Why do we keep having to go to this well of 'popularism?' It's a word that doesn't mean anything. Saying 'oh just do things that are popular' sounds good, but it's a bit like saying 'just make infinite energy machines!'
Question. Democrats didn't pass the BID with BBB. You know, the thing that centrists said would be better and super pop…
Why do we keep having to go to this well of 'popularism?' It's a word that doesn't mean anything. Saying 'oh just do things that are popular' sounds good, but it's a bit like saying 'just make infinite energy machines!'
Question. Democrats didn't pass the BID with BBB. You know, the thing that centrists said would be better and super popular. They then didn't pass BBB. They didn't pass vote reform. They didn't defund the police, in fact, police have record budgets. And they've spent their time as Russia hawks at a time when the broader public has never been more anti-russia. And the result? Pretty much jack squat.
Which means the entire time we've been doing what the moderates want. They've gotten everything. You didn't want BBB, so you didn't get it. You wanted a russia hawk, you got it. You wanted the police funded, they are. And the result is that by and large, the public is acting like they always have: they elect GOP people who wreck the country, and then elect Democrats to fix it, only to turn around and punish the Democrats for doing so by electing more GOP members.
If you're going to say 'run on things that are popular' you need to actually, you know, explain what that means. What issues would you like them to run on? Because they've basically passed a stimulus, the BID, and nothing else, all because of the moderates being really worried Democrats might actually legislate something. Good luck going to voters and say 'the choice is because fascists who will do things and Democrats who won't, choose wisely!' Because we all know the public prefers people who will do bad ideas to people who won't do any ideas.
Here's the problem: despite the amount of people in the moderate camp, you can't cater to people who don't actually want anything. What do people who are moderate want to actually do? Because they've not proposed any ideas or legislation that they actually want. Instead, they seem content to just sit around and blame liberals while doing nothing and voters decide that the fascists are preferable to do-nothing Democrats.
It's very sad to see. And sadder to see people throw their hands up and go 'just do what's popular' as the GOP rides forcing women to bear children and banning math textbooks for being CRT to victory and probably the white house. Not sure that current success story is going to be compatible with the idea that popularism is a coherent policy set, unless you accept that by and large the American people want awful things.
I feel the same frustrations that Shawn does in his post above. But I think "Popularism" (awful word) is not senseless, and does not mean surrender. It means looking for ways to optimize political advocacy to produce leverage for legislative and policy action. Because the basis of leverage is ultimately votes, the only alternatives are persuading voters to like what you want them to like or to persuade them you are advocating what they already like.
The first is much harder. Democratic progressives have made heroic efforts to do it, but managed to undermine their efforts through counterproductive tactics, intentional (I'm thinking of strident rhetoric, censorious attacks on routinely complacent voters, extremist proposals like "defund the police," deciding this is a great time to focus on racial equity and gender complexity), and unintentional (the "riots" of 2020 brought huge numbers of voters into the GOP in the county I live in).
The second is easier, but the playing field is unfairly tilting against it: (1) The political focus has moved towards extremes, and the Right is far more skilled in manipulating those tools that turn these to advantage--the MAGA news bubble and its white nationalist and QAnon associates have made The Squad, HRC, and company far more menacing to its audience than anything the Left is able to do with MTG and crew (who are often treated, like DJT, as figures of fun--the far Right is reading Alinsky; the Left has forgotten him); (2) Democrats' interest in actual government is far more challenging for political success than the MAGA goals of disruption and exploitation.
Fairness and frustration have nothing to do with real outcomes. Most voters have always been complacent, poorly informed, and subject to fraudulent manipulation. The simple fact is that Democratic goals are harder to achieve and require maximal discipline, focused simply on getting more votes. Nothing good will happen without them. The MAGA world doesn't need discipline: even negative disruption serves their goal of shifting attention away from governing and towards conspiracy fantasies, fear, and reaction. The Democrats have done a great deal over the past year and a half, but the lack of discipline among the Party writ large has subverted it. It's too bad, but good government is for its own sake; political theater is only a means to get as much of it as possible.
