89 million Americans over 18 didn't vote.

[Funtatlaguy]

Sad.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-15/how-many-people-didnt-vote-in-the-2024-election

[JI7]

1. There are many people that pay very little attention to any news

and just have no interest in politics govt.

Even less people vote in non presidential years. This turns the Presidential race into more of a celeb contest. Becsuse people have little interest or understanding of how government works.

[edhopper]

2. And some of those people still voted

and mostly for Trump.

[JI7]

4. Right, they vote in Pres years or only for Pres but leave others blank

[H2O Man]

6. Right.

Perhaps a significant part of this is due to poor people seeing no connection between "politics" and their daily lives. A lot has changed since LBJ gave his "war on poverty speech." As former heavyweight champion Big George Foreman recently said, poor people's needs have gone out of style since the 1960s.

[spooky3]

8. Everyone's needs (except billionaires') have gone out of style since TSF. Nt

[H2O Man]

11. Right.

"The fallout and backlash from the war on poverty gave way to what Kaaryn Gustafson called the criminalization of poverty. As white middle-class Americans became more disgruntled about the “government handouts” that Black low-income communities were receiving, policymakers and legislators took action to respond to their concerns. This led to more substantial restrictions on welfare and the policing of recipients of government assistance. The resentment that middle-class Americans harbored against communities on welfare translated into anti-welfare fraud policies that disproportionately targeted low-income Black communities and failed at responding to the most egregious forms of fraudzation of poverty."
-- Joseph A. Califano, Washington Monthly, October 1999

There were advantages to the Democratic Party doing outreach in low-income, low-voting neighborhoods.

[Takket]

3. that's more people than voted for either candidate

maybe if the economy collapses into depression people they love start getting rounded up by the gestapo, they'll learn that doing their civic duty is important.

not holding my breath.

[sarisataka]

5. "None of the above" wins again

[LoisB]

7. ...and I will bet half the farm that most of those 89 million complain about how the government is run (and by

whom), what the government is taking from them, what the government gets wrong, what the government should do...ad nauseam.

[magicarpet]

9. Sitting back on the comfy couch twiddling ones thumbs.

As the world burns into a blazing inferno as Hyper Capitalistic Oligarchy and Christo-
Fascistc Nationalism becomes the brand of governance of popular choice.

Hail the Fuhrer, praise be to the MAGA Nazis. They have work so diligently to shit trash American Democracy while many stood by and did nothing to help stop this political atrocity.

Thomas Jefferson,....

"The Government you elect is the government you deserve."

We are up for a world of hurt and pain with

djt 2.0,

Project 2025 - Nazi Manifesto,

and finally

Agenda 47.

Pass the Oxycontin, plus fentynal, and watch the suicide rates skyrocket.

Won't this be fun ?

[Funtatlaguy]

13. Welcome to real life Gilead, handmaids.

Margaret Atwood said she didn’t think she was writing prophesy.
She apparently was.

[Yavin4]

10. Maybe, just maybe, Democratic campaign managers should spend some time focusing on these 89M

instead of begging Republicans to vote for them which they never do.

[dawg]

12. Should've been more.

If you're too fucking stupid, or just can't be bothered, to understand the issues and how the government works, then you should not vote.

[RussBLib]

14. and I wonder what % were stricken from the rolls?

We heard quite a lot up to Nov 5 that certain states had been removing names, some LOTS of names, from the voter rolls, whether those voters had moved, or maybe hadn't voted in years, or had immigrant surnames.

Yet, after the election, I heard nothing about any voter who tried to vote and was turned away. Nothing about any voters whose names were no longer on the rolls, and could not vote. Nothing about any minorities specifically not allowed to vote when they should have been able to vote.

Are we to believe that all those voter purges by Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Florida, etc, were flawless? Perfectly executed so that no one who was entitled to vote was denied the right to vote?

Or were these stories all over the news and somehow I missed them?

Greg Palast is up to his usual.

Here’s What We Do Now
A Personal Note
by Greg Palast
November 6, 2024

As a former professor of statistics, I know there’s still a lot of sleuthing in the numbers I have to do, but I can tell you this: The number of rejected provisional ballots, the number of voters wrongly purged from the rolls, the number of ballots “spoiled” and not counted, has unquestionably skyrocketed.

The result: This is the most “Jim Crow,” racially bent election I’ve covered in 25 years of reporting.

