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On April 11 2021 12:01 Mohdoo wrote:
If Democrats just ignored immigration, guns and abortion, they'd never lose another election
Ignoring immigration additionally means ignoring civil rights issues, racism, poverty, and the cultural melting pot phenomenon that gives our country its diverse identity.
Ignoring guns additionally means ignoring unnecessary deaths, mental health, suicide, drugs, gangs, welfare, and crime.
Ignoring abortion additionally means ignoring women's rights, sex education, and rape.
It's not so easy to simply drop a single topic (or three); they're intertwined with so many other issues.
Also, they're all topics worth fighting for, from the ethical perspective of many.
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fully agree. as much as it would kinda make sense in theory to "drop" hot button issues it would play out very poorly. too much is simply at stake.
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On April 11 2021 19:09 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2021 12:01 Mohdoo wrote:
If Democrats just ignored immigration, guns and abortion, they'd never lose another election Ignoring immigration additionally means ignoring civil rights issues, racism, poverty, and the cultural melting pot phenomenon that gives our country its diverse identity. Ignoring guns additionally means ignoring unnecessary deaths, mental health, suicide, drugs, gangs, welfare, and crime. Ignoring abortion additionally means ignoring women's rights, sex education, and rape. It's not so easy to simply drop a single topic (or three); they're intertwined with so many other issues. Also, they're all topics worth fighting for, from the ethical perspective of many.
Republicans did very well stitching a voter base together, only the "tax haters" are missing from your list.
Instead of ignoring the topic, I have thought of pitting the various groups against each other, like everyone can't be both for restrictive abortion rights and minimal gun control...?
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On April 12 2021 02:16 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2021 19:09 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On April 11 2021 12:01 Mohdoo wrote:
If Democrats just ignored immigration, guns and abortion, they'd never lose another election Ignoring immigration additionally means ignoring civil rights issues, racism, poverty, and the cultural melting pot phenomenon that gives our country its diverse identity. Ignoring guns additionally means ignoring unnecessary deaths, mental health, suicide, drugs, gangs, welfare, and crime. Ignoring abortion additionally means ignoring women's rights, sex education, and rape. It's not so easy to simply drop a single topic (or three); they're intertwined with so many other issues. Also, they're all topics worth fighting for, from the ethical perspective of many. Republicans did very well stitching a voter base together, only the "tax haters" are missing from your list. Instead of ignoring the topic, I have thought of pitting the various groups against each other, like everyone can't be both for restrictive abortion rights and minimal gun control...?
The idea of pitting different conservative groups against each other is a pretty interesting one, although I'm not sure how effective it would ultimately be. I feel like most voters, in general, are single(-ish) issue voters, and so even if the candidate they support contradicts a position with a different one, many voters are likely to cherry pick whatever they want to focus on. I'm sure liberals are guilty of this too, if they encounter a liberal candidate with conflicting positions.
Doesn't hurt to try though, even if it only manages to change the minds of a few people (or, at least, start by planting the seed).
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United States43677 Posts
It assumes that there are values that would cause a conservative to not vote for a Republican candidate just because he is the antithesis of those values. There is no conservative value that Trump did not spit on daily. These people cannot be won by appealing to their values, they have none. Hillary pointed out that Trump actively cheated on his wives with prostitutes, insulted war heroes, encouraged violence and civil unrest, promised to increase government spending, destroyed America’s reputation abroad, undermined American treaty obligations, had no visible religious convictions, cheated blue collar workers, and didn’t pay taxes. It didn’t help. The only value these people care about is racism, and not in the way we’d like.
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Reverting to a Southern Democrat platform on social and cultural issues would be a real fascinating realignment. Adopting a civil rights agenda in the 60s is the genesis of so many of the Democrats' electoral problems because it lost them the South and fed into losing a majority of white voters, which Republican were happy to exploit. If elections were decided purely on economics I actually think Democrats would have the advantage based on the popularity of Biden's COVID relief and infrastructure bill, and the unpopularity of the Republican tax cuts bill of 2017.
But would you really be happy with the Democrats forsaking progressive action on abortion, immigration and guns? It's hard to stay silent on those matters when so much of the Democratic voter base is only in support of them because they take those stances.
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On April 12 2021 03:39 KwarK wrote:
It assumes that there are values that would cause a conservative to not vote for a Republican candidate just because he is the antithesis of those values. There is no conservative value that Trump did not spit on daily. These people cannot be won by appealing to their values, they have none. Hillary pointed out that Trump actively cheated on his wives with prostitutes, insulted war heroes, encouraged violence and civil unrest, promised to increase government spending, destroyed America’s reputation abroad, undermined American treaty obligations, had no visible religious convictions, cheated blue collar workers, and didn’t pay taxes. It didn’t help. The only value these people care about is racism, and not in the way we’d like.
