Taskiss wrote:
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but it also causes candidates to believe things about the electorate that are not true
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
This claim was more evidence that Carl Sagan had an agenda than anything else. There's no arbitrary line that separates "extraordinary" claims from other ones. What he should have said was "A claim that contradicts existing evidence needs at least equally convincing supporting evidence." or something to that effect. What he really wanted was the ability to declare claims he didn't like "extraordinary" and then dismiss all evidence supporting them as not "extraordinary" enough, and that's how that line has been used since he originally said it. Where it's really frequently misused is when someone makes a claim where there's little evidence in
either direction, usually by importing evidence of some other, but very different, argument or point, then just arbitrarily claiming the other side is making an "extraordinary claim" and has to provide "extraordinary evidence" against the massive weight of evidence... that is in favor of something they aren't actually arguing against.
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Of course, that's a conservative assertion. Others need no extraordinary evidence, they're good with how the claim makes them feel.
The problem for the Democrats at the moment is that they're the ones having an internal primary. The eventual nominee isn't actually running against a Republican yet.
There's other similar problems. Trump's approval rating among black people is actually pretty high for a Republican, and his disapproval rating is low, for a Republican, despite an endless barrage of "he's racist!" claims. I believe that what's driving this, specifically, is black MEN who are starting to understand that most of the issues that are supposedly about their race are really about their sex. This trend is pretty likely to continue, too; the fact that voting as a block for one party gives neither party any incentive to do anything (other than pay lip service to them) and, specifically, black males are starting to realize that criticisms of "white, straight, cisgendered, Christian males" include them as well in 3 or 4 of the 5 categories.
It's not looking good for them with lesbians, either, who are suddenly figuring out that protections for women is completely incompatible with allowing transwomen to pretend they are ACTUAL women. The online LGBTQ+ community is really good at vote-brigading out dissenting voices, but a growing number of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are getting pretty alienated at the idea that actual women should get crushed by transwomen at sports, that people who don't even PRESENT as female can just walk into the women's bathroom on their own say-so... and worst of all, that you're a bigot if you don't want to sleep with people who's genitals don't match their apparent sex.
There's an increasing number of internet voices who are (or at least insist they are) on the left, who are echoing a lot of conservative concerns, but also are rather loudly wondering why they can have a civil conversation with Ben Shapiro but cannot have one with people that ostensibly share their own political leanings.
There's really deep fissures in the left right now that normally would not exist. The reason they do exist is almost entirely the press covering for extreme views, unacceptable behavior, and sheer nonsense out of a fear of not being able to go on forever with "Republicans bad, Democrats good", and recently "Orange Man Bad". It has destroyed the ability of the Democrats and the Left to internally self-correct. It has also created a very dangerous feeling of being under siege on the right, which first elected Trump and now feels justified, with Democrat candidates embracing ever-more-outrageous positions in an attempt to keep the charade up. The extreme left has been allowed to believe it can just browbeat the entire rest of the country into acquiescence because the press has been unable to stomach criticizing them.