracy theory would be a pretty grotesque distortion of the truth: conservative politicians have campaigned on rolling back big government for as long as there have been competitive elections.

> Trump "taking on the deep state" isn't even a conspiracy theory, he literally made that a major part of his 2016 campaign

You're misframing this. The conspiracy theory is not that Trump is taking on the deep state; it's the existence of the deep state to begin with.

>If deep state/swamp/etc is interpreted as a vague reference to the Washington/New York professional classes who populate government in huge numbers and tend to share very similar worldviews and beliefs

Speaking of grotesque distortions of the truth, that is not what the "deep state" has ever referred to. It's always been, by definition, a conspiracy theory. It generally posits that the country is actually run by a group o unelected individuals in secret that orchestrate events in this country up to and including the selection of presidents.

Eh, wasn't one of the main reasons Clinton ran aground the belief that her nomination was due to a stitch-up inside the DNC (selection of Presidents ... nearly, at least)? Isn't it true that many US laws are created by regulatory agencies of various kinds, and then implemented/enforced by unelected judges?

The notion that most rules are invented and implemented by the unelected isn't extreme, is it, it's more like an observation of how the system really works, especially in the US where - unusually - regulatory agencies can create new laws without involving Congress.

Well, no. Laws are only created by Congress. Regulatory agencies can create non-trivial policies, and you might want to argue that the distinction between a regulatory policy and law is minimal or non-existent. But regulatory agencies are never what proponents of the deep state are discussing in my experience. Likewise with judges - and if we wanted to somehow include judges in the deep state, we have the problem that Trump has at this point appointed more federal judges in a single term than any other president and more SCOTUS judges than any other president. If judges are part of the deep state, Trump can not in any way be said to be fighting against it.

> Eh, wasn't one of the main reasons Clinton ran aground the belief that her nomination was due to a stitch-up inside the DNC (selection of Presidents ... nearly, at least)?

No,.that belief was a side effect of (1) the fact that it was, to a certain extent true that her nomination was largely a product of elite arrangements and structural advantage, and (2) the deep and broad unpopularity that was the actual reason she ran aground in what should have been the easiest election for Democrats in a long time.

I'm guessing but I bet that about 30-40% of his voters believe it.

No point guessing here, either produce proper evidence or don't bother ostracizing the other group.

"Produce proper evidence" - excellent advice. Would be nice if the president himself followed it.

I don't know what you consider 'bulk'.

I would say that candidates pushing a three year old conspiracy theory doing better in elections than, say, the Libertarian or Green candidates demonstrates some mass.

I would say the US president supporting it gives it some mass.

Pretending it is not a significant force in Republican politics is either spin or an ostrich impersonation, not sure which.

To put some numbers to it here are results from a Morning Consult poll[1]:

>Republicans, in particular, have been drawn to QAnon, with 38 percent of GOP adults who had heard of QAnon saying they believed the claims were at least somewhat accurate, compared to 18 percent of Democrats and 16 percent of independents.

Strangely enough Democrats and Independents were more likely to have an opinion of QAnon than Republicans. However they were much less likely to believe any of it with 63% of Democrats labeled it somewhat or completely inaccurate while only 24% of Republicans did.

This also seems to be another strike against the idea of "shy Trump voters" because I think there is a bigger social stigma against QAnon than Trump. Although I guess maybe the Republicans who are saying they aren't aware of or have no opinion of QAnon could be "shy QAnon believers".

[1] - https://morningconsult.com/2020/10/14/social-media-qanon-pol...

I don’t find it too surprising that more Democrats have an opinion of QAnon. There’s a small segment of people who actually have consumed the material and believe in it, and a much larger set who have heard of it and have a vague (and possibly wrong) notion of what “side” it’s on. I think due to the repugnant nature of the movement, most of that commentary is going to come from the left, so mostly left-wing people will form an opinion. Most of the people who are favorable toward QAnon in those polls on both the left and right probably have little idea of what it actually is.

See: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/28/bush-did-north-dakota/

Anecdotal, but every single person I've spoken to who voted for Trump does believe one or more of these conspiracy theories.

What's your sample size?

About 27 people in 5 different states.

Anecdotally, I’ve seen the same thing. It’s weird because outside of these political conspiracies, they don’t really have any other odd beliefs as far as I know.

I know a lot of Trump voters, and I’m not aware of any who believe these things. It might be my own bubble, though. They voted almost exclusively due to the abortion issue.