I'm sure it's too late for 2022, but for 2024, I think the entire Left needs to ask itself, "Are you pro-democracy?" Because if you are, then it's going to be necessary to realize that continuing to divert political news with the new version of anti-racism, with anti-capitalism, and with other progressive positions that may have great value but that feed the agenda of the right, all reduce to anti-democracy positions, because in this context, that's where they are leading us.
I should have said the first time that I totally get your frustration Shawn, and I agree with you that popularism sounds pretty vague and wishy washy. But right now the Democratic party is not one that ordinary people can relate to very well. The things you hear them talk about the most are climate change and racism. Both are abstract things that don't affect most people's daily lives. So if nothing changes, Democrats will keep losing votes from lower class working folks while saying they are for the little guy. Keep losing black votes while saying they care so much about diversity. And keep losing hispanic votes while saying how much they care about immigrants. It's too late to save the mid-terms but if Democrats want to win in 2024 they need to have more to offer normal voters.
"The things you hear them talk about" are the things the media highlights. They talk about plenty of other things, but you only get to hear about these specific items. Why do you think that is?
Expanding the child tax credit is popular. Paid family leave is popular. Not banning gas pipelines at a time of record high gas prices would be popular. Allowing more legal immigration while providing more funding to preventing illegal immigration would be popular. Increasing taxes on the rich can be popular, and raising the minimum wage is popular. Helping labor unions is popular. There are a lot of democratic positions that are popular, and there are a lot that are unpopular. Lots of moderates want to do these things but they can only happen if leadership picks one and moves on it.
Realistically though it's not enough to pass legislation and it's not enough to support popular positions. It's also important not to loudly broadcast unpopular positions. It's not enough to pass a bill that provides additional funding to police, you need to give speeches saying how much you support them and give fiery rhetoric about the importance of law and order. Back when crime rates were falling it was popular for Democrats to support police reform and reduce prison populations. Now that crime is rising Democrats can't afford that any more. People already associate them with defunding the police, they can't just stop talking about it, they need to actively counter that narrative. At the same time Democrats became associated with spending massive amounts of money while the biggest economic problem we face is inflation. They need to stop talking about spending more money on big programs and talk about combatting inflation and helping people cope with it. That's what popularism means.
It does mean "run on things that are popular" but it means more than that. The popularist doesn't actually care about those things and doesn't necessarily even think they'd be good for the country but pushes them anyway as ways to get the voters to like them. Trump and the GOP also use fear the same way. They aren't interested in pushing good policies. If one of their policies turns out to be good, it is purely by accident.
You are describing a populist, not what is being suggested as popularist. No one is suggesting that Democrats start railing about illegals taking jobs from hard working Americans. What they are suggesting is that you loudly do the things that Democrats want to do that are popular like the CTC expansion, and then quietly do things that are unpopular like spending money to fix climate change. If instead you loudly proclaim that you want to tax gasoline to subsidize solar panels then you won't win elections and the party that doesn't do anything at all about climate change gets to make the rules.
I was merely responding to the deficient definition of "popularist". As far as your suggestions go, I suspect it isn't possible to "quietly" fix climate change. Instead, it should be billed as a business opportunity. Some amount if climate change is inevitable at this point. Some has already happened. The US is well-positioned to be the supplier of technology and know-how that will be needed by the whole world. It should attack it directly rather than letting the fossil fuel industry quietly deprioritize it.
Quietly fixing climate change is basically what we have been doing this whole time. Attempts to do big things like implement a carbon tax even fail in liberal-as-it-gets Washington state. The average voter says they aren't willing to spend $100 a year to fix climate change. But there was a lot of money for fighting climate change in the infrastructure bill. Progressives railed about not doing enough to fight climate change in that bill as well as in BBB, but the reality is that chipping away at it by slipping things into other bills is the only real way to achieve progress.
