Trump wins presidency for second time
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This thread could be worse (ok, it could be a lot worse) but I'm still noticing people breaking the rules. Please follow them instead—it will be a better experience for all of us, including yourself.
-Inflation is not prices; it is the rate of change in prices. Low inflation doesn't imply low prices. -Aggregate statistics don't necessarily explain individual outcomes.
The Dems failed on this count massively, and have, for maybe the last 40 years, which is about the amount of time it took for my state to go from national bellwether (As goes Ohio, so goes the nation) to a reliably red state. This cost one of the most pro-union Senators (Sherrod Brown) his job.
You can't put extreme tariffs like 200% and expect prices to come down.
The reality is post-covid was an inflationary period because of hyper consumerism. Demand shot up, extremely quickly, and supply was still lagging due to covid. There was really nothing anyone could do. It's unfortunate, but voters don't consider these things. They just see the prices, see a blue president, and go from there.
Its worth noting that printing new money was the actual inflation, inflation is a measure of the increase in the money supply itself. Prices did go up, or you could say the dollar lost value, but price changes aren't actually inflation (prices are tracked by indexes).
It looks like US electricity costs are up around 10% since 2022. How do you peel that apart to know electricity prices changed first, and that that is what caused all other prices to go up?
Also why do you look at electricity? Its not just electricity, its everything. The war disrupted oil supply from Russia, which is something like 11% of global oil production. On top of it they disrupted supply chains globally.
Also, this is on top of the pandemic's economic hangover. This is pretty much up there from the first few searches on this topic, before you have to get into any detailed economic analysis.
> I mean - you just said it didnt you? Energy touches basically every corner of the economy. Thats perfect. Yeah it does - and so it raises prices for everything.
That doesn't show direction though. Energy impacts basically everything in the economy, but energy can also be impacted by the rest of the economy.
> Also, this is on top of the pandemic's economic hangover. This is pretty much up there from the first few searches on this topic, before you have to get into any detailed economic analysis.
Doesn't that go against the earlier comment that prices are tied through energy costs and directly linked to Ukraine?
I wouldn't put to much faith in top search results for what its worth. Those are almost never going to include detailed economic analysis. Most people don't click on detailed analysis, search engines won't promote those first.
What direction? Sorry, direction of prices of energy? Direction of inflation.
Look, we seem to be debating the strangest things. Not only are there 100s of articles that discuss and establish this fact, it is the basis for every strategy to handle the situation.
>Doesn't that go against the earlier comment that prices are tied through energy costs and directly linked to Ukraine?
Yeah you are right. I added it in context of the larger forces driving inflation.
If you want to be focused on energy alone then it is the war on Ukraine. Here - theres a paper from Nature that decomposes the various factors of the price rise and finds that the war was responsible for 75% of the increase in prices.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-02526-9#:~:text=T....
I suppose that should satisfy you?
Harris did not.
Once again, Republicans Show Up and they win by default. Yes, his "plans" are nonsensical, but the opponents decided to forfeit the match!
I have no trouble believing many people are worse off, which sucks. And many politicians should care more and try to do more.
But: 1) I would attribute that to low wage increases for several decades, not the last 4 years. 2) there's no easy fix for these things. 3) Putting inflation in a global perspective is meant to show how this is not mainly Biden's fault, since he doesn't control the rest of the world.
Let me share an anecdote: I worked on a project to estimate household-level price sensitivities to the market basket of goods commonly used in CPI calculations. (My employer had shopper-card/upc/transaction-level data from tons of major grocery chains across the USA with which to attempt this project.) I tried to read through the docs on how CPI is calculated, and let me tell you: major snoozefest, and I consider myself "a numbers guy."
I doubt the run-of-the-mill American can accurately define inflation. Consequently, "look at how we fought inflation" is the wrong campaign slogan.
There was this Biden admin. push to not call things a "recession" due to technicalities that probably pissed people off? "Inflation" means 'higher prices' and "recession" means 'economy things suck right now'.
I did hear Trump loudly, constantly, inaccurately talking about Grocery prices.
That was just an outgrowth of high monetary supply during COVID to shore up the numbers and prevent economic collapse due to a steep and sudden drop of economic activity. All that money couldn't be immediately mopped up as soon as the economies opened up, so it sloshed around for a while longer.
I used to believe this, but the truth is we haven't been able to import food, energy or homes from China for a while. That leaves autos, and it's very hard to predict how auto tariffs would affect inflation, since people have always purchased more expensive cars over cheaper ones, for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile for stuff you and I care about like computers, well most of what you are paying for is software, which is all made here. Services like health care and education are insensitive to tariffs, and since grocery stores have to provide health care to some employees all the same, it affects prices for goods. Home prices rising is supported by both parties, and besides inflation the government basically guarantees market returns but risk free in owner-occupied real estate in this country.
I wish what you were saying were true - that bringing tariffs down to zero would eliminate inflation - but if it were that simple it would have been done already.
>Trump proposed a 10% tariff on all U.S. imports and a 60% levy on Chinese-made products, which if enacted would affect the entire economy by pushing consumer prices higher and stoking retaliatory levies on American exports. Trump also threatened to impose a 25% tariff on all imports from Mexico.
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-suppliers-importers-prep...
And that freshman would be more educated than 1/3 of the country.
I don't mean that as an insult to 1/3 of the country. Trump wins because he messages in a way that EVERY person can understand. A huge portion of the country will disagree with his approach, but that's vastly different than relying on people to understand concepts they've never had exposure to.
See Smoot Hawley - it passed in 1930, and deflation accelerated. Economy is a complicated system.
Recent example: Gas prices deflated during covid. Why? Massive reduction in driving and buying of gasoline.
[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Smoot-Hawley-Tariff-Act
"Smoot-Hawley contributed to the early loss of confidence on Wall Street and signaled U.S. isolationism. By raising the average tariff by some 20 percent, it also prompted retaliation from foreign governments, and many overseas banks began to fail. (Because the legislation set both specific and ad valorem tariff rates [i.e., rates based on the value of the product], determining the precise percentage increase in tariff levels is difficult and a subject of debate among economists.) Within two years some two dozen countries adopted similar “beggar-thy-neighbour” duties, making worse an already beleaguered world economy and reducing global trade. U.S. imports from and exports to Europe fell by some two-thirds between 1929 and 1932, while overall global trade declined by similar levels in the four years that the legislation was in effect."
You've hit the nail on the head. They "like Trump." They find him charismatic and entertaining. Democrat politicians are boring and starched. Politics is show business. Why can't the Democrats learn that?
Anyway, the two party system seems to breed extremes. I'd like to see ranked choice, same day, primaries, and abolishment of the slavers' electoral college.
Yes, we like charismatic candidates, but we don't run them.
