US Presidency 2020

[LarsMac]

Originally Posted by Ari

Frankly, a formal congrats to conservatives for getting a conservative in the white house that will almost certainly push reasonably favorable agendas.

A biden win is the car not going off the cliff, I don’t see it as a liberal victory but an american victory (despite the angry emotionally panicked Trumper americans). Trump’s love of tinpot dictators and clear willingness to chop up and sell america to the highest bidder or private foreign creditor, is something I don’t think America would have survived, and I presume that 8 years of Trump would turn into 12 years and an attempt to appoint his daughter president.

Good points. I remember in 2008, Joe was to conservative for many in the Democratic Party.
Obama's team brought him on board to appeal those conservatives.

I do prefer a conservative Dem, to a Batshit crazy Republican Clown.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

There are no non-bullying Trump supporters.

Finding a timid reason to support a bully doesn’t mean you aren’t a bully. It just means you told yourself an excuse. https://t.co/4RBF0ZBLnf

— A.R. Moxon (@JuliusGoat) November 8, 2020

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Edit: Be sure to read Erimir's rebuttal

Misc thrad

House Dems who lost reelection in 2020:

- Donna Shalala, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.
- Joe Cunningham, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.
- Xochitl Torres Small, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.

(1/2) https://t.co/DSaJ9O2Y7w

— Aidan Smith (@aidan_smx) November 5, 2020

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by Ari

A biden win is the car not going off the cliff

Hey I used that exact analogy on the bird app today. Someone said something to the effect of a milquetoast neoliberal not being a course correction and I said we may still be off course but at least we've avoided going off a cliff.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

There are no non-bullying Trump supporters.

Finding a timid reason to support a bully doesn’t mean you aren’t a bully. It just means you told yourself an excuse. https://t.co/4RBF0ZBLnf

— A.R. Moxon (@JuliusGoat) November 8, 2020

I believe there are non-bullying, non-racist, Trump voters, but every single one who joined a truck, boat, or stadium rally can fuck right off to hell.

[viscousmemories]

Oh, and now the reason I came here dammit.

https://www.tiktok.com/@josie_karavi...75251114413318

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

I believe there are non-bullying, non-racist, Trump voters, but every single one who joined a truck, boat, or stadium rally can fuck right off to hell.

I don't think you can call them non-racist. They're low information voters, ignorant and incurious and deeply indoctrinated by their information bubbles. But also, they are at the very least subconsciously racist, even if they don't realize it.

Because anyone who voted for Trump agrees with, is OK with, and/or isn't even willing to question white supremacy.

I don't underestimate how poorly informed some people are, because WOW, but anyone who is aware of the BLM protests has the ability to actually listen to what the protestors are saying. And choosing to ignore or dismiss that is racist.

[viscousmemories]

Dammit, I came to that same conclusion earlier today when I was thinking about this then forgot when I made that post. I had decided to allow for Trump voters who aren't overtly racist. But anyway yeah, I think every white person who grew up in America is some degree of racist.

Also I forgot to add "antagonized a BLM protest" to the list of Trumpers who can die.

[lisarea]

Yep to that! This is such a huge number of people, I don't know how much of the blame we can really put on them individually. Like you said in another thread just now, that's a lot of people to line up.

And it points to a fundamental, systemic issue that needs to be addressed fundamentally and systemically. Through education, information, and basic reforms. People aren't just born like this. This happens through indoctrination, and we need to work with them somehow.

And that's ideal, anyway. As mad as I get sometimes, at some point, I have to recognize that there's a reason that people who've been immersed in this all their lives are the way they are. They need help. Not by negotiating or compromising or appeasing, but by addressing the root of the issues.

So we need to line them up against a wall and provide them with health care, food, shelter, and a solid and thorough education.

[erimir]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

Misc thrad

House Dems who lost reelection in 2020:

- Donna Shalala, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.
- Joe Cunningham, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.
- Xochitl Torres Small, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.

(1/2) https://t.co/DSaJ9O2Y7w

— Aidan Smith (@aidan_smx) November 5, 2020

That thread is extremely misleading, to the point that I consider it most likely bad faith.

His argument is based entirely on conflating correlation and causation. And he purposely only mentions those candidates who lost - what information is there to be gained in listing M4A supporters who won and M4A non-supporters who lost, if you don't also account for M4A supporters who lost and M4A non-supporters who won? This is a big reason why I conclude it's bad faith.