I'll humbly take a shot at addressing some of these points:
Shawn doesn't make a distinction between how governance by the totality of the Democratic coalition has actually worked out compared to what the majority of the Party wanted to do. The message that moderate voters absorbed over the battles about BBB and other spending plans is that the vast majority of Democratic members of Congress wanted nothing more than to spend gobsmacking amounts of money and that the only thing that prevented them from doing so were a couple of moderate Senators that the rest of the Party hates. Now we could debate the accuracy of this narrative, but this narrative has taken hold and Democrats in their political incompetence let it take hold, which has destroyed the Party's standing with independents. Similarly with the "defund the police" story. The facts may be that police funding has risen, but if voters believe that a large portion of the Party, if they could have their way, would abolish the police (and this is how the "defund" rhetoric is interpreted by voters), this is just political suicide.
The narrative rules over the reality. I have said this multiple times.
The reality is that people DO NOT KNOW what they want WRT a lot of things. Sure they can get behind a general idea. Infrastructure! Voting rights!
Punchy little catchphrases or vague general ideas and principles. All in.
THEN you start talking about actually doing it. About what has to be done. About what it will cost. About how it will be paid for--and the popularity falls out the bottom--particularly after your opponents scaremonger and misrepresent the hell out of it.
Then, if you are lucky, you get some half-assed version of the original idea, full of compromises to get the reluctant members of your party to fall in line and the usual poison pills that corporate America demands that don't seem like much but that have been cunningly designed to gut whatever it is that you are trying to do.
The Democrats have consistently failed to set the narrative since the 80s.
They have consistently gone through what I have outlined above, turning out crappy (but at least possible) policy and action that they then fail to capitalize on because they do not self-promote and they allow something (for example) to become Obamacare (which people hate for some reason) while they like the ACA (which is Obamacare but without the spin narrative).
When are these people going to pull their heads out of their ass? The Republic KINDA depends upon them doing so.
Maybe America needs to get cornholed by the GoP and Trump for a decade or so before they wise up--but I sincerely doubt the mass of America will ever get that wise.
Well said. Regarding self promotion, my very trumpy neighbors next door with 4 children still believe that the child tax credit money they enjoyed each month was from a former trump policy that didn't go into effect until 2021. He had planned it ahead for his 2nd term. 🙄 I tried to talk to them about the ARP and all I got was "fake news".
Another thing I saw yesterday that made me think about self promotion was a side by side clip of Trump on the WH balcony for the 2019 Easter thing. Instead of talking to the children he very inappropriately sold whatever economic BS he was pushing at the time. The man never missed an opportunity to message and sell.
Last weekend at the same event with Biden, Jill excitedly, and appropriately, spoke to the children and parents from the balcony with Joe at her side, silent.
Average voters do not know what you have done for them unless repeatedly told, as sad as that is.
The problem is the people that'll get cornholed (racial minorities, non-white immigrants, LGBTQ people, and non-Christians) aren't the ones who need to learn the lesson
In the end, the reality is that everyone will get cornholed that isn't a member of the ruling clique or a corp that is willing to bend the knee to the GoP (which most will, in the end).
It will just take a while for the cornholing to become obvious.
The reality of the situation as I see it is that the federal GOP has a strategic objective — minority rule — and a few ways to help achieve it, two of which are giving free rein to the rabid conspiracists and carnival barkers in government and outside it, and obstructing Biden and all Democrats everywhere via the Senate filibuster / activism from the remade judiciary.
Effectively, to your first point, we simply can’t have much in the way of governance: just one reconciliation bill per period that will pass the bad-faith and unknowable-in-advance tests of Manchin and Sinema, show legislation that won’t be passed in the House, and the Senate doing its best to slow-walk Biden’s nominees to fill out the executive branch.
I don’t think the GOP is going to turn on these goals or methods. They probably see them as having had a great deal of success so far.
> The message that moderate voters absorbed … we could debate the accuracy of this narrative … Democrats in their political incompetence let it take hold.
So as for the second half, I don’t find the way you’ve assigned “Democrats” responsibility for this outcome very convincing or specific.
