Adding to this: All politicians will always go where they think the votes are. Of course there’s some nuance to this. Trump doesn’t think he has a chance in Hell of winning a state like NY or CA. Sure, he’ll do some appearances, but everyone knows it’s a lost cause. Same w/ Harris and the red flyover states. But if polling shows there are votes to be had and the campaign is willing to “shift” their stance, they will go after it. Every. Time.

I keep seeing people post and/or suggest on Lemmy that the US is overall more liberal than our national representation would suggest. If that’s the case, why is the national polling still so damn close!? If I’m not mistaken, national polling reflects the hypothetical popular vote - i.e., no Electoral College bullshit. I even got into a pretty good discussion not too long ago over how voters can pull the Democratic party back to the left - by holding their collective nose and voting for the “left” candidate and holding the party’s feet to the fire if they keep sliding right. At this point, any vote that isn’t for Harris helps Trump get reelected. Regardless of what anyone thinks will happen in a Harris administration, we all pretty much know what will happen in a second Trump term.

Yes, the Dems have been pulled to the right by the GOP and the nature of the Electoral College, but an argument can be made that they’ve been pushed as well by apathetic, otherwise liberal, voters not voting. I get it. Every time I walk in the ballot box, there’s a growing part of my brain that wants to vote for the craziest MF’er on the ballot in the hopes that all this nonsense will just burn down so we can start over. So far, the other side of my brain is still winning that argument. I did not enjoy voting for Biden. I won’t enjoy voting for Harris. I didn’t really enjoy voting for Obama the second time. But I’ll still do it because the alternatives (including the “burn-it-down” one, for now) are worse.