2024 Elections Thread

[Sea_Ice]

Why are we blaming Harrid and the D's?

Why aren't we blaming the Americans who were so foolish as to vote for someone who was obviously deranged, ranting about immigrants eating pets, deporting 20 million people, and dancing to Ave Maria?

Those Americans were warned by their own party members that he was unhinged. They were presented with the few people who were willing to get on stage with him - Musk and Kennedy - also certifiable nutjobs.

Not to mention his 34 felony convictions plus the convictions, jail time and seized assets of many of his other compares.

And they trusted him with... the economy? Because... ???

Because all of the many reasons that an individual will give, plus a heavy dose of delusional thinking.  That no longer tends to result in quick negative reinforcement, so people continue the behavior.

We have a bad mix of a society too complex for many to understand, an educational system that fails too many, and all sorts of guard-rails that prevent the sort of (painful!) experiential learning that was common within my early life-time, and certainly before that.

[jimbogumbo]

The CoL issue can be laid at the feet of Joe Manchin. He would not agree to continuing payments that were desperately needed by low middle and low income people, and that really hurt. While obviously other factors were at play, that really hurt the D's chances.

[apl68]

Why are we blaming Harrid and the D's?

Why aren't we blaming the Americans who were so foolish as to vote for someone who was obviously deranged, ranting about immigrants eating pets, deporting 20 million people, and dancing to Ave Maria?

Those Americans were warned by their own party members that he was unhinged. They were presented with the few people who were willing to get on stage with him - Musk and Kennedy - also certifiable nutjobs.

Not to mention his 34 felony convictions plus the convictions, jail time and seized assets of many of his other compares.

And they trusted him with... the economy? Because... ???

Because all of the many reasons that an individual will give, plus a heavy dose of delusional thinking.  That no longer tends to result in quick negative reinforcement, so people continue the behavior.

We have a bad mix of a society too complex for many to understand, an educational system that fails too many, and all sorts of guard-rails that prevent the sort of (painful!) experiential learning that was common within my early life-time, and certainly before that.

And yet it's looking like he won the popular vote this time around.  So there's no saying that the election was "stolen" by the electoral collage, voter suppression, etc.  If an actual popular majority decided to vote for Donald Trump, then what are his opponents going to do about it?  Simply dissolve the people and elect another, as Bertolt Brecht put it?

[spork]

Ben Rhodes, After the Fall: Being American In the World We've Made.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/opinion/republicans-democrats-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Yk4.8M_G.HjBy-H8ut7F5&smid=url-share

[kaysixteen]

What do you mean by this: "and all sorts of guard-rails that prevent the sort of (painful!) experiential learning that was common within my early life-time, and certainly before that."?

[Parasaurolophus]

About ten years ago, a little before Trump decided to run for the Republican nomination, my partner and I were driving in the South and listening to Christian talk radio, as we sometimes like to do. We listened to one particular sermon/lesson/whatever they call it (teaching?) on Revelations that focused on the trumps of God. There are lots of trumpets in the Bible, said the preacher, but only two trumps. The first one is a warning that the second one is coming. The second trump heralds the beginning of the end.

In the intervening years, I've often thought about this particular (/particularly illiterate) nugget. And it now seems just about right.

[Kron3007]

Why are we blaming Harrid and the D's?

Why aren't we blaming the Americans who were so foolish as to vote for someone who was obviously deranged, ranting about immigrants eating pets, deporting 20 million people, and dancing to Ave Maria?

Those Americans were warned by their own party members that he was unhinged. They were presented with the few people who were willing to get on stage with him - Musk and Kennedy - also certifiable nutjobs.

Not to mention his 34 felony convictions plus the convictions, jail time and seized assets of many of his other compares.

And they trusted him with... the economy? Because... ???

Because all of the many reasons that an individual will give, plus a heavy dose of delusional thinking.  That no longer tends to result in quick negative reinforcement, so people continue the behavior.

We have a bad mix of a society too complex for many to understand, an educational system that fails too many, and all sorts of guard-rails that prevent the sort of (painful!) experiential learning that was common within my early life-time, and certainly before that.

And yet it's looking like he won the popular vote this time around.  So there's no saying that the election was "stolen" by the electoral collage, voter suppression, etc.  If an actual popular majority decided to vote for Donald Trump, then what are his opponents going to do about it?  Simply dissolve the people and elect another, as Bertolt Brecht put it?