Indeed, folks should remember that "conservative principles" are not held by these people in any sort of meaningful or consistent way, they are instead relied on as surface level indicators of adherence to more base ideals, two of the most prominent being racism and its close relative, the notion that "progress" is not measured by how much better off everyone is generally, rather by how much better off one and their family is by comparison with people of different skin colors, ethnicities, religions etc.
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On April 11 2021 12:01 Mohdoo wrote:
If Democrats just ignored immigration, guns and abortion, they'd never lose another election
I think people missed an* important clarification on this:
Are you saying that primaries aren't elections or that Democrats with such a strategy wouldn't lose those either?
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It's remarkable to say what has been said above without recognizing that many people picked Trump because
1) those politicians who had more closely lived their values had, in many voters minds, failed to deliver what had been promised and
2) in 2020 that Trump was the most conservative president with respect to policy since Reagan
3) that many voters, when faced with Trump vs X, made the exact same lesser-of-two-evils calculation Democrats did.
The understanding of conservatives by lefties or even center-leftists in this thread is abysmal. Perhaps it didn't help that most of the few conservatives in this thread, no matter what calculation they made on 3) did not like Trump. I for one was pleasantly surprised by the Trump presidency. But despite my hatred of Trump the man, there was no way on God's green earth I was going to vote for Hillary.
But more widely, yet relatedly, this belief in the popularity of their own ideas is so shallow by those on the left. Because universal healthcare might, for instance, poll well as a general, vague question, a bill and implemented policy is obviously not the same as a poll question. See 2010 and Obamacare. Moreover, one must give voters a little bit of credit. Just as voters didn't blame Trump for the economic fallout of COVID, and didn't reelect him either, it's not obvious voters will credit Biden/Democrats with a rebounding economy to the point of getting them votes they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.
It is somewhat amusing to me that those on the left can be so confident of how popular their ideas are and then learn nothing when electoral backlash arrives. Of course then again the story the left tells itself is not about persuasion but about turnout.
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Relating Trump to Reagan is appropriate not because either of them has any particular relation to "conservatism," rather it's appropriate because Reagan and Trump were remarkably good at channeling the grievances of particular kinds of average American voters into electoral turnout. Trump did not win because a significant number of people considered "Hillary v. Trump, I have to go Trump," he won because he managed to energize voters who would never even consider voting for a Democrat in the first place. At the same time, Hillary proved remarkably bad at exciting any core Democratic group other than upper middle class college educated city dwellers, many of which still can't quite wrap their head around how Trump won in the first place. They don't understand because they simply do not grasp what makes middle America tick, something LBJ and successful Democrats before him knew all too well.
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Northern Ireland26362 Posts
On April 12 2021 07:20 Introvert wrote:
It's remarkable to say what has been said above without recognizing that many people picked Trump because
1) those politicians who had more closely lived their values had, in many voters minds, failed to deliver what had been promised and
2) in 2020 that Trump was the most conservative president with respect to policy since Reagan
3) that many voters, when faced with Trump vs X, made the exact same lesser-of-two-evils calculation Democrats did.
The understanding of conservatives by lefties or even center-leftists in this thread is abysmal. Perhaps it didn't help that most of the few conservatives in this thread, no matter what calculation they made on 3) did not like Trump. I for one was pleasantly surprised by the Trump presidency. But despite my hatred of Trump the man, there was no way on God's green earth I was going to vote for Hillary.
But more widely, yet relatedly, this belief in the popularity of their own ideas is so shallow by those on the left. Because universal healthcare might, for instance, poll well as a general, vague question, a bill and implemented policy is obviously not the same as a poll question. See 2010 and Obamacare. Moreover, one must give voters a little bit of credit. Just as voters didn't blame Trump for the economic fallout of COVID, and didn't reelect him either, it's not obvious voters will credit Biden/Democrats with a rebounding economy to the point of getting them votes they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.
It is somewhat amusing to me that those on the left can be so confident of how popular their ideas are and then learn nothing when electoral backlash arrives. Of course then again the story the left tells itself is not about persuasion but about turnout.
It very much depends on who is being talked about.
A Conservative who may have voted for Trump with or without nose held as the lesser of two evils is not really the same thing as an enthusiastic Trump zealot.
The characterisation of the latter in this thread is pretty damn accurate from my observations of that particular specimen in the wild.