In all sincerity, Jon Stewart is highly electable. More realistically, I think Pete Buttigieg would dominate the podcast circuit in a way that Kamala Harris dared not even try.
And in all sincerity, I think he'd be a good president too. He isn't interested in running, however, so the point is moot.
However, we must admit it is effective and it would do the democrats good to be more populist. It's just hard to be populist without resorting to emotional appeals, propaganda, fear mongering, misinformation, etc.
That's not what I'm saying. Populism represents an ideology about policy, i.e. do what the people want. My argument that "Politics is show business" is about the presentation of a campaign, not its content. One can use a persuasive presentation to market any policy viewpoint, populist or not.
Trump's campaign has alternately incoherent and destructive policy proposals, but the narrative he presents is exquisite (without being necessarily true): "A popular and successful businessman selflessly sacrifices his own comfortable lifestyle to bring common sense to politics by sweeping away greedy bureaucrats and wasteful institutions, along the way surviving assassination attempts, criminal charges, and a malign media campaign to discredit him." It's a great story, with heroes and villains. It's easy to get swept up in that story and want to be part of it. Certainly Trump's experience as a TV star has given him insights into crafting a narrative that engages with people.
The Democrats' have sensible policy but virtually no narrative. At best (as someone tweeted, can't find original source now) the Democrats are in the position of defending imperfect institutions. The Dems blow loads of money on ad buys, but what they need is writers to create a story that engages people emotionally.
Inflation is actually the increase in the money supply. The term is used wrong almost everywhere today.
Price indexes like the CPI are what measure the change in prices of a set of goods.
Inflation can influence prices since the supply of money changed, but they aren't directly linked.
Edit: getting plenty of requests for a source here, especially because you will find countless sources online using the price increase definition.
https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentar...
The word has multiple meanings. That’s monetary inflation. The primary meaning in use today is price inflation.
Inflation is not price increases. If that is the definition then the metric is effectively useless. Prices can increase for any number of reasons, looking only at price changes doesn't tell us anything meaningful or actionable.
It absolutely does when the correct definition is still used. Inflation is an increase in money supply, that's really all there is to it.
Your point is why the use of "inflation" to mean price increases is so meaningless. Prices change for any number of reasons and you need context. When "inflation" still means in increase in the money supply there is no context required to know what it means, though obviously that's not all the information you need to understand the economy.
You are wrong and that's why you are misunderstood. I would suggest just saying "increase in money supply" if you mean increase of money supply instead of using a term that means "a continuing rise in the general price level". That will make people understand what you mean.
[0] https://www.clevelandfed.org/center-for-inflation-research/i...
[1] https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/statistics/inflation
[2] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb-and-you/explainers/tell-me-mor...
That doesn't change the fact that the attempt to redefine it both co-opted the word and made it functionally useless. Prices change for all kinds of reasons. The amount of change alone is meaningless and using that meaning of the word allows economists today to play a lot of shell games with the numbers.
This is totally false. It dates to the inter-War period, specifically, to describe Weimar hyperinflation. (If you just look at money supply, it was bad. If you look at prices it was the disaster that it was.)
That's exactly how words get redefined.
Wittgenstien would like a word. Words always mean whatever the hell the speaker thinks they mean, which is always unverifiable. We should always endeavor to understand what people _think they mean_ instead of insisting on some (faulty) denotation.
The inflation argument is always frustrating. In a vacuum, inflating the _supply of money_ would delate the _price of money_ which inflates the _prices of goods_. Most people say "inflation" to mean the price of goods, but it does no good to insist that one definition means you can't use the word in other ways!
If you insist a cat is a dog, we're not playing a fun game - but that's up to me and up to you - Maybe someone in an undiscovered tribe doesn't know these words and wouldn't balk. If you say "dog" when you mean to insult someone, I might know what you're saying. But there is no mechanism to verify internal meaning.
I _strongly_ suggest reading some Wittgenstien if you're interested in this topic! If I say I speak Swedish fluently but refuse to ever utter a word, do I speak Swedish? Only our actions can vaguely point at our meaning. Language is a game we play with each other which does not and cannot communicate ultimate meaning. All we can do is agree or disagree to play games - animals dancing around a fire.
Each time the Romans debased their currency, they could be fairly confident that previous more valuable issues had a tendency to be hoarded if possible from that point on, and with a precise measure of the exact amount leaving the treasury could get a reasonably good estimate of how much was actually needed to be in general circulation. Perhaps the minimal amount to get by, perhaps not, maybe just depending on how generous Caesar felt at the time. And by offering a slightly more-than-fair exchange for the silver content, when issued, the amount that can afford to be hoarded can be deduced. While still turning a little bit of a "profit" from fractional percentages of silver that the general public can not measure accurately. Their central bankers were as shrewd as any existing today, equally as gifted mathematically as modern man can be.
Further inference can also be made about the resulting state of affairs by later following the private trading of recalled issues at "inflated" (previous) values.
If you were the one setting monetary policy risky enough that the chance for collapse was not as slim as it could be, you would want to know how close you were cutting it and the best way would probably be to get as good a handle on the money supply as you could, even if you could not gain full control. Nobody can anyway. But all effort always will be toward gaining more control.
This is basically the variable you could call _value of money_.
Not exactly the same as _price of money_, which is manipulable somewhat differently, but directly related to it in terms of _prices of goods_.
Which seems to be directly related to any type of inflation you can imagine :\
[0] Like the 1960's.
Do you have a source that this is the „correct“ definition? Wikipedia for example uses the definition you think is wrong, and specifically says that CPI measures inflation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation
I can't get deep links in wikipedia on my mobile browser for some reason, but here's the full page.
The "Terminology" section vaguely references the original Latin word and gives a few nods to when currency was tied to gold. It is a bit hand wavy, though when it talks about new gold supplies being found or later mentions when the cost of money changes, those are both related to the original (correct) definition. Finding more gold increased the money supply, which may change prices though it doesn't have to.
Toman history sometimes covers the idea well as they inflated the currency by minting more coins to increase supply. I can't find a great link at the moment that covers it well from that angle though, I'll try to come back here when I'm at my desk if I find a good link down that rabbit hole.
Am I out of touch? No it is all of modern economists who are wrong.jpg
If physicists decide to reuse the word "meter" for a unit of measuring volume does that mean anyone that uses it as a measure of distance is wrong? Wouldn't it make more sense to create a new term for the new need, a term that doesn't collide with centuries of use?
Perfect question!
In fact, the definition of "meter" has changed over time, and if you stick with the old definition, you'd be off by 0.2 millimeters:
https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/meter
Science changes as it needs to. (And the word "science" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here when we are discussing economics, aka the dismal science.)