Yeah, I think that's a separate category. I've tried to engage with a number of Trump supporters, as I'd really like to understand how reasonable, ethical people could vote for someone I see as so despicable and dangerous. Obviously I'm missing something, and I honestly don't want to think that half the US population is unreasonable on unethical.

I've found that the most reasonable people tend to be staunchly pro life. And I can see that—if you truly believed abortion was murder, it would be reasonable to support almost anyone who might stop it. I don't believe that, but I can respect it. Others tend to believe things about the world that I don't think are true, like climate change isn't a big deal, other countries have been taking advantage of the US for decades, democrats are controlled by the military-industrial complex, etc. Their conclusions might be reasonable if you take their beliefs as fact, but I think their starting position is flawed.

And then there are of course those who aren't reasonable. Those who just enjoy watching Trump troll libs. Those who want to see the whole system burn. Those who just believe whatever Fox or Breitbart or whatever says. Etc.

I mean, I'm sure I have my own biases. I despise the very thought of the man, because of the way he acts and how he doesn't care about the damage he does. But I'm sure that feeling makes it difficult for me to see any of his positive qualities, or that someone could (perhaps rationally?) value those qualities over the negative ones I see. So far though, I haven't been able to find evidence to change my mind.

If you're missing something, it's probably because you dismiss what was said. I've seen that happen all too often.

For example, suppose a person doesn't want to become a linguistic or religious minority in their own country. When they logically oppose immigration, do you decide that you're hearing a dogwhistle for white supremacy? If so, you're discarding what was actually said and you're substituting false data that supports a pre-determined conclusion that Trump supporters are racist.

Another factor is that there has been some truly shocking projection and gaslighting with regard to corruption. Like no other president, Trump has fought corruption, yet he is relentlessly accused of it. The claim that Obama had a "scandal-free presidency" is a cruel joke; his abuse of the intelligence apparatus to target a political opponent made Nixon look saintly. Biden's family has gotten rich off of foreign influence; we have the evidence and there is no alternative explanation. The whole impeachment process started because both Biden and Pelosi had children collecting bribes from Ukranian gas companies, and Trump dared to tell the Ukraine that prosecuting the corrupt was proper. Looking back to Hillary, her actions with classified information would have put any normal person in prison for decades. The contrast with Trump is stunning. For years everybody has investigated Trump in hope of finding something, and everybody has failed.

The desire to put America first is real, legitimate, and proper. It's a job requirement for the president.

Cutting regulations shot the economy to record highs before that virus hit. Inequality actually dropped. Black and hispanic unemployment was the lowest recorded ever, with records going back over half a century. Trump knew what business needed, and he delivered.

Why do you imagine that "he doesn't care about the damage he does"? He is only damaging things that need to be damaged, like the choking bureaucracy. He cares, and he did the damage on purpose, because the damage was needed. If by "damage" you're referring to something like the opinions of the leftist leaders of parasitic countries, yeah he doesn't care and he shouldn't care. The job is to put America first, not to please foreigners.

I don't know what to say besides that I disagree with almost every single aspect of what you wrote, on either a factual or a moral basis. Often both. Honestly though, we're so far off that I think itemizing everything I disagree with here would be a waste of time. So instead, I'll list what I do agree with. First to answer your question, I don't believe most Trump supporters are racist, although I would suggest you really analyze why decreasing linguistic or religious dominance is threatening to you. I agree that the first (but not only) duty of any world leader is to the people of their country. I agree that cutting regulations, cutting taxes, and encouraging low interest rates likely helped the economy (although other effects of some of those regulatory cuts, especially on climate, are very concerning to me).

And to answer your final question, the most recent example of Trump not caring about the damage he does is him currently undermining faith in the democratic process itself in order to avoid admitting defeat. More generally, he will always take opportunities to fire up his base despite any deleterious effects on national unity. And yes, also his actions and rhetoric toward strong allies such as Canada. Framing such as "parasitic countries" is both inaccurate and diplomatically unproductive - from you, but especially from a world leader. I would go further into why I disagree with that approach, but that would lead me into all the things I disagree with here. So instead I'll just ask you to do some research on your other points outside of right-wing sources. The most clear-cut one is this thing about Pelosi's son, so maybe start there.