I’ve said it for many moons but, aside from wars or not handling a pandemic well (ok I didn’t predict that one), there’s only so much damage Trump could do that couldn’t be semi-easily reversed, outside of his general poisoning of the well and courting this distrust of media, of institutions and of checks and balances in general. How do you fix that and what are its effects?
Maybe he’s not your guy but he’s in your corner wearing your trunks and he was allowed to do all of this for years and wow who’d have thought we’d have a giant chunk of the country with ridiculous beliefs and no obvious mechanism to correct them of them?
The polling on such matters as ‘Did Biden win the election legitimately?’ is just absolutely bleak to behold. Never mind Covid skepticism.
Then there’ll be the usual bleating about ‘oh no, things are so partisan, whatever will we do?’, when an orange fucking idiot was given carte blanch to stoke those fires for an entire term to the extent his followers stormed the Capitol.
Given the media infrastructure we now all inhabit, I think it’s of prime importance to find a way to enable average Joe or Jane to be well-informed and versed in the goings on of the day, a real big challenge but I think one that all countries are going to have to tackle and nail. We had a President who chose to use all the negative aspects of modern telecommunications precisely to do the opposite for his own personal aggrandisement.
Anyway I’m rambling, I do think you’re correct that the left overestimate some of the popularity of their pet policies, that’s correct. Doesn’t mean I don’t think some aren’t good policies that if we got to see them in action wouldn’t subsequently be viewed favourably.
As I’ve also said before, the problem with Trump zealots is that much of what they desire is actually impossible to deliver. Aside from a certain cultural supremacy of the white folks, they appear to want all the benefits of global interconnected capitalism, but with none of the downsides. Ye olde cheap consumer goods but with the factory jobs paying the same relative wages as before, etc etc. Other countries catching up and the system working as it ever did doesn’t factor in at all, hence the increasing shift to anti-China sentiment, which of course Trump hasn’t stoked at all.
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On April 12 2021 07:20 Introvert wrote:
It's remarkable to say what has been said above without recognizing that many people picked Trump because
1) those politicians who had more closely lived their values had, in many voters minds, failed to deliver what had been promised and
2) in 2020 that Trump was the most conservative president with respect to policy since Reagan
3) that many voters, when faced with Trump vs X, made the exact same lesser-of-two-evils calculation Democrats did.
The understanding of conservatives by lefties or even center-leftists in this thread is abysmal. Perhaps it didn't help that most of the few conservatives in this thread, no matter what calculation they made on 3) did not like Trump. I for one was pleasantly surprised by the Trump presidency. But despite my hatred of Trump the man, there was no way on God's green earth I was going to vote for Hillary.
But more widely, yet relatedly, this belief in the popularity of their own ideas is so shallow by those on the left. Because universal healthcare might, for instance, poll well as a general, vague question, a bill and implemented policy is obviously not the same as a poll question. See 2010 and Obamacare. Moreover, one must give voters a little bit of credit. Just as voters didn't blame Trump for the economic fallout of COVID, and didn't reelect him either, it's not obvious voters will credit Biden/Democrats with a rebounding economy to the point of getting them votes they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.
It is somewhat amusing to me that those on the left can be so confident of how popular their ideas are and then learn nothing when electoral backlash arrives. Of course then again the story the left tells itself is not about persuasion but about turnout.
not many I think would deny your 3 points in general. what quite a few here have lamented however is that despite having recognized all that, and that way too many politicians are bought and paid for - especially and imho more egregiously on the R front - not as a matter of "R more prone to corruption" necessarily, but because being for private enterprise and less state necessitates and facilitates that to a decent amount.
let me elaborate: in the EU in general (my example is mainly focussed on Austria though as I live here ) we pay a ton of more taxes. included in that is also a good portion for elections. the parties around here are for the most part canvassing and electioneering on the tax payer's dime. why is that you might ask - you crazy euros again with your hippie bullshit and high taxes!?
first, you reign in spending by having a somewhat regulated cap - look at what happens EVERY cycle in the US. election spending gets bigger and bigger - and did candidates or democracy improve an iota for all that spending? has "freedom" (cui bono?) generally improved?
second. a decent amount of transparency: parties have to report what they receive and spend, they report it to an - for the most part - independent board ("Rechnungshof" kinda like an inhouse treasury watchdog, sanction mechanisms are limited but critical reports are discussed widely in the public.) if they are found to exceed the amount they will be fined. funnily enough that happened the last couple of times for the OEVP of Chancellor Kurz around here.
