Winning By a Landslide and other politicspeak

[onlinebiker]

What exactly qualifies as "winning by a landslide"?

It seems it depends on the person making the claim. If it is "their" candidate who wins -- it seems anything more than "the other guy" got.

Rather ambiguous if you ask me. I say there should be a specific number - say 75 percent of the electorate. I've seen real landslides - they are rather dramatic. A landslide should be more than just some mud your kids tracked into the kitchen. Winning by 48 percent of the voting is a plurality. Winning by by 51 percent is a narrow majority. It's certainly not a landslide.


.....

And how can it possibly be - that EVERY 4 YEARS - we hear "This is the most important election of our lifetime".???? Every time? How the hell can that possibly be? I MIGHT buy in - if we had an election where the pundits said "Don't worry - either one is fine". Come to think of it - we had the reverse of that 4 years ago.. But noooooo... Every election is so damned important. They want you to think the world will end if the right guy doesn't get elected. Does that mean we got it right - every time??? After all - we're still here - right??? IF all those past elections were so damned important - and we got it wrong - the world would have ended - right??

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

And WHY do they call that televised shitfest they recently held a "debate"?

I went out with a girl on the debate team when I was in high school. (when the dinosaurs roamed the earth). I went to a few of her debates. They looked about as much like that thing the other night as RuPaul looks like Dr Ruth Westheimer.

I suspect they may be shading the truth with us.

[Brian37]

What exactly qualifies as "winning by a landslide"?

It seems it depends on the person making the claim. If it is "their" candidate who wins -- it seems anything more than "the other guy" got.

Rather ambiguous if you ask me. I say there should be a specific number - say 75 percent of the electorate. I've seen real landslides - they are rather dramatic. A landslide should be more than just some mud your kids tracked into the kitchen. Winning by 48 percent of the voting is a plurality. Winning by by 51 percent is a narrow majority. It's certainly not a landslide.


.....

And how can it possibly be - that EVERY 4 YEARS - we hear "This is the most important election of our lifetime".???? Every time? How the hell can that possibly be? I MIGHT buy in - if we had an election where the pundits said "Don't worry - either one is fine". Come to think of it - we had the reverse of that 4 years ago.. But noooooo... Every election is so damned important. They want you to think the world will end if the right guy doesn't get elected. Does that mean we got it right - every time??? After all - we're still here - right??? IF all those past elections were so damned important - and we got it wrong - the world would have ended - right??

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

And WHY do they call that televised shitfest they recently held a "debate"?

I went out with a girl on the debate team when I was in high school. (when the dinosaurs roamed the earth). I went to a few of her debates. They looked about as much like that thing the other night as RuPaul looks like Dr Ruth Westheimer.

I suspect they may be shading the truth with us.

Reagan beat the fuck out of Mondale. That was a landslide.

It is true parties throw the line "This is the most important election of our lifetime".  But 4 years ago as with today, it is especially true. Trump has fucked up the country. 50 former republican intel agents warned America not to elect him during his run calling him a national security threat. Giving him 4 more years will damage this country beyond repair.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

An election landslide is like pornography - you may not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it.

Boru

[onlinebiker]

An election landslide is like pornography - you may not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it.

Boru

Interesting.

Paraphrasing Potter Stewart - a conservative and Republican....

[Gawdzilla Sama]

How many do you have to look up?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/23/us/most-s...index.html

[The Grand Nudger]

We do elections like we're cramming for a test. Little to nothing for four years and then, at the eleventh hour, we hope that a single vote cast on a single day can do a great deal towards resolving the previous four years backlog of issues.

I think that might be why we seem to feel that every election is the most important in our lives. It's something we'll do...maybe, 15 times. That puts it in rarified air.

I was thinking about this and last night's debate - the embarrassing retrograde discussion of minimum wages. We have two old men arguing over whether we should go to 15 an hour, but that was a livable wage a decade ago. It just took that long for this to bubble up and through that backlog.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

An election landslide is like pornography - you may not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it.

Boru

Interesting.

Paraphrasing Potter Stewart - a conservative and Republican....

Why not? It’s applicable, don’t you think? 

Boru

[arewethereyet]

A landslide - a real one - falling on Trump would be something I would pay to watch. Might even make some popcorn for the occasion.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

We do elections like we're cramming for a test.  Little to nothing for four years and then, at the eleventh hour, we hope that a single vote cast on a single day can do a great deal towards resolving the previous four years backlog of issues.

I think that might be why we seem to feel that every election is the most important in our lives.   It's something we'll do...maybe, 15 times.  That puts it in rarified air.

I was thinking about this and last night's debate - the embarrassing retrograde discussion of minimum wages.  We have two old men arguing over whether we should go to 15 an hour, but that was a livable wage a decade ago.  It just took that long for this to bubble up and through that backlog.  They were both younger (right or wrong), and the 15/hr figure was accurate..a decade ago.

Imma go with human nature - the problem seems twofold: half of you don’t vote and the half that does don’t  vote often enough.

Government rarely has a sea change. Most alterations in governments are incremental. If  the overwhelming majority of you are not voting in every possible election (not just every two years), of course things aren’t going to change.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

That's the worry. That we simply can't be as nimble as we need to be. That the rate of problems accruing and change in general exceeds the rate at which the human creature is capable of making change as a group.

I was just talking with The Wife about the idea of all of human issues as a big Chuck E Cheese Wack-a-Mole game. If every human being was actively engaged (and lets go beyond the confines of just voting - because voting may or may not be a factual waste of a persons time) in whacking moles, might there still be a number of moles that overwhelm us? Just how many tickets can we earn, what's our prize budget?