To wit, it could be that the same factor that leads those candidates not to run on M4A also lead to them being defeated. Namely, that those are relatively conservative districts meant that they were vulnerable in an election where the Democrats didn't do amazing across the board. It also explains why they chose not to run on M4A or defunding the police.

We also have direct evidence of what the public thinks of Defund the Police, because there have been polls on it. They oppose the idea by a 31-58 margin. To be fair, the ideas behind it are much more popular than the slogan, which is, frankly, why it's a horrible, horrible slogan that results in its proponents having to explain that they don't mean removing all funding from police every. single. time. There is no reason any Democrat should be embracing a slogan that is hard to understand, doesn't mean what people assume it means and is easily misrepresented by the other side.

If you want to say the polls on that issue aren't trustworthy because of the miss in this election... they missed in the direction of the GOP, so how could that be an argument that support for Defund the Police is actually higher?

The notion that those candidates lost in any way because they didn't say they favor defunding the police is so obviously incorrect analysis that that guy is either full of shit, or simply doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.

The polls on M4A are a bit less clear in terms of whether it's good to run on it, but I would note that in this case the slogan is more popular than some of the ideas commonly associated with it - ending private insurance is not popular. A public option is, by contrast, very popular, significantly more popular than even the slogan "Medicare For All". Running on it is smart politics, and a public option really could, seriously, get us to affordable universal health care. Yes, I understand that it's stupid that people would rather pay premiums to the government than pay taxes that end up providing them with the same care. But that's how Americans are, and why should we insist that they pay for universal healthcare with taxes instead of with premiums (with substantial income-based subsidies) if the end result is very similar?

Finally, it's stupid to base any political analysis on binary win/lose counts, when elections provide us with much more data than that. We should be looking at margins, because a close loss tells you something different from a landslide loss. We also should be comparing how congressional candidates did compared to Biden and to statewide candidates. Biden lost Montana by 16 pts, and Steve Bullock lost it by 10. Why would I conclude that Bullock fucked it up because he lost? He performed 6 pts better than Biden! Conversely, Kara Eastman, an M4A supporter, lost in Nebraska's 2nd district by (under incomplete results) 5 pts, while Joe Biden, who doesn't support M4A, won the district by 11 pts, so she did 16 pts worse! That's not enough data to draw conclusions from, but saying Bullock and Eastman both lost and throwing up your hands would not be a very good analysis of the relative value of their strategies.

You also need to account for different numbers of candidates that meet your criteria. There's a reason there were more non-M4A incumbent Democrats in swing districts to talk about in the first place (enough for a list of losers - coincidentally, he didn't talk about any of the ones who were reelected ) - is because hardly any Democrats who support M4A won any swing districts at all! In 2018, our red-to-blue flips in those districts did not come from M4A supporters.

At any rate, it's

1. going to lead to bad analysis to talk about this when the votes aren't all in. Or at least, you should be hedging any claims significantly (e.g. AOC was criticizing Conor Lamb's campaign... before they counted more votes, and he ended up winning)
2. And, at least based on the partial results we have, the evidence suggests either that it didn't make a big difference or that running more liberal campaigns in swing districts tends to hurt.
3. But to really examine why some candidates won and others lost, you would also want to account for factors like incumbency, demographics, etc. because Biden's performance doesn't explain all the variation.

It might be that it doesn't make much difference, in which case we would want to tease out what does make candidates win in those districts. I'm certainly not arguing that there aren't any progressive policies to run on, even in swing districts! A $15 minimum wage is pretty popular across the country - it got over 60% of the vote in Florida at the same time that Trump won the state by 3 pts! But that guy's analysis is dishonest horseshit.

I put this together quickly, but controlling for 2016 Presidential vote, this relationship goes away / probably goes the other way.

Caveat: will want to re-run once all votes are reported. https://t.co/0Thn6DpE1z pic.twitter.com/wpXrDIXDmR

— David Broockman (@dbroockman) November 8, 2020

[erimir]

To be clear, I'd also be focused on the people who are winning easily but have conservative records, who could be replaced with more liberal candidates or could be pushed to the left.

If I lived in California in 2018, I absolutely would've voted for Feinstein's challenger. I also think Biden should appoint her to something to get her out of the Senate. And that Katie Porter would be a fine choice for any Senate vacancy there (Harris's seat is guaranteed to be open).