mind you, I am not saying it is perfect, there are quite a few problems with it since parties... like to cheat and not report all of their spending and there is also the topic of private donations which are supposed to be capped and limited as well... it ain't easy to track everything. but people are absolutely aware of it for the most part and excesses are very rare and in between. (currently there are interesting scandals/discussions going on - Kurz' popularity imploded.)
you on the other hand have "citizen's united and lul money is speech - I am rich biatch".
just inconceivable over here, and looking at what happened since - not as a matter of ideology, try to critically look at the results: insane spending got even bigger and the influence of dark money you will never ever be able to track when it is funneled through a couple of legal vehicles and maybe companies existing only on paper - basically NO transparency but a lot of "assumptions" from voters... assumptions that are grounded on lack of transparency and an overabundance of scepticism and hatred of the elites. let's call those assumptions fertile ground for conspiracies - for theory's sake...
but that's beside the point. what for the most part works around here does not necessarily mean it will work in a state in the US, let alone the union. "government" you apparently do not do so well.
back to other points, being pleasantly surprised by the last presidency can also mean your expectations were insanely low to begin with. I can only speak for myself, and I get that voting for Hillary is of course out of the question if you are on the other side. she is the next best thing to Satan for Rs, actually pretty funny how much you hate her. but "just to spite" the Ds to go for the golden toilet shitter who could not be more coastal elite even if he tried, to not even ponder not staying home or voting third party... that is adding bile to a cesspool as a matter of political principle.
is it your right? of course it is. but sometimes there are more important things to consider.
and funny you mention 2010. the GFC hardly had anything to do with it right? or death panels and the other bullshit being spewed to poison the well before Obamacare was passed... but alas history has vindicated it. look at what happened afterwards. Rs being impotent trolls and failing to deliver on their bullshit claims and promises even as they had ample opportunity. and the pandemic making it highly popular in people's minds.
you know what Ds should have run with and said to people what a death panel is? your private insurance company saying "sorry not sorry - we looked at the numbers and computer says no. your cancer treatment/insulin/... application has been declined".
but your other point is partly well taken. there is a world of difference between an idea being popular - and that idea being molded into smart legislation enacted accordingly. as said before, looking in from the outside, "doing good government" apparently is particularly challenging for the US.
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On April 12 2021 07:20 Introvert wrote:
It's remarkable to say what has been said above without recognizing that many people picked Trump because
1) those politicians who had more closely lived their values had, in many voters minds, failed to deliver what had been promised and
2) in 2020 that Trump was the most conservative president with respect to policy since Reagan
3) that many voters, when faced with Trump vs X, made the exact same lesser-of-two-evils calculation Democrats did.
The understanding of conservatives by lefties or even center-leftists in this thread is abysmal. Perhaps it didn't help that most of the few conservatives in this thread, no matter what calculation they made on 3) did not like Trump. I for one was pleasantly surprised by the Trump presidency. But despite my hatred of Trump the man, there was no way on God's green earth I was going to vote for Hillary.
But more widely, yet relatedly, this belief in the popularity of their own ideas is so shallow by those on the left. Because universal healthcare might, for instance, poll well as a general, vague question, a bill and implemented policy is obviously not the same as a poll question. See 2010 and Obamacare. Moreover, one must give voters a little bit of credit. Just as voters didn't blame Trump for the economic fallout of COVID, and didn't reelect him either, it's not obvious voters will credit Biden/Democrats with a rebounding economy to the point of getting them votes they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.
It is somewhat amusing to me that those on the left can be so confident of how popular their ideas are and then learn nothing when electoral backlash arrives. Of course then again the story the left tells itself is not about persuasion but about turnout.
As a quick aside, what were you pleasantly surprised about the Trump presidency? And... wouldn't you say that someone like Jeb Bush might have achieved the same thing, minus the scandals and armed insurrection?
In other words, what did Trump do that any other generic republican president wouldn't have achieved?
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On April 12 2021 21:52 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2021 07:20 Introvert wrote:
It's remarkable to say what has been said above without recognizing that many people picked Trump because
1) those politicians who had more closely lived their values had, in many voters minds, failed to deliver what had been promised and
2) in 2020 that Trump was the most conservative president with respect to policy since Reagan
3) that many voters, when faced with Trump vs X, made the exact same lesser-of-two-evils calculation Democrats did.
The understanding of conservatives by lefties or even center-leftists in this thread is abysmal. Perhaps it didn't help that most of the few conservatives in this thread, no matter what calculation they made on 3) did not like Trump. I for one was pleasantly surprised by the Trump presidency. But despite my hatred of Trump the man, there was no way on God's green earth I was going to vote for Hillary.