The fear of other language and religion is reasonable. In fact, I'd have to say that a person is extremely foolish if they don't fear it. Language is how we communicate. Communication failure creates isolation, hostility, and loss of productivity. You can see that the map of linguistic diversity at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_diversity_index looks an awful lot like a map of poverty, strife, and general failure to be part of the modern world. There is a connection. Religion just made the news a week or two ago in France, with a teacher's head getting cut off. Pretending these issues don't exist doesn't solve them.

Other aspects of culture matter too. It's just more comfortable to know that your neighbors laugh at the same jokes, celebrate the same holidays, and so on. People who want different can leave, but people who want the same have no option other than to fight to keep their culture from being overrun.

This idea that there is a problem with "undermining faith in the democratic process itself" suggests that the most important thing in a fraudulent election is to hide the flaws. I hope you were at least fair about that, not complaining at all when Trump or Bush won. I hope you opposed taking those elections to the supreme court. Lots of people claimed that those three elections were stolen, and lots of people even rioted. If you had any complaints whatsoever about those far-cleaner elections, you're just being partisan. I happen to believe that there is a duty to expose problems, including any way by which fraud could go undetected. We shouldn't just trust that an election could be clean; it is dirty until proven clean. The fact that the left has vigorously opposed election integrity efforts is shameful and highly suspicious. If you'd rather Trump didn't have a legitimate argument that the election was stolen, maybe you should have cooperated in securing it against all possible fraud.

Have you found the perhaps-mythical unbiased news source? Are there any non-right-wing sources that don't censor the news and maliciously spread misinformation? Anything that spread the Russia hoax or "fine people" hoax is disqualified immediately. If the news source didn't fully cover the Biden laptop, it is censored. Full coverage includes at least a description of where to find the video of Hunter naked and worse with his niece, and it includes mention of the email being DKIM verified. The news is censored if it didn't included coverage of Biden's sundowning and other signs of dementia. The news is censored if it never tied the Ukraine controversy back to Joe Biden being caught on video bragging about how he got the Ukrainian prosecutor fired by threatening to block a billion dollars of foreign aid.

In response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25132392 which doesn't have a reply link: being open to other viewpoints doesn't mean automatic acceptance. I do listen and think. I'm not very likely to change my whole value system though, and I'm not about to trust news sources that have long histories of dishonesty. Remember that much of your news media couldn't even be honest about Trump feeding koi in Japan, editing the video to suggest that he rudely disrespected the ceremony. That news bubble is a bad one to be in.

The purpose of an open mind is to close on the truth, but that should be more like science than dogma. New information can change conclusions.

My value system is largely focused on the success of my descendants, including distant ones not yet born. They will prosper best if they have complete dominance for their country, culture, language, and religion. They are more likely to die off otherwise. To prosper they also must avoid the mistake of leftist government (socialism, communism, etc.) because that killed over 100 million people in the 20th century and it's still killing people today.

Answering a couple more points from your original comment here: I don't just enjoy watching Trump troll libs, but I do enjoy it. There is nothing wrong with a bit of fun. People on the right don't believe Fox anymore, and haven't for several years. There was an ownership and control change, with Roger Ailes dead and Rupert Murdoch mostly gone. Aside from two major commentary/interview shows, Fox is now leftist. Fox even hired Donna Brazile, the disgraced former head of the Democratic National Committee.

You mention that you despise the very thought of Trump because of the way he acts and how he doesn't care about the damage he does. OK, so what about that crime bill? I mean the one that put lots of black people in prison for crack. Joe Biden fought hard to pass it, Kamala Harris eagerly used it to put black people in prison with huge sentences, Hunter Biden was immune from it while smoking crack, and Donald Trump signed a prison reform law to stop the harm. How can you not despise the very thought of Biden because of the way he acts and how he doesn't care about the damage he does?

As you say, "I'd really like to understand how reasonable, ethical people could vote for someone I see as so despicable and dangerous." Yes, me too, but the other way. The 100 million are dead, and more are dying. The war in Iraq, supported by Biden, killed plenty. A few decades of life in prison is roughly equivalent to a death, and there were an awful lot of those. Perhaps you can explain why all these things are reasonable and ethical?

It’s about 40%, look it up there’s polling on it, and that’s apparently probably over representing the more trusting/sane ones. Partly joking on the last part dunno how the populated those polls.

> there's polling on it

Ironic, right? How do we trust any political based polling that got things so very wrong the past two elections?