I don't think anyone is denying that he won or talking about "doing anything about it" (that would have been if he lost).  People are just reflecting on the how and why of it.

[Langue_doc]

Maureen Dowd

Democrats and the Case of Mistaken Identity Politics

Here's the article:

Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke.

Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of Black and Latino voters and young men.

Democratic insiders thought people would vote for Kamala Harris, even if they didn't like her, to get rid of Trump. But more people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn't like him, because they liked the Democratic Party less.

I have often talked about how my dad stayed up all night on the night Harry Truman was elected because he was so excited. And my brother stayed up all night the first time Trump was elected because he was so excited. And I felt that Democrats would never recover that kind of excitement until they could figure out why they had turned off so many working-class voters over the decades, and why they had developed such disdain toward their once loyal base.

Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like "Latinx," and "BIPOC" (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).

This alienated half the country, or more. And the chaos and antisemitism at many college campuses certainly didn't help.

"When the woke police come at you," Rahm Emanuel told me, "you don't even get your Miranda rights read to you."

There were a lot of Democrats "barking," people who "don't represent anybody," he said, and "the leadership of the party was intimidated."

Donald Trump played to the irritation of many Americans disgusted at being regarded as insensitive for talking the way they'd always talked. At rallies, he referred to women as "beautiful" and then pretended to admonish himself, saying he'd get in trouble for using that word. He'd also call women "darling" and joke that he had to be careful because his political career could be at risk.

One thing that makes Democrats great is that they unabashedly support groups that have suffered from inequality. But they have to begin avoiding extreme policies that alienate many Americans who would otherwise be drawn to the party.

Democrats learned the hard way in this election that mothers care both about abortion rights and having their daughters compete fairly and safely on the playing field.

A revealing chart that ran in The Financial Times showed that white progressives hold views far to the left of the minorities they champion. White progressives think at higher rates than Hispanic and Black Americans that "racism is built into our society." Many more Black and Hispanic Americans surveyed, compared with white progressives, responded that "America is the greatest country in the world."

Gobsmacked Democrats have reacted to the wipeout in different ways. Some think Kamala did not court the left enough, touting trans rights and repudiating Israel.

Other Democrats feel the opposite, calling on the party to reimagine itself.

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a vulnerable Democrat in a red congressional district in Washington, narrowly held her seat. The 36-year-old mother of a toddler and owner of an auto shop told The Times's Annie Karni that Democratic condescension has to go. "There's not one weird trick that's going to fix the Democratic Party," she said. "It is going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office and being taken seriously."

Representative Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the party needs rebranding. "Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone," he said. "I have two little girls. I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I'm supposed to be afraid to say that."

On CNN, the Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said that Democrats did not know how to talk to normal Americans.

Addressing Latinos as "Latinx" to be politically correct "makes them think that we don't even live on the same planet as they do," she said. "When we are too afraid to say that 'Hey, college kids, if you're trashing a campus of Columbia University because you aren't happy about some sort of policy and you're taking over a university and you're trashing it and preventing other students from learning, that that is unacceptable.' But we're so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we don't know what to say."

Kamala, a Democratic lawmaker told me, made the "colossal mistake" of running a billion-dollar campaign with celebrities like Beyoncé when many of the struggling working-class voters she wanted couldn't even afford a ticket to a Beyoncé concert, much less a down payment on a home.

"I don't think the average person said, 'Kamala Harris gets what I'm going through,'" this Democrat said.

Kamala, who sprinted to the left in her 2020 Democratic primary campaign, tried to move toward the center for this election, making sure to say she'd shoot an intruder with her Glock. But it sounded tinny.

The Trump campaign's most successful ad showed Kamala favoring tax-funded gender surgery for prisoners. Bill Clinton warned in vain that she should rebut it.

James Carville gave Kamala credit for not leaning into her gender and ethnicity. But he said the party had become enamored of "identitarianism" — a word he uses because he won't say "woke" — radiating the repellent idea that "identity is more important than humanity."

"We could never wash off the stench of it," he said, calling "defund the police" "the three stupidest words in the English language."

"It's like when you get smoke on your clothes and you have to wash them again and again. Now people are running away from it like the devil runs away from holy water."

[Kron3007]

The CoL issue can be laid at the feet of Joe Manchin. He would not agree to continuing payments that were desperately needed by low middle and low income people, and that really hurt. While obviously other factors were at play, that really hurt the D's chances.