They like to think they are, but they aren't. Its the thoughts, feels, perceptions, and narratives that drive votes, not actual policy. Not actual governance (or lack thereof)
So my takeaway should be that moderates are contemptable, so fuck 'em. I should rather lose and let the fascists take over then find a way to work with them. After all, I'd still have my high opinion of myself to keep me warm at night.
This is why I will never go along even with some of your (their) ( general
you)more reasonable ideas...
As long as you think you are superior to moderates and be condescending and arrogant, why would we?
You don't win converts by insulting them
And good luck getting major things done without us (I am willing to compromise and I neither think I am all right and better than you, nor that we have to be enemies) ...unless, like your mirror image on the right you intend to kill us all?
Yes, when they come for me in the black Lada on my way to to concentration camp, I'll have the satisfaction of knowing I was right about them all along. We can high five each other! If they put us in the same cell.
How is it "moderate" to vote for a party who has direct ties to white nationalists like VDare, Nick Fuentes, and The Oath Keepers?
What good is compromising with said moderates on basic voting and civil rights protections? Sounds like you lose nothing if these people get their way, so it's no skin off your nose if they take over. Must be nice to be in such a safe situation
Real world politics: I live in Nebraska. The Democrats are running a weak candidate for governor who obviously has no chance of winning. So the race for governor in reality is between three Republicans in the Republican primary. I'm a registered Democrat but I am considering temporarily registering as a Republican so I can vote in the primary which is the real election. (I will still vote for the Democrat in the general.) One of the three Republican candidates is being attacked in advertising for "wokeness" for saying that he "see's racism everywhere." (He's on videotape saying exactly that.) Does this candidate have direct ties to "white nationalists like VDare, Nick Fuentes, and The Oath Keepers?" I certainly believe that charge would be unfair. In the real world, I find Manichean worldviews like yours not very helpful.
Why do we keep having to go to this well of 'popularism?' It's a word that doesn't mean anything. Saying 'oh just do things that are popular' sounds good, but it's a bit like saying 'just make infinite energy machines!'
Question. Democrats didn't pass the BID with BBB. You know, the thing that centrists said would be better and super popular. They then didn't pass BBB. They didn't pass vote reform. They didn't defund the police, in fact, police have record budgets. And they've spent their time as Russia hawks at a time when the broader public has never been more anti-russia. And the result? Pretty much jack squat.
Which means the entire time we've been doing what the moderates want. They've gotten everything. You didn't want BBB, so you didn't get it. You wanted a russia hawk, you got it. You wanted the police funded, they are. And the result is that by and large, the public is acting like they always have: they elect GOP people who wreck the country, and then elect Democrats to fix it, only to turn around and punish the Democrats for doing so by electing more GOP members.
If you're going to say 'run on things that are popular' you need to actually, you know, explain what that means. What issues would you like them to run on? Because they've basically passed a stimulus, the BID, and nothing else, all because of the moderates being really worried Democrats might actually legislate something. Good luck going to voters and say 'the choice is because fascists who will do things and Democrats who won't, choose wisely!' Because we all know the public prefers people who will do bad ideas to people who won't do any ideas.
Here's the problem: despite the amount of people in the moderate camp, you can't cater to people who don't actually want anything. What do people who are moderate want to actually do? Because they've not proposed any ideas or legislation that they actually want. Instead, they seem content to just sit around and blame liberals while doing nothing and voters decide that the fascists are preferable to do-nothing Democrats.
It's very sad to see. And sadder to see people throw their hands up and go 'just do what's popular' as the GOP rides forcing women to bear children and banning math textbooks for being CRT to victory and probably the white house. Not sure that current success story is going to be compatible with the idea that popularism is a coherent policy set, unless you accept that by and large the American people want awful things.
I feel the same frustrations that Shawn does in his post above. But I think "Popularism" (awful word) is not senseless, and does not mean surrender. It means looking for ways to optimize political advocacy to produce leverage for legislative and policy action. Because the basis of leverage is ultimately votes, the only alternatives are persuading voters to like what you want them to like or to persuade them you are advocating what they already like.