Did that make the difference? Don’t ask our “see-no-evil” media. While, before the election, The New York Times (never forget to capitalize the “The”) and MSNBC will run some stories on vote suppression trickery, from crazy ID requirements to rejecting student registrations to suspect purges of voters. However, the establishment outlets will NEVER, EVER say that these ugly, racist electoral swindles changed the outcome of the election.

They will wave the flag and tell us that American democracy prevailed again. That’s just horseshit. Excuse my French, but when are we going to face the fact that Jim Crow has returned — this time as Dr. James Crow, systems analyst.

In my film Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, I note that just one Trump-backed group, True the Vote, signed up a posse of 40,000 of self-proclaimed vote fraud hunters who, two months ago, had already challenged the ballots of 852,381 voters, overwhelmingly citizens of color — with a goal, undoubtedly met — of challenging 2 MILLION by this week.

Could disqualifying literally millions of ballots affect an election’s outcome? What do you think, Sherlock?

https://www.gregpalast.com/heres-what-we-do-now/

[Irish_Dem]

15. Yes some of these were vote tampering/interference in some way.

[ibegurpard]

16. Anyone who's not voting is so misinformed

That I'm not so sure we want them to. We have a huge hill to climb on persuasion and communication.

[Mark.b2]

17. I absolutely agree.

Sometimes I wish I didnt care, either! My blood pressure would be better.

[DJ Synikus Makisimus]

18. Voters mostly disliked all two parties candidates.

I realize diehards think that everyone should automatically choose blue just because, but after the last four years why would you think that?

It was a stretch for Joe Biden to broaden his appeal to ordinary folks in 2020, but he knew how to do retail politics and promised specifics that would put money in people's pockets. Democrats in Congress didn't pass any of it. The benefits package for COVID-19 relief, intended to jumpstart the economy, expired. People saw that as money taken from their pockets. The bits that came later were too little too late. You can scream all you want about how "Joe raised wages," but working folks think they get increased wages by working hard - which is also true (otherwise they'd be fired). The general feeling is that they're no better off after Biden than they were during COVID, other than they can go outside and go to work now. And lots of places went out of business and haven't come back. Infrastructure packages don't get noticed until completion, which won't happen 'til the Trump Administration. Guess who'll take credit? Moreover, and this is a big one for connected/aware voters, Joe didn't cut the head off the MAGA snake. "He got served up a fat fastball and he whiffed," was the way one retired worker put it to me.

Kamala Harris worked hard to make sure that business and finance weren't scared of her "radical" politics, and courted folks like Liz Cheney. She made no specific promises as to how working class folks (especially the working poor) would benefit from her being President. She spent a great deal of time in the company of celebrities. While that may have appealed to Taylor Swift (etc.) fans, it didn't do much for older workers who aren't. Younger workers are beyond annoyed at the wholesale support for Israel in Gaza, but it never comes up talking to older folks. Harris also failed to convince on EXACTLY HOW she was going to "save Roe." She never committed to Supreme Court expansion, for example.

There's also a thing about Harris being a woman. My preliminary investigations indicate (I'm still working on it) that older working class folks, for whatever reason, aren't OK with a woman being President. That works across racial lines and includes men and women I talk with. I have no idea why it's such a big deal, and YES, I am surprised. Here I thought the reason that Hilary lost was because people hate her. That was only part of it. I get the impression that we are a generation away (+/- 20 yrs.) from a woman President.

I can't speak about MAGA voters locally, because if they are any among the folks I've talked with they haven't identified as such. I'm spoken to no one who admits voting for Trump, unsurprising in my city and specific neighborhood. Nationwide though, I think what most voters felt was that their only choice was "voting against." Enough folks in a few critical states voted against the "bums in charge" to tip the balance, barely. Others in those same places, seeing nothing much in either party's propaganda that had anything to do with them, voted for the reality TV show spectacle that is MAGA in all its rudeness. Those same voters will likely vote against the MAGA GOP IF there are midterms in 2026, since they'll be "the bums" then.

Bottom line was very many people really wanted someone to vote FOR. They didn't find anyone, so they didn't vote.

[ThePartyThatListens]

19. Democrats need to give them something to vote FOR

Run on what you will DO to IMPROVE people's lives.

Like another person did some years ago, but got smacked down by the powers that be.

It works folks, we just have to do it.