In part maybe, but this is a global post-covid phenomenon.  The US has done relatively well addressing it.  Many Americans seem to think everything is under the control of the POTUS, but that's not the case.

However, details don't filter down well and politics is all about sou d bites.

[ciao_yall]

Problems are complex.

Solutions are complex and require nuance and compromise on black/white issues.

This anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism is just a way of distracting and upsetting people so they can't patiently take the time to understand a solution.

"Illegal immigration" is a classic. Solve it by letting people into the country, registering them, setting them up with a job and education Registry, access to housing and social resources.

In other words OPEN BORDERS! AMNESTY! AAAAAAAAAAAA!

And funding education, public housing, food benefits.

BUT MY TAXES WILL GO UP!

Not if we focus on taxing the wealthy.

BUT MY BOSS WILL FIRE ME BECAUSE HE WONT BE ABLE TO AFFORD TO PAY HIS TAXES!

smdh.

[kaysixteen]

Two points here:

1)Like it or not, Dowd is absolutely correct with regard to the pandering to the extreme secular educated left with terminology, condescension to those who do not use or do not even know that terminology, etc., but if the Dems were to actually really jettison this stuff, how do they do that without offending a key component of their own base?

2) Various analyses of the election seem to not want to take into consideration one real, salient factor-- many Americans are either too unintelligent, uneducated, and/or uninterested, in serious thinking about and analysis of facts associated with voting in general and Trump in particular.

3) And almost no one seems to be openly saying that a 'cult of personality' deeply impacted the vote in Drumpf's favor.  Who thinks more or less any other candidate of either party would have been elected with his resume?  Say, for instance, Ron DeSantis had become the GOP nominee this year, instead, and had to run against Harris-- he might have won, but anyone think the results would have been nearly as strong as Trump's?

[jimbogumbo]

The CoL issue can be laid at the feet of Joe Manchin. He would not agree to continuing payments that were desperately needed by low middle and low income people, and that really hurt. While obviously other factors were at play, that really hurt the D's chances.

In part maybe, but this is a global post-covid phenomenon.  The US has done relatively well addressing it.  Many Americans seem to think everything is under the control of the POTUS, but that's not the case.

However, details don't filter down well and politics is all about sou d bites.

Clearly a global phenomenon, but I will maintain that continuing those payments would have had a significant counter effect here on the Trump train. This election was extremely close on the margins in the swing states, so the effect of discontinuing them was, imho, outsized on the Electoral count.

[ciao_yall]

Two points here:


3) And almost no one seems to be openly saying that a 'cult of personality' deeply impacted the vote in Drumpf's favor.  Who thinks more or less any other candidate of either party would have been elected with his resume?  Say, for instance, Ron DeSantis had become the GOP nominee this year, instead, and had to run against Harris-- he might have won, but anyone think the results would have been nearly as strong as Trump's?

Interesting point.

Suppose Trump had been the D in 2016 running against some dull party stalwart like Jeb Bush?

Then, Mitt Romney wins in 2020 but a last-minute health crisis takes him out in 2024 and Liz Cheney is the candidate?

Suppose Trump had won the D nomination again and was just as unhinged, and just as many warnings came out?

Would I vote D to keep the Supreme Court and my general party in play, hoping for the best with Trump?

Or would I think this was bigger than Party and vote for Liz Cheney despite disagreeing with her and her party on almost everything?

[jimbogumbo]

3) And almost no one seems to be openly saying that a 'cult of personality' deeply impacted the vote in Drumpf's favor. 

I'm lost. That has been the focus of countless opinion pieces since 2016.

[kaysixteen]

Hard core party loyalists might well have voted for any GOP nominee this year, but Trump got many votes from non-Republicans, at least some of which had never voted for a GOP candidate before.  How many of these sorts of voters would have voted for DeSantis over Harris this year?  The level of cult of personality-driven voter support and loyalty Trump has is astounding-- even my own very Trump-friendly pastor felt the need, a month or so ago to decree in a sermon various comments he had been hearing from church folks, our church folks, which essentially atttributes a 'he can do no wrong, he is God's prophet'-style attitude towards Trump, and I have seen many a nigh-onto-cultic slogan flying from banners in yards of people who are, ahem, clearly not devout Christian fundamentalists of any stripe.  Really, Trump has done it, created this allure over himself in a way which literally no other president has ever done (though of course Washington could have but pointedly refused to do).