In my book that's very similar to taking a distance measurement and reusing the word to instead measure a totally different concept, volume. Curious how its different though, I may just be tripping myself up here.
This link does at least acknowledge the original meaning of the word, though it does imply that's an outdated use in economics.
"It is during this period [the era between the mid-1830s and the Civil War] that the word inflation begins to emerge in the literature, not in reference to something that happens to prices, but as something that happens to a paper currency.7"
The footnote doesn't contain any reference.
It's a fool's errand to try to claim the original definition is the "right" or "only" definition at that point.
You've lost this semantic battle against the world, and it's honestly pretty exhausting to see you wasting effort trying to continue fighting a lost cause.
Monetary inflation is an important concept that is now almost entirely ignored. An increase in the cost of goods can be interesting, but its a second or third order effect of an extremely complicated system.
Price changes are meaningless without context and extremely difficult to understand with context. Money debasement, or inflation, is easy to understand and is a primary input to the system rather than a downstream effect.
Historically, monetary inflation and consumer inflation coincided (Supply of X goes up -> X is devalued -> consumables are now charged at higher X), and so distinguishing between the two wasn't particularly pertinent.
The Roman Empire's observations that debasement of their coins resulted in the increase in prices, meant that the original conception of inflation really was as a monetary phenomenon, not just that prices are going up.
It's really only a relatively recent phenomenon, from the early 20th century, that you had dual definitions trying to occupy the same word, although the concept that price inflation could deviate from monetary inflation probably was starting to be understood with the establishment of price indices in the 19th century.
Keynes arguing that prices could rise independent of the monetary supply post-Great Depression increased the focus on consumer inflation. It was around the 1970s where inflation more commonly came to consumer inflation in academia. 'Stagflation' of the 1970s is probably the tipping point in usage.
To conclude: it's not really wrong to use inflation to refer to monetary inflation, as it's the original usage, but considering consumer inflation as 'inflation' is definitely more in fashion (especially in the US).
Arguably, with a fiat currency where they can freely manipulate the money supply, they aren't wrong. That's a problem of fist in my opinion though, there are too many moving pieces and the data can be too easily manipulated to say whatever you want it to say.
But don't take it from me:
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back...
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/inflation.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explaine...
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/statistics/inflation
https://gisme.georgetown.edu/news/what-the-hell-is-inflation... (Inflation used to mean what you claim it means...but doesn't anymore)
https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/HighSchool/Inflation....
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/what-is-inflation
https://www.rba.gov.au/education/resources/explainers/inflat...
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/26/inflation-definition-evolut... (There is some argument that I may too be wrong, and inflation is coming to mean high prices, but when the DNC campaign was talking about low inflation, it was not referring to prices, but change in prices.)
Its extremely common to hear "inflation" used to describe price changes, but the number is then used in isolation. Prices change for countless reasons and without detailed context related to supply/demand, strength of the dollar, etc you have NP idea why prices changed. Maybe we printed trillions and prices went up because the supply of money went up Maybe prices increased because demand is outpacing supply. The response to those situations and economic sentiment should be wildly different, but the inflation number may be exactly the same.
Can you provide a single source for this?
I'm looking at textbooks from 25 years ago (Macroeconomics by Doepke Lehnert Sellgren) and they also contradict you. How far back are we supposed to look for your definition?
Heres a good source I just found as so many were looking for sources here.
I believe it was around the 1960s or 1970s when most economists started using "inflation" to mean price increases.
The history there is pretty fascinating, it was basically a reaction by modern monetary theorists who really had to redefine it for their economic system to make sense. A core goal in MMT is to have a fiat currency and controls in place to let you manipulate the money supply quickly in an attempt to move the economy in one direction or another. With the original definition, inflation is actually the tool used by MMT rather than an indicator of economic health.
Since most of the people arguing about the term care about a specific class of effect, the term grew to encompass that type of effect. As our understanding of the cause of that effect grew, the term shifted to primarily meaning the effect.
This all makes complete sense since most people don't care about the cause in itself but about how prices are changing.
I would hope that isn't true, an economy would function horribly if we only cared about the price change percentage and didn't care why it happened. If prices went up because most people had more money to spend you should act much differently than if prices went up because supply collapsed, for example.
That isn't what I said.
The causes of inflation to matter, but we generally only care about them because they cause inflation. We don't tend to care nearly as much about the causes in and of themselves.
Thus as the argument about how much inflation there should be progressed, it is perfectly natural that the term came to refer to the part of the debate we actually care (how fast prices rise) about rather than factor that can sometimes cause it.
And that would even include something like "As a poor, single mother working 2 jobs in Pennsylvania, how is my life better under the current administration?"
That would be my response, based on the past actions of republicans under Trump.
I believe your argument, though, is that those in power can redefine existing words to whatever best suits their current needs and we should all accept that and not consider why we had the original definition in the first place?
I'm sorry I just can't find a single source backing you up. All sources I find define inflation as increase in prices.
Here's a good one I just found as so many here were asking for sources.
My argument isn't with the fact that "inflation" is in fact being used to mean "price increase of goods." My issue is that economists co-opted the word at all and made it functionally useless, especially in isolation as it is often mentioned with no other context of why prices changed.
The use of "inflation" to mean money supply increase goes all the way back to the roman empire.
Someone did a study looking at magazine prices for example. They picked magazines because they almost always had prices printed on the cover and cover images are cataloged. I don't remember the exact numbers, but they found that the actual prices went up by a much higher rate than how the CPI calculated it because they were discounting price increase with a claim that quality got better. Meaning you may have seen the price double over time but the CPI only said it went up by 30% because you got more value from the newer issues.
As adastra22 points out: some authors define the term inflation primarily as the increase in the money supply (“monetary inflation”), others primarily as an increase in (consumer good) prices (“price inflation”).
At least in modern economic literature and usage, the term “inflation” (without modifier) is more often used to denote price inflation rather than monetary inflation.
The insistence that the term “inflation” ought be primarily rather used for “monetary inflation” goes back to at least Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, 1912:
“In theoretical investigation there is only one meaning that can rationally be attached to the expression inflation: an increase in the quantity of money (in the broader sense of the term, so as to include fiduciary media as well), that is not offset by a corresponding increase in the need for money (again in the broader sense of the term), so that a fall in the objective exchange-value of money must occur.”
Growing up, a close relation of mine was an economist, and certainly not of the Austrian school. As a teenager, I was basically ganged up on by a teacher and some kids when inflation was brought up in class. They seemingly had no concept of monetary inflation, and I was forced to swallow that it referred solely to prices going up. I obviously questioned him on this incident, and he outlined that the "prices are going up" phenomenon is price/consumer inflation, and that increases to the money supply are monetary inflation.