Yeah but polls routinely show that 4% of people think Obama is a lizard:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

Very often you do encounter polls these days where an absurdly huge number of people give hilariously trollish answers to pollsters, and then people take the resulting polls completely seriously. Pollsters try to include 'attention check' questions to catch basic issues like people just pressing yes to every question, but I do see very often polls that quite obviously can't match reality without anyone noticing it. There's something about maths that switches people's brains off.

Looking from afar, paranoia seems to have been a mainstay of the American right since the 1950's. What's changed in the past 15-20 years is it appears to have become a mainstay of American politics in general.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American...

they are victims of a con, and they are members of a cult, but they are not gullible: they are scared. scared people are easy to manipulate, which is why terrorism (broadly defined, including 24/7 news cycle of calamity) is so effective at public control.

By dismissing the individuals as flawed due to gullibility, you obscure the true phenomena, and make you and your peers more susceptible to it.

> By dismissing the individuals as flawed due to gullibility, you obscure the true phenomena, and make you and your peers more susceptible to it.

Yes, the continual polarization and forcing of picking a side. What's sad is even after the victory speech I'm seeing posts on FB from the 'winning side' that are further polarizing.

To be fair, there is a small grain of truth to that. Not resolving the Epstein debacle gave a lot of room for Q to grow.

So you're defending the person who is trying to explain why polls got it wrong by using polling data to show that their argument belittling the BLM protests was correct.

This is ridiculous on it's own, but also ignores things like how wrong it is to blame the protests for violence often instigated by the police, how dumb it is to trust polling data from the Nixon campaign when we know he was involved in all sorts of disgusting tactics to get elected, and how there is evidence that the protests strongly helped the Democrats.

https://mobile.twitter.com/tbonier/status/132468779601621811...

> So you're defending the person who is trying to explain why polls got it wrong by using polling data to show that their argument belittling the BLM protests was correct.

He's not belittling them. He's supporting them and their cause, and offering course corrective advice so that they are better able to achieve their stated goals.

> This is ridiculous on it's own, but also ignores things like how wrong it is to blame the protests for violence often instigated by the police

Violence was instigated on both sides, but regardless of what the underlying reality was, the perception was that leftists were responsible for much of the violence, and that is problematic electorally.

The Twitter thread you linked is exactly why the Democrats lost power this cycle. This thinking, right here:

> And for those pointing out that Dems may have lost some House seats in conservative districts, at least in part due to BLM: If you define your party based on what you think might work in one district in Oklahoma, you're doing it wrong.

You may not like the fact that you have to think about the median Oklahoman voter, but the reality is that that voter is much more important than the median say, NYC voter. Because you already have NYC in the bag. Oklahoma, on the other hand, is up for grabs. Whether or not this system is how things ought to be, this is how it actually is.

>Violence was instigated on both sides, but regardless of what the underlying reality was, the perception was that leftists were responsible for much of the violence, and that is problematic electorally.

Literally "it doesn't matter who was responsible for the violence, the left get blamed for it so it's their fault." Fuck that. The police are very often responsible for the violence, and you should not stop protesting because they can attack you and make you look bad. Suggesting they should stop is belittling their protest.

>You may not like the fact that you have to think about the median Oklahoman voter, but the reality is that that voter is much more important than the median say, NYC voter

You completely missed the point of what was said. Maybe in Oklahoma this was a net negative, but countrywide including many swing states it was essential.

I don't think they were saying the protests should stop. They made on observation about how the protests were perceived by others, and that perception, correct or not, influenced voting decisions.

This is changing it from "they said to stop" to "they said it was wise to stop," and the distinction basically only matters if you want the Democrats to win. You're saying the same thing either way.

Of course the distinction only matters if you want the democrats to win. The comment being discussed was made by a Democratic strategist.

Do you mean I'm a democratic strategist? I'm the one that proposed the the distinction, and I'm no political strategist. If that part of your comment was meant for me, then I really have no idea where you got that impression.

The comment I was responding to seemed to be saying that a person cannot acknowledge that the protests would lose votes without automatically believing the protests should stop, even though they might support the issues being protested.

That's not true. A person can believe-- about any issue-- that fighting for that issue may have negative consequences but also that fighting for it is still the right thing to do, that the cost of the fight is worth the consequences.

Saying "don't want the Democrats to win" would have made it clearer, my mistake. Ignoring the outlying position the other poster mentions as they will make themselves clear on their own, if you want the Democrats to win those two positions are identical. If you don't, it's two separate negative views of the protests.