The first is much harder. Democratic progressives have made heroic efforts to do it, but managed to undermine their efforts through counterproductive tactics, intentional (I'm thinking of strident rhetoric, censorious attacks on routinely complacent voters, extremist proposals like "defund the police," deciding this is a great time to focus on racial equity and gender complexity), and unintentional (the "riots" of 2020 brought huge numbers of voters into the GOP in the county I live in).
The second is easier, but the playing field is unfairly tilting against it: (1) The political focus has moved towards extremes, and the Right is far more skilled in manipulating those tools that turn these to advantage--the MAGA news bubble and its white nationalist and QAnon associates have made The Squad, HRC, and company far more menacing to its audience than anything the Left is able to do with MTG and crew (who are often treated, like DJT, as figures of fun--the far Right is reading Alinsky; the Left has forgotten him); (2) Democrats' interest in actual government is far more challenging for political success than the MAGA goals of disruption and exploitation.
Fairness and frustration have nothing to do with real outcomes. Most voters have always been complacent, poorly informed, and subject to fraudulent manipulation. The simple fact is that Democratic goals are harder to achieve and require maximal discipline, focused simply on getting more votes. Nothing good will happen without them. The MAGA world doesn't need discipline: even negative disruption serves their goal of shifting attention away from governing and towards conspiracy fantasies, fear, and reaction. The Democrats have done a great deal over the past year and a half, but the lack of discipline among the Party writ large has subverted it. It's too bad, but good government is for its own sake; political theater is only a means to get as much of it as possible.
I'm sure it's too late for 2022, but for 2024, I think the entire Left needs to ask itself, "Are you pro-democracy?" Because if you are, then it's going to be necessary to realize that continuing to divert political news with the new version of anti-racism, with anti-capitalism, and with other progressive positions that may have great value but that feed the agenda of the right, all reduce to anti-democracy positions, because in this context, that's where they are leading us.
I should have said the first time that I totally get your frustration Shawn, and I agree with you that popularism sounds pretty vague and wishy washy. But right now the Democratic party is not one that ordinary people can relate to very well. The things you hear them talk about the most are climate change and racism. Both are abstract things that don't affect most people's daily lives. So if nothing changes, Democrats will keep losing votes from lower class working folks while saying they are for the little guy. Keep losing black votes while saying they care so much about diversity. And keep losing hispanic votes while saying how much they care about immigrants. It's too late to save the mid-terms but if Democrats want to win in 2024 they need to have more to offer normal voters.
"The things you hear them talk about" are the things the media highlights. They talk about plenty of other things, but you only get to hear about these specific items. Why do you think that is?
Expanding the child tax credit is popular. Paid family leave is popular. Not banning gas pipelines at a time of record high gas prices would be popular. Allowing more legal immigration while providing more funding to preventing illegal immigration would be popular. Increasing taxes on the rich can be popular, and raising the minimum wage is popular. Helping labor unions is popular. There are a lot of democratic positions that are popular, and there are a lot that are unpopular. Lots of moderates want to do these things but they can only happen if leadership picks one and moves on it.
Realistically though it's not enough to pass legislation and it's not enough to support popular positions. It's also important not to loudly broadcast unpopular positions. It's not enough to pass a bill that provides additional funding to police, you need to give speeches saying how much you support them and give fiery rhetoric about the importance of law and order. Back when crime rates were falling it was popular for Democrats to support police reform and reduce prison populations. Now that crime is rising Democrats can't afford that any more. People already associate them with defunding the police, they can't just stop talking about it, they need to actively counter that narrative. At the same time Democrats became associated with spending massive amounts of money while the biggest economic problem we face is inflation. They need to stop talking about spending more money on big programs and talk about combatting inflation and helping people cope with it. That's what popularism means.
It does mean "run on things that are popular" but it means more than that. The popularist doesn't actually care about those things and doesn't necessarily even think they'd be good for the country but pushes them anyway as ways to get the voters to like them. Trump and the GOP also use fear the same way. They aren't interested in pushing good policies. If one of their policies turns out to be good, it is purely by accident.