But that's a different matter from saying that the way to win coastal South Carolina or a seat in Okla-fucking-homa is to run on M4A.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Merits an edit:

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Sat down three times trying to write this post, interrupted each time. Short, short version.

Demanding empathy for people who supported abusive policy and are sad their supply will now be slowed down is in itself abuse. The abusers need to repent, and do the necessary labour to undo their harm and to not engage in it again before any reconciliation can occur. The labour is theirs to do, not their victim’s.

[ceptimus]

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by ceptimus

Both 2-term impeached Presidents were impeached in their 2nd term. Interesting.

[Oxymaroon]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

Demanding empathy for people who supported abusive policy and are sad their supply will now be slowed down is in itself abuse. The abusers need to repent, and do the necessary labour to undo their harm and to not engage in it again before any reconciliation can occur. The labour is theirs to do, not their victim’s.

The labour is always the victim's to do - even the slow, tedious, low-yield labour of steering the abuser to realization of wrongdoing. That goes quadruple in this sort of case, where the abuse is not done directly by the voters. The voters don't feel any impulse toward hurting any particular victim: all they have is a second-hand idea that some threat is being averted from them by a protector.
And then, in the long version, you also have to consider degree of complicity and degree or support for a particular policy. For one Trump supporter (you can probably tell which one by the slogan on his XXXL Tshirt), being allowed to hurt people is the main benefit of winning; for another (you can probably tell which by his clean-shaven baby face), getting hurt might teach the baby-killers and perverts godly behaviour; for another (you can probably tell by her brass-coloured hair), it's unavoidable when dealing with an invasion of drug-crazed rapists; for another (you can probably tell her lime-green puffy coat), if a little hurting will discourage people who have ruined their own country with communism from coming over here and ruining ours, then it's all right.

I can't easily empathize with any of the ones I've seen interviewed. I can't even figure out where to place the tiniest wedge in their Great Wall of Miscomprehension.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Seems I’m conflating domestic abuse with the layer of abstraction that is politics.

In the meantime I’ll still be supportive of people harmed these past years first and foremost. People sad about Orange Man losing can take the same number Beetlejuice got from the dispenser.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Oxymaroon

The labour is always the victim's to do - ...

I don't want to [thanks] this because the concept makes me sad.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

Seems I’m conflating domestic abuse with the layer of abstraction that is politics.

At the very least the gaslighting is a common factor.

[JoeP]

In fact I'm not sure I get what Oxymaroon is saying. And if I do, it must be tongue-in-cheek.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

My take away is right or wrong or disgusting it always ends up the victim's labour. And it's not like the happy family that is America can't as easily pack a bug out bag and leave their abusive spouse as can an individual.

Or:

Originally Posted by lisarea

So we need to line them up against a wall and provide them with health care, food, shelter, and a solid and thorough education.

Someone rewrite Private Idaho into Private Nuremberg.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

Someone rewrite Private Idaho into Private Nuremberg.

I thought that was a reference to the movie My Own Private Idaho which I saw in the theatre when it came out. RIP River Phoenix. But when I googled it to refresh my memory about the film's plot in hopes of understanding your reference, I discovered that it's a B-52's song. As soon as I discovered that, it played in my head and I realized it was a B-52s song I knew VERY WELL. Anyway I'm old. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[Oxymaroon]

Originally Posted by JoeP

[The labour is always the victim's to do - ...]

I don't want to [thanks] this because the concept makes me sad.

I'm sorry! It's a sad ol woll, ain it?

[Oxymaroon]

Originally Posted by JoeP

In fact I'm not sure I get what Oxymaroon is saying. And if I do, it must be tongue-in-cheek.

No, i mean it quite literally. Evil usually wins, because it's not hampered by ethics, compassion or shame. Human predators consider themselves entitled to their prey. They may go through elaborate intellectual justification of their actions for show - as a shield against social censure - but privately, they despise the weaklings (losers and suckers) who need that justification, rather than just taking what they want.
Evil leaders always find sycophants, expediters, enablers, apologists, defenders, willing tools and patsies, adoring followers, because they empower the inner predator in those who are not strong enough or bold enough to act on their worst impulses.
These are not self-correcting personality disorders. They need a great deal of external effort to make any course-correction. And some, of course, are permanently unreachable.