I care what matters to independents and undecideds.
Okay the "Hidden Silent Neutral Jury of people who are secretly watching this discussion and agreeing with me therefore I'm winning" are all still too busy watching Jabba prove immortality using Bayesian statistics, they can't be invoked here.
And that is your opinion. You're entitled to that opinion. And my opinion is your opinion is not shared beyond Trumpers.
Okay I'm going to address this and your first point in tandem since they are we are diverging.
You can't respond to what I say with a curt "Well that's just your opinion" and a dismissive wave of the hand when your entire argument is "We're losing in the elections, the polls, the courts, and in literally every way that can be measured or observed but it's okay because trust me there's this invisible demographic of people who you can't see or hear but they totally agree with me and any minute now are going to rise up and start making a difference." And no that is not a strawman or hyperbole of what you are arguing.
There is a hard and fast limit to how much you can invoke some unknown unknowable group of people who are going to tip the scales at some random and arbitrary point in the future as proof that you're looking at this more accurately then I am.
Now to be 100% clear so I don't get misconstrued I am not saying undecided or swing or edge case or etc, etc, etc people don't exist.
What I'm saying is this mythical, invisible, undetectable mass demographic of undecided voters that all didn't/don't:
- Respond to polls
- Talk to reporters
- Talk to... anyone
- In the discourse at all in anyway
- Create any measurable data that can be pointed at
But that are/is
- Going to vote in 2020 in statistically meaningful numbers or otherwise just up and start being otherwise "in the system" in some way that matters as soon as Trump is "stained" enough.
- Going to vote "our" way.
That you (and others) just somehow know are out there... I'm saying they don't exist. Or at the very least it's insane to tailor our strategy to the idea that they do.
When I say things like "Impeachment is not popular among likely voters" and "Trump's approval is not being majorly affected by scandal after scandal, investigation after investigation" I can point to facts and figures to support it to some degree. No there's no "proof" in politics, but every single fact that we have available to us shows that this isn't working.
But every time I do that I get "No, no you see you're wrong because of... invisible, silent people that never talk to anybody and aren't in the polls or at the voting booth or talk to reporters or are covered in political studies so they don't show up in literally any of the facts or evidence but who are anyday now going to up and decide to get involved" and after hearing that as many times as I have I don't think I'm being insanely unreasonable to go "Well then we'll factor their opinions in when they up and decide to show up, not before." Because at this point you're functionally invoking a Deus Ex Machima. You're on the level of arguing that the Ghost Army from the end of Return of the King is gonna show up.
We need accept that the people who are already at the table are the ones playing the game and if you want to introduce some new entity... I'm not wrong for asking exactly how you know any of this. Because you do not have special mental powers I do not to see from your perch in this internet argument and see into the soul of American politics without going through the data provided by the people who actually step up to a voice we can point to.
I'm not the bad guy here. I want to be wrong and for you to be right. But you gotta give me something beyond evidence-less faith in some new Democrat version of the "Silent Majority" argument the Republicans used to ruin the country from the mid-80s until... now. "No, no just believe me all the lurkers agree with me" is a large part of how we got Trump.