You are describing a populist, not what is being suggested as popularist. No one is suggesting that Democrats start railing about illegals taking jobs from hard working Americans. What they are suggesting is that you loudly do the things that Democrats want to do that are popular like the CTC expansion, and then quietly do things that are unpopular like spending money to fix climate change. If instead you loudly proclaim that you want to tax gasoline to subsidize solar panels then you won't win elections and the party that doesn't do anything at all about climate change gets to make the rules.
I was merely responding to the deficient definition of "popularist". As far as your suggestions go, I suspect it isn't possible to "quietly" fix climate change. Instead, it should be billed as a business opportunity. Some amount if climate change is inevitable at this point. Some has already happened. The US is well-positioned to be the supplier of technology and know-how that will be needed by the whole world. It should attack it directly rather than letting the fossil fuel industry quietly deprioritize it.
Quietly fixing climate change is basically what we have been doing this whole time. Attempts to do big things like implement a carbon tax even fail in liberal-as-it-gets Washington state. The average voter says they aren't willing to spend $100 a year to fix climate change. But there was a lot of money for fighting climate change in the infrastructure bill. Progressives railed about not doing enough to fight climate change in that bill as well as in BBB, but the reality is that chipping away at it by slipping things into other bills is the only real way to achieve progress.
Of course, because it's always presented as a price to be paid. You've proven my point.
I would love to see ANY of these points addressed before I read yet another run-to-the-middle screed.
I'll humbly take a shot at addressing some of these points:
Shawn doesn't make a distinction between how governance by the totality of the Democratic coalition has actually worked out compared to what the majority of the Party wanted to do. The message that moderate voters absorbed over the battles about BBB and other spending plans is that the vast majority of Democratic members of Congress wanted nothing more than to spend gobsmacking amounts of money and that the only thing that prevented them from doing so were a couple of moderate Senators that the rest of the Party hates. Now we could debate the accuracy of this narrative, but this narrative has taken hold and Democrats in their political incompetence let it take hold, which has destroyed the Party's standing with independents. Similarly with the "defund the police" story. The facts may be that police funding has risen, but if voters believe that a large portion of the Party, if they could have their way, would abolish the police (and this is how the "defund" rhetoric is interpreted by voters), this is just political suicide.
The narrative rules over the reality. I have said this multiple times.
The reality is that people DO NOT KNOW what they want WRT a lot of things. Sure they can get behind a general idea. Infrastructure! Voting rights!
Punchy little catchphrases or vague general ideas and principles. All in.
THEN you start talking about actually doing it. About what has to be done. About what it will cost. About how it will be paid for--and the popularity falls out the bottom--particularly after your opponents scaremonger and misrepresent the hell out of it.
Then, if you are lucky, you get some half-assed version of the original idea, full of compromises to get the reluctant members of your party to fall in line and the usual poison pills that corporate America demands that don't seem like much but that have been cunningly designed to gut whatever it is that you are trying to do.
The Democrats have consistently failed to set the narrative since the 80s.
They have consistently gone through what I have outlined above, turning out crappy (but at least possible) policy and action that they then fail to capitalize on because they do not self-promote and they allow something (for example) to become Obamacare (which people hate for some reason) while they like the ACA (which is Obamacare but without the spin narrative).
When are these people going to pull their heads out of their ass? The Republic KINDA depends upon them doing so.
Maybe America needs to get cornholed by the GoP and Trump for a decade or so before they wise up--but I sincerely doubt the mass of America will ever get that wise.
Well said. Regarding self promotion, my very trumpy neighbors next door with 4 children still believe that the child tax credit money they enjoyed each month was from a former trump policy that didn't go into effect until 2021. He had planned it ahead for his 2nd term. 🙄 I tried to talk to them about the ARP and all I got was "fake news".
Another thing I saw yesterday that made me think about self promotion was a side by side clip of Trump on the WH balcony for the 2019 Easter thing. Instead of talking to the children he very inappropriately sold whatever economic BS he was pushing at the time. The man never missed an opportunity to message and sell.