Historically, monetary inflation and consumer inflation coincided (Supply of X goes up -> X is devalued -> consumables are now charged at higher X), and so distinguishing between the two wasn't particularly pertinent.
The Roman Empire's observations that debasement of their coins resulted in the increase in prices, meant that the original conception of inflation really was as a monetary phenomenon, not just that prices are going up.
It's really only a relatively recent phenomenon, from the early 20th century, that you had dual definitions trying to occupy the same word, although the concept that price inflation could deviate from monetary inflation probably was starting to be understood with the establishment of price indices in the 19th century.
Keynes arguing that prices could rise independent of the monetary supply post-Great Depression increased the focus on consumer inflation. It was around the 1970s where inflation more commonly came to consumer inflation in academia. 'Stagflation' of the 1970s is probably the tipping point in usage.
To conclude: it's not really wrong to use inflation to refer to monetary inflation, as it's the original usage, but considering consumer inflation as 'inflation' is definitely more in fashion (especially in the US).
Unless I'm mistaken, I don't believe we can be sure of that. The economy is extremely complex, ferreting out the impact of any one intervention is nearly impossible.
On the surface it seems very unlikely to me that printing trillions in new money and giving it to banks, businesses, and directly to every citizen had no impact on prices. The supply of money increased dramatically and the cost of money (interest rates) was also extremely low.
Beyond my hunch though, I haven't found any data that has clearly isolated the inflation out of the equation to be able to show that the price increases weren't driven by the new money at all.
The every day person uses the culinary definition of tomato, and inflation means that those tomatoes cost more at Walmart.
Everyday people can use whatever definition they want. That doesn't mean economists, the Fed, etc should say "inflation" when they mean "price of goods".
Get it yet?
If price goes up then inflation, if price goes down then deflation. If value of good goes down and money supply stays the same, inflation.
Second, there's a huge difference between spending new money on specific policies for deliberate outcomes, and blindly dumping it into the financial sector to bid up the everything bubble as fuel for the Potemkin stock market and a handout to asset owners.
-1/3 economic/voters: we need better/different economics/policy
-1/3 cultists/far right christians/nationalists: trump is how we finally rise to power/right the nation
-1/3 lolz/nihilists: i hate everything; burn it all down
> Something is very wrong with the calculus being used by a great number of Americans
I'm sure a lot of people, especially independents who could have swung either way, voted for Trump precisely because they were sick of this attitude.
People are free to make partisan judgments against Trump or any other politician, but they will also suffer electoral consequences if those judgments are for the most part fact-free, as in your case.
Huh? I always thought this is common knowledge.
Second, I think it is fair to say that the causes of inflation are uncertain, even among mainstream PhD economists. The quantity theory hasn't been matching empirical data, and newer theories like the fiscal theory of the price level are gaining attention.
No, that is expansion of the monetary base. Inflation is an increase in price levels. If a country’s money supply contracts while prices rise that’s inflation.
The problem with the metallic definition is a country that loses half its territory and most of its reserves after losing a 19th-century war, thereby setting off double-digit price increases across its economy, doesn’t “inflate” from a monetary base perspective. Once we understood these concepts were separate, we segregated the terms. Insisting inflation refers exclusively to monetary-base expansion is phlogiston-theory stuff.
Inflation has a bad connotation historically due to the number of examples where increasing the money supply too quickly ruined economies and destroyed empires. MMT and Keynesian economics use the money supply as the primary tool for controlling the economy.
They may not like that "inflation" described the exact mechanism for the main tool of modern economics, but that doesn't make it wrong. The easily could have come up with a new term for an increase in the price of goods rather than co-opting an existing term. That strategy seems very much like a play driven by ulterior motives.
It isn't so much that we had to understand new concepts as it was they had to redefine terms to put their new game in a better light. That's also why they talk about price increases rather than currency devaluation or theft. Both would be accurate, but price changes sound more benign.
NO.
It is the cost of the goods. What people will pay.
Inflation Contributors:
30% money supply
30% was corporations raised prices specifically under cover of people blaming the government. This was actually listed on earnings calls, for profit.
30% supply chain shortages.
No. Even in the modern definition I'm arguing against here, this isn't right. The cost of goods is just a number, inflation in the CPI sense would be the rate of change of prices.
> Inflation Contributors:
30% money supply
30% was corporations raised prices specifically under cover of people blaming the government. This was actually listed on earnings calls, for profit.
30% supply chain shortages.
Where's the last 10%? And how do you come up with such specific numbers? Economies are extremely complex, I don't believe you could have untangled them so precisely or that the numbers behind it would be so evenly distributed.
You said Inflation was Money Supply, I said it was the cost of what you are buying. YES, technically it is the "change" in the cost of what you are buying. Congratulations. I assumed that was understood.
Percentages.
Nothing is exact. There are ranges, and really more than 3 factors. I was going off memory. Congratulations again on your discernment.
More ball park:
"" While pinpointing exact percentages for each contributing factor to inflation is complex and can vary significantly depending on the economic context, a breakdown of major contributors could include: high demand for goods and services (30-40%), supply chain disruptions (20-30%), labor cost increases (15-25%), rising energy prices (10-15%), government spending (5-10%), and currency devaluation (5-10%); however, these percentages should be interpreted as a general guide and not a definitive breakdown"
The point is, it is not Biden's spending, that is just another misleading right wing talking point. (lie)
You've linked to a privately written article ("The views authors express in Economic Commentary are theirs and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland ") by someone who worked for the Cleveland Fed, who blames printing currency for inflation. No doubt that debasement of the currency increases the nominal prices of things. But it's hard to square the idea that that's all there is to inflation when you consider that lots of countries had inflation after COVID. They didn't all coordinate on printing currency.
This isn't entirely accurate, either. An increase in the cost of living occurs when real wages fall (in other words, when workers paid less, in real terms (adjusted for inflation), for the same amount of work). In principle, inflation doesn't necessarily lead to an increase in the cost of living, although in practice usually it does.
Most people are not economists. All they know is they're spending more for less every month, and they don't like it.
The money supply idea has always been Austerian crackpot nonsense, intended to dissuade governments from investing in public services of all kinds because that's socialism, and we certainly don't want any of that.
In reality price rises are mostly driven by corporate profiteering, and sometimes - as in the oil crises of the 70s - by supply shocks.
It's not that simple. That might be how it is defined in economy textbook, but in practice, how do government agencies measure inflation? You have predefined basket of consumer goods and record their prices over time, and that price increase is reported as "inflation rate", and that's what gets reported in TV news.
And yet you somehow blame people for misunderstanding the term when the wrong definition is hammered into their brains all the time by all the mainstream media.