No, it really doesn't. You're making an extra leap in logic that isn't true for all people. Just because the protests could lose some votes doesn't mean everyone who acknowledge that possibility wanted them to stop.

Pick any issue. A person can support the issue and recognize it may have negative consequences. From there I'm making the distinct that beliefs on the issue can go (at least) two ways: 1) The issue is too important for those consequences to take precedence over fighting for the issue. OR 2) The consequences are too high to continue fighting for the issue and it would be wise to stop.

You seem to be saying that someone who supports the protests & believes it will lose votes must automatically jump to #2. That doesn't follow. A person can believe the lost votes are not important enough to override the importance of the protests.

>A person can believe the lost votes are not important enough to override the importance of the protests.

That person will spend their time discussing the issues important to the protests, not spend their time discussing how the protests are actually hurting their greater cause.

A responsible person considers the consequences of their actions and what trade offs are being made. Supporting the protests but also considering the consequences are not mutually exclusive and is in fact an obvious step to take for a mature and rational person.

OK? If you've thought through your actions, your still not going to belabor the point that the protests aren't helping in the elections. You'll talk about what is important enough to be worth those consequences.

Well, it seems like we parsed this conversation to the point where we found that we actually fundamentally agree on that issue. Thank you for a thoughtful conversation. Heck, even if we had ultimately disagreed, we went about the discussion productively, clarifying our points at each step etc. without insults or flame wars. This is why I find HN to be a unique community.

But this is part of the problem for Dems: it's perception of truth, not truth, that matters for the undecided voter. So even though a few miles from me it's the Aryan Cowboys and Boogaloo Bois who are being prosecuted for property damage, it's the antifa that people in rural Oregon and Oklahoma are afraid of. They're also very afraid of "white slavery" (yes, I'm using the wording of the 1880s and 1910s [1] because it's the same tropes gussied up for today) -- they're afraid that some foreigner will come snatch their beautiful innocent daughter from Walmart; the reality is of course that their daughter's more likely to start doing meth. And of course there is abortion, too; it's wildly more likely that a Republican woman will need a procedure that will be forbidden under various proposed antiabortion laws than that a woman will have an abortion of a healthy baby in the 9th month, but the second scenario drives Republicans while the first is a fact to be swept under the rug ("it's different").

Dems don't speak to the feelings in the way that modern Republicans do. Dems think that because something is unlikely or illogical, they don't have to spend a lot of time talking about it; Republicans realize those are the best things to spend all your press time on, because then there can be no metrics to look bad on. Republicans know much better how to tap into the fear of the white electorate in particular, and then add the carrot that once the temporarily embarrassed millionaire is restored to riches, there'll be no taxes ;)

[1] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slav...

> He's not belittling them. He's supporting them and their cause, and offering course corrective advice so that they are better able to achieve their stated goals.

Kind of like telling women that they shouldn’t venture out at night? For their own safety.

Or to give another example, the recent arguments made that people shouldn’t publish cartoons that Muslims find offensive, for their own safety.

In all three cases telling people that they shouldn’t exercise their rights “for their own benefit” is seen as highly offensive.

He's not telling them not to exercise their rights. He's telling them not to protest violently. He is encouraging them to protest. He's encouraging those protests to be non-violent.

An impossible dream. 100% of protestors can be nonviolent and external forces, usually cops, can turn it violent.

> show that their argument belittling the BLM protests was correct.

David Shor has not, to my knowledge, ever made an argument belittling the BLM protests. I welcome any links you have that might demonstrate otherwise.

> how wrong it is to blame the protests for violence often instigated by the police

Neither Shor, nor the researcher he linked, Omar Wasow did this.

> how there is evidence that the protests strongly helped the Democrats.

Neither Shor nor Wasow have, to my knowledge, suggested that the protests were net negatives for Democrats. You have constructed a series of strawmen.

>You have constructed a series of strawmen.

I was responding to a post that said "It’s conventional wisdom now that failure to condemn violent protests earlier cost Democrats votes, including among minority groups." So if Shor's point was not about such topics, it has been subverted to be used about such topics.

I'll admit, he does not seem to have belittled the protests directly though. I may have went to far with that one.

It is possible that protests motivated both Democrats and Republicans. The extent of this is unknown, the dust has barely settled. I suspect it will be an area of much research.

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