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Super PACs supply funding for campaigns. Is that not reality?
Funding for a campaign = more resources for the campaign to accomplish more. Is that not reality?
Campaigning is done to increase votes for a candidate. Is that not reality?
Spending more doesn’t guarantee a win because not everything a campaign does to increase votes is equally effective or equal in cost. Is that not reality?
But spending less means less resources for the campaign which limits what the campaign is capable of. Is that not reality?
Trump selling sneakers was for his personal gain and unrelated to campaign funding.
I don’t know why any of that needs to be explained.
What are you not getting here? HARRIS HAD MORE MONEY. HARRIS SPENT MORE MONEY. HARRIS LOST.
Harris campaign took in HALF A BILLION MORE THAN TRUMP in direct contributions. In terms of dark money, her Super PAC, Future Forward USA, took in $423 million while Trump's PAC, Maga America Great Again Inc., took in $280 million. Even if you look at all the Super PAC money spent on the presidential race in 2024,
$889 million was spent on pro-Harris/anti-Trump messaging, while only $834 million was spent on pro-Trump/anti-Harris messaging. Any way you slice it, the money was on Harris' side, not Trump's.
You've got a narrative in your head that the billionaires all teamed up and used their money to defeat Harris, but it's based on nothing but your feelings and assumptions, not reality. And remember, you're the one who started off claiming that if Bernie couldn't beat the DNC conspiring against him, he couldn't beat billionaires and their Super PAC money. But now you're the one who won't accept that the money was on Harris' side this election and she fucking lost.
Wait, the narrative is that money doesn't matter at all, when your numbers explicitly call out that the difference is only 10%?
lol, what a fucking idiotic talking point.
...no, not what I said. 10% in PAC money on top of half a billion in direct campaign spending.
What are you not getting?
Spending more doesn’t guarantee a win because not everything a campaign does to increase votes is equally effective or equal in cost. Is that not reality?
But spending less means less resources for the campaign which limits what the campaign is capable of. Is that not reality?
Bernie can’t compete with only grassroots donations. You’re feelings and opinions won’t change that.
Literally all of the data I shared says the fucking opposite, dude! On top of that, Trump was running a grassroots campaign in 2016 that broke GOP records for small-donor money, and he won even though Clinton out-spent him. So, what actual evidence do you have to back up your assertions here? Or is it just the vibes?
Literally none of the data you shared says the opposite.
You shared an opinion piece about Bloomberg and a chart of Super PAC spending.
Literally none of the data you shared says the opposite.
Fact Sheet: What We Know about Russia’s Interference Operations
You’re gonna pretend Trump is running a grassroots campaign without Russian backing?
OK, so gonna recap here; you think it didn't matter that the DNC conspired against Bernie in 2020 because billionaires would have used their wealth to crush his grassroots campaign. I've shown you data that proves the Harris campaign spent a half-billion more than Trump in 2016, that more dark money went to Harris than Trump, and that Trump won with the type of small-donor grassroots campaign that Bernie had, and your conter argument is a fact sheet on Russian disinformation campaigns. Nice vibes dude.
You’re still pretending that Trump ran a grassroots campaign? Even though that requires you to pretend Russian bot farms don’t exist? Even though Trump got help from billionaires that didn’t involve campaign financing? Why do you refuse to base your decisions on reality?
Show me data then. How much of Trump's grassroots campaign is actually astroturfed Russian propaganda? What non-financial support did billionaires give Trump, and what are the quantifiable outcomes of that support. Say something other than, "[X] event happened, and this is my unsubstantiated opinion on how that changed the outcome of the election," or just stop talking.
You’re asking for me to get specific to an unecessary level to pretend that Russians didn’t influence the elections because I can’t quantify it. Bad faith argument.
I can’t quantify how many times I took a shit in 2023. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Elon Musk holding a lottery like give away for people to vote for Trump is one example. There were other reports of business owners trying to find out who voted for democrats to intimidate them with threat of losing their jobs. Or sheriffs trying threatening people with Harris signs. Obviously it isn’t possible to know exactly how much these things influenced the outcome but that was your intention with the bad faith argument you’re making.
The fact that you can’t respond without bad faith arguments shows how bias and emotional your thought process is on the subject.
Not to mention you’re trying to change the subject after I pointed out that your links didn’t support your claims.
Now that's a bad faith argument. You're the one that's making all the claims. You're claiming a Sanders campaign could never stand up to the money and influence of the billionaire class, and it's you claiming all the evidence of Trump doing exactly that doesn't count. And while I never said Russian interference didn't affect the election, you're the one claiming that it was so influential that it invalidated the grassroots nature of Trump's campaign.
You're the one making proclamations on why Sanders would lose and why Trump won, and you're the one refusing to back it up with anything other than, "trust me bro." So, again, back up any of your claims with actual evidence or just STOP TALKING.
I pointed out the fact that Sanders couldn’t win a primary without the added difficulty of funding a campaign.
That’s not a claim that’s a fact.
You’re the one claiming that Trump won because of a grassroots campaign without any evidence to support that. How can you verify a grassroots campaign is sole reason Trump won when there are Russian bots using social media accounts to tip the scales in his favor?
That’s called confirmation bias. You’ve provided no evidence of the claims you’ve made. While I have only stated facts.
Not what I said. I said that Trump ran a grassroots campaign (which is true and I even linked to an article about it), which I brought up to refute this statement of yours: "I don’t think Bernie would get any air time if he was just funded by grassroots donations." I didn't say being a grassroots campaign was the cause of his win, just that it clearly wasn't an obstacle for him. Given that Trump was successful with a grassroots campaign, and that both Harris and Clinton heavily outspent him, there is no reason to believe that Bernie wouldn't be able to succeed as well on a grassroots campaign with less funding.
So far, the only argument against this you've been able to present is that Russia has trolls and billionaires exist. While those are technically facts, they're not data that contradict any of my points. Since you don't seem to have any of that, I think we're done here.
The facts I stated did more than prove they exists. The facts I stated prove they influenced they outcome of the election.
Your claim was that if I can’t quantify the exact amount of votes that Russian bots and billionaires were able to influence, you get to claim Trumps wins were strictly because he had a grassroots campaign.
Right, so, TL;DR, no, you have no data that contradicts my point, but you will continue to insist that the fact that Russian bots and billionaires exist is proof. This is why your entire argument is vibes-based, not reality-based.
So you admit you don't read posts that prove you wrong and just base your response on emotions and assumptions.
"Prove." Adorable.