That's the clue that it's a signal. If every merchant is mandated to drop the cost of goods to 1$, the measure becomes meaningless for this purpose, while people continue to trade more and more for the same amount of goods. The published values themselves are incidental and barter normalizes, detached from the edge effects, as the underlying cause remains.
https://search.brave.com/search?q=inflation+origin&source=de...
The Iraq 91 war literally ended the USSR, which dissolved a few months later because of soaring prices and economical failures. The Ukraine war might end up pushing the US into a second tier country, especially since Trump brings Musk and RFK into the government, who are literal morons when it comes to managing anything.
Look at the history and you will see Americans want someone at least somewhat charismatic as their leader.
Hilary and Harris have less charisma than my cat. They were simply unelectable.
A choice with a slightly more charismatic person and we would see different results in my opinion
Furthermore, and sadly in my opinion, I am not convinced that Americans are ready for a female president. Give it another 20-30 years
He seems like a used car salesman to me...
Harris on the other hand is like an EU Bureaucrat.
Anyway. That’s my take, doesn’t mean I’m right.
It really does matter.
We do our best stuff when the hot mean ones listen to the ones with smart ideas.
The bigger part, amongst other things, Harris is part of the current administration, people are not happy about how things are going, or how much their groceries cost. People are not happy to get censored or called nazi's for having different opinions. When asked on a left-leaning show "The View" with people all on her side, what she would change about the last 4 years, she answered, "there is not a thing that comes to mind".
Charisma didn't kill her, not being able to ask layup questions killed her. The American people are not as dumb as the Harris voters are now screaming about on Reddit/TikTok/X, the American people want to know what their president is going to do to change their lives. Trump is a sociopath, again amongst other things, but he is very very clear about where he stands on things and what he's planning on doing.
I don't know if you'll agree with this, but I actually think that one of Trump's gifts, or maybe his campaigns gifts seems to be to convince everyone they're going to get what they want, and is in fact not very very clear where he stands on things. He's sort of emotionally clear (tarriffs and illegal immigration)
But I also think...
If you ask a blue collar worker, they'll tell you Trump is pro-union If you ask a business owner they'll say he's anti-union. If you ask someone on the ACA, they'll tell you he'll protect it, if you ask a fiscal conservative, they'll tell you he'll abolish it. If you ask a woman, he'll keep abortion with the states. If you ask a catholic, he'll abolish abortion. He's friends to muslims but will also deport them.
He's the friend to the blue collar worker, enemy of the elites, but also friend to billionaires willing to work with him. I think this is why Trump would have beaten Sanders. Sanders would have never gotten the support of the business class, and if he did it would have eroded his support with his base, Trump is somehow immune to that.
But saying Trump was more charismatic than Harris, your cat, or the shit I took this morning is certainly a divisive opinion at least.
I've encountered farts which cleared a room and were still more "charismatic" than Trump according to 9 out of 10 people exposed to both.
I said, if the Democrats have chosen someone more charismatic than Harris, they would have won.
Well.. Trump was elected. If you're not saying Trump is more charismatic then this all seems to contradict your point that charisma is necessary for electibility.
You are making a logical jump there. Hillary and Harris are Democrats. Trump is Republican. Based on logic, just because Trump won doesn't automatically make him more charismatic, as there are other factors that play role.
So logically you cannot assert that this is true; Trump winning <==> Trump more charismatic
Republicans don't need charisma: if the Democratic candidate isn't charismatic enough, they'll instead vote for whatever pile of shit the GOP puts on the ticket.
The problem is the voters.
She was in primaries some time ago and gain less than 10% votes.
What was their failure here? The failure to explain to the economically illiterate that while inflation is now about where it was prior to covid that prices won't be going down (unless there's some sort of major recession leading to deflation)?
Blaming Trump for printing money when you voted on it, too, is a bad strategy.
Thinking you're always smarter than the electorate is never a way to win elections. fixing inflation is pretty easy. Telling people how you're going to do that is pretty easy.
Not doing it because you think people are too stupid to understand it is why you lost. Harris never had a plan to fix anything and it was obvious to voters. Its funny you think this way when Trump swept all the battleground states - states Biden won in 2020. Were you saying the same thing about THOSE areas too then?
I somehow doubt it.
Biden stimulus was the one that
a) Ignited demand > Supply
b) provided no incentives for people to go back to work (Biden also had extended mortgage, rent, loan payment programs) which exacerbated inflation
Must have been a pretty fast 10mph.
loose monetary policy was the right thing to do after the COVID downward economic shock. But not extending it over and over, and that's when/why the inflation kicked in.
One, that last round of stimulus. Two, not agreeing to cutting spending when prices continued going up. Three, not massively greenlighting permitting around new energy and fossil fuels to bring energy prices into a deflationary stance. (Note: this is Monday-morning QB’ing from me.)
The whole pattern feels like a repeat of the country using Democrats to clean up messes (in this case, the mess was more Covid's than Republicans'), at which point they kick out the Democrats again. I don't think another massive tax cut (or extension of the last one) is a good idea.
Yes, this is likely what would have happened. And in that case the Dems would still lose because people would be upset about the high unemployment.
Yes, but you can target where that unemployment goes.
Democrats were probably too fair in distributing the pain. (As well as the fruits. Both the IRA and CHIPS Acts massively invested in counties that would have always voted Republican. That boosted turnout in an adversarial way.)
Of course what we need to be doing is halting all burning of fossil fuels ASAP, but that would be a losing electoral strategy. Who cares about the looming climate disaster, we need cheap gas...
The rest, and the part communicated to voters, is yet another fake issue. It’s exhausting.
>But what a fool believes, he sees
>No wise man has the power to reason away
>What seems to be
>Is always better than nothing
>Than nothing at all
By failing to meet the economically illiterate at their level, the DNC campaign looked completely oblivious to those they were trying to help.
DNC forgot that in polls, the American electorate prefers a bigger 1/4 lb hamburger to the smaller 1/3 lb one.
You can't just educate people in a campaign that the President doesn't cause inflation, when it's the result of a global pandemic. They just don't listen and don't care. The different campaign messages get tested among focus groups. The ones that try to teach economics or explain inflation perform terribly.
This isn't a failure of Democrats at all. This is just pure economic ignorance among voters.
If the Dems don't/won't/can't account for it by changing their messaging, devising better or more readily understood platforms, then it is on them. You have to meet people where they are, not where you think they should be.
That's what's so sad. The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. The Republican campaign was a disaster in execution, but they won anyway.
The message of this election isn't that Democrats did something wrong. It's that they did everything right, and a majority of voters simply still don't care. They don't think the insurrection mattered, and they think Trump will fix inflation because he's a strong businessman. And they don't listen to anyone who says otherwise.
I don't see anything the Dems could have done about that. You can't force people to listen, you can't force people to understand economics. That's not something campaigns can do.
