I think you'll find the following quite interesting and surprisingly non-partisan despite the fact it's entirely about partisanship! It turns out the partisan makeup of the military is somewhat deceiving. We all tend to think of the military as tending to be more conservative. Which it undoubtedly is compared to the country as a whole. But it turns out it actually isn't any more conservative than the demographics that make it up. For example, the south is far more conservative than the northeast. And when you look at where people enlist from, it turns out that they disproportionately come from the south. This graphic gives a decent picture of that: So basically if your enlisted force overweights from predominantly conservative areas, they're just naturally going to be more conservative and they in fact match the political lean of the place they came from. Likewise the military is made up of around 83% men and 17% women. There's about a 10% difference in partisan lean between men and women in the county, so again the military isn't necessarily more conservative for any other reason than the demographic it's drawing from. Which brings us to your statement about service academy grads. It turns out that they have the most liberal lean in the military. While surprising at first blush actually makes perfect sense given the above and the congressional nomination requirement for admission to the service academies which nearly guarantees equal representation by population weight from across the country. Therefore unlike the rest of the officer corps and the enlisted force, it's the only place where it's close to a true draw from the U.S. population (the male/female issue is still there). And therefore it's much closer to the equally conservative vs liberal balance of the country as a whole. So it turns out that a service academy grad is actually one of the most likely group in the military to lean left. I'll also caution that there's a pretty massive difference in the military between identifying as conservative and supporting Trump. The Military Times, which is in the checkout line of every exchange in the world and generally not considered even remotely liberal (or really partisan at all, but certainly not liberal), ran a series of polls on the Trump's popularity in the military. They stopped with the Dec, 2019 version (https://www.militarytimes.com/news/...ppy-with-trump-new-military-times-poll-shows/), probably because it showed more than half of troops had an unfavorable view of Trump and 45% had a "very unfavorable" view of him. Interestingly it also highlighted the divide I talked about above, specifically the officer enlisted split was dramatic and mirrors the split in Trump support by education in the general U.S. population. This is versus a roughly 15% skew toward Republicans among military members according to Gallup. Most of us, conservative and liberal alike, are guessing the Military Times poll would show Trump's support continuing the trend of eroding support. After all he's a guy who dodged the draft but bragged about how only he knows how to win wars and the military was stupid, denigrates guys who spent years in POW camps and families of heros who not only died in the line of duty but did so running toward danger to save their fellow soldiers, fires aircraft carrier COs for caring about the lives of their troops more than their career, continually wants to put on military parades to stroke his own ego (believe me, nobody in the military would rather spend the 4th of July in dress uniform sweating their ass off standing at attention than spending time with their family or even doing real work like fixing a tank or helicopter), and calls General Mattis, one of the most respected retired military generals alive, "the world's most overrated general" because he dared to speak truth to power and expose Trump as the emperor with no clothes, and on and on and on. And at the end of the day, he's actually done jack shit to actually support military members or the military itself compared to his predecessors. So not a lot of love lost there, the only surprising thing is how strong the partisan lean is that anyone in the military still supports the guy. And by the way, a lot of folks in the south are stepping in poopy. We call those people farmers. They just don't tend to whine about it
He is a polarizing CIC for sure. The majority of military I know support Trump. I'm not saying they like the guy. He is not very likeable. Heck, I am voting for him but I can't wait until he is gone. 2024 election can't come fast enough... a lot of shit will go down before that imho. To me he is the necessary evil of our time. Even Crozier firing was controversial in military. Some of his own classmates believe Crozier's firing was justifiable. Was it worthy of firing to me? idk. SecNav also a boat schooler did the firing. Lots of stress throughout our system. Poop on the farm doesn't bother me. I just don't like it on the sidewalk. We can agree to disagree on poop lol.
Whether he wins or loses I view 2020-2024 as a most likely period of suck. Too much polarization. For me it will suck less if he gets 4 more years.
I still remember H Clinton was leading in the poll right until election night. Even had a firework celebration planned and cancelled last min. election night. I didn't vote for Trump.
Irrelevant. She won the popular vote by 3MM votes even in light of Comey's double sabotage and the light turnout on the the DEM-side as the result of the seemingly overwhelming polling results. He won the EC via 10s of thousands of votes in the Midwest. This is all common sense from ppl that exercise critical thinking. Asking why. Why? You didn't ask why... but that's the only relevant question.
I am going to run for Senate -> POTUS if I get to $50MM in the next ten years. A social Liberal who is fiscally-conservative and who worked in govt. 6'3" ripped with a full beard as thick as bear-fur at (then) 62? You fuckers will be begging to vote twice. Sure, I'll have to subpoena Baron to remove all my posts... a small price to pay.
I was there when a friend was developing his biofuel in 2010-13, it's kind of a poor economic wasteland. The $200 a week in unemployed insurance speaks volumes to how the gop values human beings. To think it took a virus to give them a taste of not being destitute($600+$233)is nuts!