Last weekend at the same event with Biden, Jill excitedly, and appropriately, spoke to the children and parents from the balcony with Joe at her side, silent.
Average voters do not know what you have done for them unless repeatedly told, as sad as that is.
Well said. Unfortunately, accurate.
The problem is the people that'll get cornholed (racial minorities, non-white immigrants, LGBTQ people, and non-Christians) aren't the ones who need to learn the lesson
In the end, the reality is that everyone will get cornholed that isn't a member of the ruling clique or a corp that is willing to bend the knee to the GoP (which most will, in the end).
It will just take a while for the cornholing to become obvious.
The reality of the situation as I see it is that the federal GOP has a strategic objective — minority rule — and a few ways to help achieve it, two of which are giving free rein to the rabid conspiracists and carnival barkers in government and outside it, and obstructing Biden and all Democrats everywhere via the Senate filibuster / activism from the remade judiciary.
Effectively, to your first point, we simply can’t have much in the way of governance: just one reconciliation bill per period that will pass the bad-faith and unknowable-in-advance tests of Manchin and Sinema, show legislation that won’t be passed in the House, and the Senate doing its best to slow-walk Biden’s nominees to fill out the executive branch.
I don’t think the GOP is going to turn on these goals or methods. They probably see them as having had a great deal of success so far.
> The message that moderate voters absorbed … we could debate the accuracy of this narrative … Democrats in their political incompetence let it take hold.
So as for the second half, I don’t find the way you’ve assigned “Democrats” responsibility for this outcome very convincing or specific.
So belief and fee fees matter more than reality? I thought these rock ribbed "swing voters" were gimlet-eyed realists
They like to think they are, but they aren't. Its the thoughts, feels, perceptions, and narratives that drive votes, not actual policy. Not actual governance (or lack thereof)
So my takeaway should be that moderates are contemptable, so fuck 'em. I should rather lose and let the fascists take over then find a way to work with them. After all, I'd still have my high opinion of myself to keep me warm at night.
This is why I will never go along even with some of your (their) ( general
you)more reasonable ideas...
As long as you think you are superior to moderates and be condescending and arrogant, why would we?
You don't win converts by insulting them
And good luck getting major things done without us (I am willing to compromise and I neither think I am all right and better than you, nor that we have to be enemies) ...unless, like your mirror image on the right you intend to kill us all?
Yes, when they come for me in the black Lada on my way to to concentration camp, I'll have the satisfaction of knowing I was right about them all along. We can high five each other! If they put us in the same cell.
"black Lada" - Love it
Actually it might be a couple of Proud boys in an F-150.
F-150s are for female genitalia. 3/4 ton Silverados, Sierras, and Rams with a base price of 70-80k are Maga approved.
I wouldn't know, I'm an effete liberal with two honda fits.
But around here there are a lot of F-150's and many of the guys who drive them have tatoos and MAGA stuff decorating their trucks and their persons.
there are a lot of fake tough guys
How is it "moderate" to vote for a party who has direct ties to white nationalists like VDare, Nick Fuentes, and The Oath Keepers?
What good is compromising with said moderates on basic voting and civil rights protections? Sounds like you lose nothing if these people get their way, so it's no skin off your nose if they take over. Must be nice to be in such a safe situation
Real world politics: I live in Nebraska. The Democrats are running a weak candidate for governor who obviously has no chance of winning. So the race for governor in reality is between three Republicans in the Republican primary. I'm a registered Democrat but I am considering temporarily registering as a Republican so I can vote in the primary which is the real election. (I will still vote for the Democrat in the general.) One of the three Republican candidates is being attacked in advertising for "wokeness" for saying that he "see's racism everywhere." (He's on videotape saying exactly that.) Does this candidate have direct ties to "white nationalists like VDare, Nick Fuentes, and The Oath Keepers?" I certainly believe that charge would be unfair. In the real world, I find Manichean worldviews like yours not very helpful.
Well they are when it's YOUR feelings, not theirs.
The white public is doing that. If we weren't allowed to vote, then the GOP never wins. Collectively we are the problem