Objectively untrue; Harris lost.
>You can't force people to understand economics
You're correct. So you have to reformat the message. The Dems failed to do this. I can tell you have never been a teacher: teachers are forever having to change their messaging because different people understand in different ways.
This is absolutely not the model for candidate<->electorate relationships in any way. If anything, the elector(ate) wants the candidate to simply tell them things that confirm what they think they already know.
You're missing the critical point: it's not about captive, it's just that this helps with the critical point, which is an expectation of learning taking place, rather than worldviews/prejudices confirmed.
Yeah, sometimes if you play by the rules you lose.
> So you have to reformat the message.
They did, and it didnt matter.
The argument here is essentially: 1) IF the dems communicated correctly, they would have won 2) They did, and it didnt matter. 3) If they had communicated correctly they would have won.
Correct communication here is a place holder for winning.
Consider the many things the Dems did pull off, including Biden dropping out, and the massive massive outreach and funding they used to get the message out.
Consider that Trump is definitionally reprehensible, as just a human being, forget the standards America used to have as a presidential candidate. Seriously - tell me you think that Trump <the person> is actually what you want in a Republican candidate. Every single time, Trump supporters have to resort to some variant of "he didn't really mean that", to defend him.
There is FAR more incorrect in Dem electioneering than just communication. I think the fundamentals of how elections are held have changed. You dont really need policy any more.
From the memorable “grab them by the pussy”, to fabricating stuff about the draft recently.
“ She’s already talking about bringing back the draft. She wants to bring back the draft, and draft your child, and put them in a war that should never have happened.”
The only twisting here is when people try to ignore what he is saying and pretend he meant something benign.
I would fault the Democratic party platform itself, not the campaign. It's valid to say the campaign was executed well and that the failure was due to disagreement with the Democrat party line.
Trump has a policy platform they agree with more -- that's something that is not easily overcome by how the campaigns are run.
E.g. "secure the border". Trump fought to build a wall during his first term. To voters who want a more secure border, that speaks louder than anything either candidate can say (or not say) during their campaigns about what they will or won't do.
She had 0 counties where she outperformed 2020 biden.
People were actively deceived along the way. Do you remember that intially Yellen (and Powell together) called the inflation "not broad enough to be considered inflation", then called it "transitory" and justified printing so much money all the way into 7% inflation. At 3% PCE, Powell said everybody to relax, that nobody should doubt they will use every tool they have to fight inflation. Bostic at 2% PCE said he is not worried, he welcomes higher inflation, approaching 4% inflation would be cause of concern and would require action. Action that never came. They just lied and misinformed the people for years. People listened to this, it was all over the media. It's wrong to suggest people didn't listen.
Do you remember after 5 years of review they came up with symmetric inflation target of 2% and they instantly abandoned it because that would require lower inflation for decades to come. And nobody in media questioned it, they said people "misunderstood the target".
They don't want to educate people about the economy, they want people as stupid as possible.
The US fared better than almost industrialized nation post-pandemic. Our inflation is currently under control, unemployment is low, wages are rising. I have a hard time believing that anyone could have handled a hard situation better than the Biden administration. Meanwhile, Trump's stated economic policies (no income tax, make it up with tariffs) are unequivocally bad ideas that would make the prices paid by most Americans far far far higher than what they're paying today.
The overlap between "People who know Jerome Powell and think he did a bad job" and "People who think Trump's fiscal platform will be good for the average American" is close to zero people.
...but they are very good memes, as in units of information that compete for attention. I think we are now, post-2016, in the social media era of elections, where policy content matters far less than policy vibes.
But when you have the VP is running for the office that her boss has just occupied for the last four years, the whole point of the VP running is to continue what they started - not suddenly say you would do a bunch of stuff differently when YOU were riding shotgun on the poor economy, inflation, immigration and crime.
Harris was asked repeatedly what she would do differently and said "nothing". She was a horrific candidate. She couldn't speak to voters without a teleprompter, she was a cringe worthy public speaker, she was never on message and always reverted back to, "Well Donald Trump did this and that." which never connected with voters.
She also had a front row seat to Biden's mental decline and repeatedly went in front of the media and defended him to the very end when he was removed and she replaced him. Harris was the same person who got zero financial support from democrats during the 2020 campaign, had to drop out and didn't even make the primaries because of the lack of support from voters.
If you were paying attention, this was completely predictable.
By contrast, Trump was on message, had a plan, left all of his divisive rhetoric at the door. He connected with voters, reached across the aisle and formed a coalition with RFK, Gabbards and Musk. He went on podcasts to reach younger voters. Anybody else see Vance on the Theo Von podcast? He campaigned relentlessly in the key battleground states, he did tons of impromptu interviews.
There's a reason he's projected to get 300+ electoral votes AND win the popular vote and nothing in your comment would seem to understand why.
Take a look at the markets today. Take a look at the price of Bitcoin right now.
The country wanted significant change and they voted that way.
This is when I knew you were screwing with us.
So, put differently, you're saying that Democrats did not have Product-Market fit, while the Republicans did. Yes?
polls had 'country on the wrong path' at ~75%
Kamala Harris wouldn't break from biden on anything, even when she was begged by the media to do it several times over several days.
That's just one example of dumb shit the dnc/kamala did.
You can’t appeal to voters like this apart from not being the person in charge.
I’m willing to put money down right now that the next president is a Democrat. Not by virtue of messaging or campaigning but just because people will still be suffering and the dems will be the opposite of the status quo.
This observation admittedly provides little actionable for democrats in the near-term. But one strategy that demonstrably works is picking demographics and pushing media at them that creates a demand for solutions to issues they didn’t previously think existed (and need not necessarily exist). Look at e.g. the molding and elevation of the modern pro-life movement for an early example, or at their entire current platform, very nearly, for a bunch more-recent ones.
I have no love for Democrats but it's unclear to me that there's really anything they could have done. The common wisdom in the past had been that Trump is some kind of liability for Republicans, but at every turn he has been underestimated and I question that assumption.
To me Trump looks like a true master of his craft, and there is no line of carefully triangulated messaging that will resonate more with typical Americans than his stream of vitriol and lies.
Don't choose such a unpopular candidate as Kamala. Have a primary instead of appointing someone.
There are a plethora of reasons she's unpopular, she can's string two coherent sentences together without a teleprompter, she cackles at inappropriate times, she won't talk to anyone off the cuff, she doesn't give straight answers on policy questions thus the word salad meme, she fumbles critical questions like what would you do different in the last 3 years, what a terrible answer...
What I think I'm reading here is that you feel like Trump is a better public speaker than Harris.