But more widely, yet relatedly, this belief in the popularity of their own ideas is so shallow by those on the left. Because universal healthcare might, for instance, poll well as a general, vague question, a bill and implemented policy is obviously not the same as a poll question. See 2010 and Obamacare. Moreover, one must give voters a little bit of credit. Just as voters didn't blame Trump for the economic fallout of COVID, and didn't reelect him either, it's not obvious voters will credit Biden/Democrats with a rebounding economy to the point of getting them votes they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.
It is somewhat amusing to me that those on the left can be so confident of how popular their ideas are and then learn nothing when electoral backlash arrives. Of course then again the story the left tells itself is not about persuasion but about turnout.
As a quick aside, what were you pleasantly surprised about the Trump presidency? And... wouldn't you say that someone like Jeb Bush might have achieved the same thing, minus the scandals and armed insurrection? In other words, what did Trump do that any other generic republican president wouldn't have achieved?
It wasn’t what Trump did, it was the way he did it, specifically his way with little to no compromises or apologies for anything he did. He made Rs FEEL like winners (both electorally and culturally), something they haven’t felt in decades. I’d imagine the pleasant surprise Rs felt would be initially assuming he’d sell out to Ds like every other R (especially given his coastal elite status and previous D history) and see instead he fought back.
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Norway28761 Posts
I'm guessing non-trumpy republicans generally like the foreign policy results, even if they don't approve of his incompetence. Even I can state being pleasantly surprised by his foreign policy, although in my case that's because I expected a bigger disaster, not that I'm really happy with anything.
Then they're also happy with tax cuts, and obviously with the judges. Then the further towards crazy terrain you go, republicans are increasingly happy about his war on the media.
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Foreign policy is actually where the question becomes much more complicated, unless one buys into the Trumpy notion that all Bush-era Republicans were and are RINOs. The idea that US conservatives are essentially or consistently against the US serving as world police is only accurate insofar as one puts an inordinate amount of weight on the near uniform kowtowing to Trump that went on during his four years in office.
Edit: Speaking of Reagan-Trump comparisons, foreign policy may be one of the most striking points of contrast.
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On April 12 2021 23:02 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2021 22:25 Ryzel wrote:On April 12 2021 21:52 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 12 2021 07:20 Introvert wrote:
It's remarkable to say what has been said above without recognizing that many people picked Trump because
1) those politicians who had more closely lived their values had, in many voters minds, failed to deliver what had been promised and
2) in 2020 that Trump was the most conservative president with respect to policy since Reagan
3) that many voters, when faced with Trump vs X, made the exact same lesser-of-two-evils calculation Democrats did.
The understanding of conservatives by lefties or even center-leftists in this thread is abysmal. Perhaps it didn't help that most of the few conservatives in this thread, no matter what calculation they made on 3) did not like Trump. I for one was pleasantly surprised by the Trump presidency. But despite my hatred of Trump the man, there was no way on God's green earth I was going to vote for Hillary.
But more widely, yet relatedly, this belief in the popularity of their own ideas is so shallow by those on the left. Because universal healthcare might, for instance, poll well as a general, vague question, a bill and implemented policy is obviously not the same as a poll question. See 2010 and Obamacare. Moreover, one must give voters a little bit of credit. Just as voters didn't blame Trump for the economic fallout of COVID, and didn't reelect him either, it's not obvious voters will credit Biden/Democrats with a rebounding economy to the point of getting them votes they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.
It is somewhat amusing to me that those on the left can be so confident of how popular their ideas are and then learn nothing when electoral backlash arrives. Of course then again the story the left tells itself is not about persuasion but about turnout.
As a quick aside, what were you pleasantly surprised about the Trump presidency? And... wouldn't you say that someone like Jeb Bush might have achieved the same thing, minus the scandals and armed insurrection? In other words, what did Trump do that any other generic republican president wouldn't have achieved? It wasn’t what Trump did, it was the way he did it, specifically his way with little to no compromises or apologies for anything he did. He made Rs FEEL like winners (both electorally and culturally), something they haven’t felt in decades. I’d imagine the pleasant surprise Rs felt would be initially assuming he’d sell out to Ds like every other R (especially given his coastal elite status and previous D history) and see instead he fought back. I think the feeling comment is very astute. The whole presidency was feelings over facts. For some reason a huge amount of people will believe people if they say things very loud and angry. Trump did this lots, he spoke with confidence about all sorts of things he had no idea about (hurricane hitting Texas, quick sharpie the map) and the people who loved him, loved him for it. As long as he kept telling people they were winning, people who loved him agreed.
yeah I too agree with that point. it's not something new since other politicians of course do and did this as well, but the feeling over facts was just off the charts last time around.
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