Assuming that this is a genuinely held belief that you have, I suggest that you consider that perhaps this is very subjective.
the gaza issue also probably didnt win any points in pennsylvania etc
It's incorrect to characterize this as "pure economic ignorance among voters"
The 80mph is what got us to inflation town. If someone looks at 80mph and 10mph and says "I'll elect the 80mph guy because 10mph is irresponsible" then yeah, I'm pretty comfortable characterizing that as pure economic ignorance.
I think the problem in voters eyes is that Biden did not stop after this. He pushed through multiple trillion dollar bills on top of it.
I'm not saying I agree with that stance, but calling the $4T Trump's doing is a really misleading. It was not part of his economic agenda at all.
Then why did he make the IRS reprint COVID relief checks so he could add his name to them?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/inside-the-disaster-trumps-si...
It's not the voters job to come to a party, it's the party's obligation to figure out how to appeal to voters. The dems chose to tell people who are suffering that 'the economy is great, this is what we think a good economy looks like and we are patting ourselves on the back for it'. To voters that are suffering that seems like 'our version of good doesn't GAF about you'. Not a great message. You could have the best economics professors/communicators in the world explaining it, people still aren't voting for that.
Harris didn't run even a center-left campaign, she pushed center-right except on a few issues at the margins and it was late in the game on that front.
Americans generally favor more liberal policies economically, like stronger labor rights, universal healthcare, student debt cancellation etc. There was a lot to offer voters of all stripes there.
I think too many Democrats counted on a huge pro abortion turn out of women specifically and that translating into democratic votes, which, even to my surprise, it did not.
Harris did nothing to distance herself from being strongly associated with that liberal cohort. Regarding social policy and ideology, she came off as being far-left to the average conservative.
1. The big media is in the hands of a select few (tech) oligarchs. Look for the accelerationists there.
2. Take notice of what happened at the WaPo. Bezos fell on his knees for Trump, fearful of having his other business interests been killed.
2. I mean: no reasonable platforms. The false balance in the New York Times is below the most horrible standard you can get in journalism. New York Times Pitchbot exists for a reason.
3. In the US the press is allowed to spread fake news. Some media make a living of it. Others (see 2) try to give a neutral impression by presenting false balance
4. The serious, damaging analysis will get moved below the fold, if there is one.
==> Now you have gotten a system where the populace doesn´t even get informed anymore, so no serious debate is possible.
==> The Dems are not even able to have their own policies, they have to lean deeply right to stay not too much out of touch of what is presented as normal discourse in the media.
If the US slips further from Anocracy to Autocracy, it will be 1) because the press gave the autocrats the nod and 2) some powerful captains of industry were on board, 3) and they were helped by radicalized far right christianity (Heritage Foundation et ali.).
An echo of Weimar.
I was mostly just pointing g out ghat there is a stance/platform that could combat right wing populism.
Sure they would love to use a reasonable platform with broad reach, but they haven´t. Relevant media are heavenly partitioned in buckets of insane "Infotainment Corp" and "Sane Washing Corp".
There is simply no room for truth if you give non-truth equal space. Non-truth can be made as entertaining as possible, sucking out all oxygen for truth.
That is what Americans allowed to happen over the decades, and the consequences are getting more grim every election.
It is not even about Trump.
In a way, it is a bit of an oddity that there has been trust in journalism in recent decades - some individual acts like publishing whistleblower accounts or corruption have lead to an outsized perception of it being for the public good.
Meanwhile, we have seen again and again - particularly in Murdoch owned properties - that the interests of commercial media do not align with what we consider the common good; ie
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies
Yet we do nothing about it in particular (Australia and the US). Then we end up back here, wondering why groups in the electorate have wildly different perceptions
> have lead to an outsized perception of it being for the public good.
Exactly!
> Yet we do nothing about it in particular (Australia and the US).
Right.
First step: getting the public to know what the role of the Fourth Estate is in a democracy.
Second step: getting the public to know that they currently live in absurd infotainment landscape, getting them to understand how their media works.
Third step: getting the public to understand the importance of democracy.
Fourth step: holding media outlets accountable for misinformation.
The big danger for those in the know is that they get cynical. Then you have recreated the Soviet/Putin ecosystem, and the oligarchs have free reign. America is inching far closer to that, but in the mind of Americans "this can't happen here".
1) the Democrat party hates economic populism. Bernie would have to hijack the party like Trump did. But where Trump has many allies in positions of power, Bernie has none.
2) the populist rhetoric that people like the most is false. Grocery prices aren't high because supermarkets suddenly got greedy. Worker exploitation isn't why billionaires exist.
I also don't think it's good strategy blame a minority group for all the problems in the country. Billionaires are not a protected minority obviously, but when you stoke anger against one group it can easily result in a different group getting unjustly targeted (Mexicans, trans people, etc). We don't need any more of that and politics of hate and resentment isn't the way forward.
Or - if you accept this as the obvious bullshit that it is - then all that money is not a fair compensation for anything, but rather the consequence of being in a position of economic power that makes it possible to extract wealth from the economy in one way or another. How exactly said extraction is done is immaterial - if the wealth is unearned, it means that it was taken from someone else, since someone ultimately did the work necessary to create it.
Advocate for higher taxes if you wish, but acknowledge that economics are not a zero-sum game and propose an alternative to savvy investment, unless you simply want to foment division or to upend modern capitalism entirely.
However, I do dispute that wealth extraction is the primary source of wealth for the wealthy. Just like an engineer can save 100k in monthly AWS charges with 15 minutes of optimization work a good capital allocator can transform pointless labor that produces little to no value into labor that benefits society. The optimization process is the same: the engineer saves clock cycles and the capital allocator saves labor hours.
Labor is necessary ingredient for wealth, but labor by itself produces nothing. That's why humanity has lived in mud huts for eons, despite working every waking hour.
When people have a wrong perception (i.e. that Biden did poorly on the economy) you cannot contradict them or lecture them. That's a losing strategy. But if you don't correct them they will continue to blame Biden. That also loses.
The border/immigration suffers from similar perception problems. When people believe that dems are shuttling illegals to swing states in order to steal the election, how can you respond to that? Or to claims about illegals eating cats and dogs? Trump is very effective at messaging that invokes strong emotions.
People will forget about grocery prices and the border once Trump is in office. Trump will shout things and maybe do a few publicity stunts and that's enough to appease people. The actual reality matters little.
Lowering govt spending PLUS raising taxes would have been the way.
"Reducing prices" means deflation, which doesn't happen outside of a depression. Triggering a depression intentionally is absolutely bonkers in terms of policy.
Of course, this is tough, which is why it would never be done. And that's why you lose elections. If a president won't do it, what makes anyone think that a cowardly congress would ?
Plus , the usual suspects of real estate inflation are urban centers with heavy if not complete 1-party control for years. So any attempt at national policy has no credibility when local policy -which is already in control- continues to ignore the problem.
Contrast this with Trump - say what you will, he is willing to take flack to do things that are very unpopular, and that's what makes him stand out. Remember the early innings on the border wall ? Walking out of Kyoto ? The collective meltdown.
Exactly.
They did!
> A lot of that is due to short supply, so build more houses (Harris mentioned this in her plan, but I don't think it connected).
That was a main part of her platform. And of course it was connected. That was the entire point!
This is what infuriates me. People aren't even listening to what she's campaigning on.
This entire thread is ripe with it; hundreds of suggestions about what policy would have worked, what she SHOULD have focused on.
It doesn't matter. It's obvious when you really just embrace it: she should have lied her ass off. Blatantly. Overly simply obvious lies.
"I will fix the economy. I will triple your paycheck and lower prices at the grocery store. I will half the cost of a house. Free college for everyone. 5x the military budget"
Why not? If people don't listen to the truth and vote instead for the man who tells very nearly EXCLUSIVELY lies then what is there to lose?
is not a winning message in the US. Dems should have seen people are suffering and instead of giving them economic data given them hope (the Republicans at least offered some 'other' to blame/direct anger at). Most Americans use food as their comfort/escape. They can no longer even afford that. Personally, I think the Democrats need to run on ending zero hour jobs and $1 cheeseburgers.
Zero hour jobs are ones where people have to have 1 or more jobs that don't give you a schedule until the start of the week, don't guaranty you any hours (other than that you will get less than 36), don't give benefits. It allows companies to cut to the bone (which overworks people) knowing that if the company needs more hours they will just push up the hours later in the week (which wreaks havoc on peoples lives because these people often need to work/juggle hours at two jobs). Companies should have to staff like they used to with actual jobs and not treat/schedule people like EC2 instance. At the least the government shouldn't count zero hour jobs as 'employment' in the traditional sense. They are not. They are human EC2 instances and that is a very stressful(harmful) way to live.
This old school form of campaigning on issues and policy are just redundant in this day and age.
Trump just showed us the speed of the current media cycle. Its minutes or hours. Democrats and all "rational" styles of electioneering on "issues" and "policy" are doomed to fail agains Trump style content. Trump can insult or harm so many voting groups in a day, that people are completely exhausted and then just blank it out.
If Biden did the same thing, it would result in the same electoral outcome, it would not cost the dems any more votes. People would just be exhausted by Biden, and then blank him out too. Then it would be whatever default placeholder people like to think about when they think "Presidential candidate", and would then vote without having to worry about what they were doing.
Its honestly insanely amazing. Its like we have been doing politics wrong since the Greeks.
Policy Vibes > Policy Content
No it isn't. In the U.S., we were consciously doing it wrong because the Greek system failed for the specific reasons that are currently being discussed. The democracy broke down to the issue of personality coalesced voting blocs, that once delegated to, used the levers of power to make the task of holding onto that power easier. There was a reason the Electoral College was designed in to the American System, and there was a reason National political parties were specifically warned against by the Early Founders, and it was because down that road was the path to repeating the Greek's mistakes.
The Faithless Elector was a feature, not a bug.
>Policy Vibes > Policy Content Is specifically the death knell of a political system.
Could you elaborate more ? Are you talking about demagogues and oligarchy? My Greek history is weak.
Quick things to stash for later for brushing up on those subjects in particular:
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/unity/2021/04/07/civics-101-keep-...
https://www.greece-is.com/learning-from-the-demagogues-of-an...
The problems of today are not novel. Regrettably, we don't do the best job in grinding this info in within the traditional civics education of about a year in the teenage years. The demagogues in particular were a flavor of politician that found their stride "working" the lower parts of the Athenian democracy. The periods in which they were most active were noted for being spikes in instability of the Athenian democracy; even if paired with and consented to by the masses. The context and history of those times were used as foundations for the architecture of the U.S. system of government, in which much of the thinking behind why things were structured in the ways they were arr documented in the Federalist Papers.
The Federalist papers, specifically No. 10 is where Madison touches on the ills of faction, and the inevitable challenge it presents in a government first and foremost concerned with the securing of Liberty. He puts it far better than I. If you read nothing else in the spirit of a civically inclined individual. I beseech you to take the time to peruse the Federalist Papers; hell, hit up the anti-federalist papers too. Be well-rounded! They didn't enter building the foundation of the U.S. blind, neither should we! Start here:
https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10
I strongly recommend sticking with copies maintained by the Library of Congress. It can be found elsewhere, but I've run into things online claiming to be documents written by the Founders where the biblio seemed to check out, but the content was massively doctored.
I will include the following excerpts from #10 though; Madison discusses the problem of faction presents to systems of governance specifically applied to the task of preservation of Liberty:
>From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
[TL;DR: Democracies are rife with an excess of sacrificing the individual to the whims of the majority. There is no real check to ensure that the smaller party can be secure in their liberty against a sufficiently motivated quorum. The specific breed of politician here, is indeed, a reference to the demagogues]
A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.
The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.
[TL;DR] A republic is seen as desirable to democracy due to the quality through which by focusing the duty of operating the governmental function through those with a predisposition or knack for it, it's possible to craft an institutional corpus that can cut through the noise as it were, and get down to the essence of the public good. This theme reoccurs multiple times in the civic architecture of the U.S. The Jury->Judge, the House->the Senate. Each function taking a broad sentiment, then making it some smaller groups entire job to wring out the general vibe to the specific end that best serves the public good. A danger is recognized, however, in that this dynamic admits the chance of danger when this institutional arrangement is co-opted by groups sufficiently motivated and coordinated to attain these levers of power, and employ them to their own ends.
Madison continues enumerating how at least, the republic offers a chance at mitigation of this danger through sufficient diligence on the part of the electorate being on guard against these types of perfidious politician. Tragically, this mechanism doesn't tangibly exist today. The political parties we have today are the embodyment of the supporting institutions/collusive actors that make it possible for perfidious, well-heeled individuals to seize the seats of power rather than being organically elevated to such positions by the collective wisdom embodied in their localities. The Party tells the locality eho to vote for, not the other way around. The Democratic Party (DNC in particular), is a particularly egregious example of this with their reliance on Superdelegates.
Despite the Papers being written in a time long before the Internet ended up supercharging our ability to coordinate over vast distances, where the fastest that info was going to propogate was as a packet by train or horse; much of what they lay out is still eerily prescient today.
If ever you have spare time, the history around these documents is well worth your time.
Hey, you can ignore the steps I’m working through below to articulate my conjecture.
Suffice to say it focuses on whether modern variables make certain assumptions anachronisms, leading to a failure of the edifice.
—————
It looks like one variable was a plurality of thought.
I feel, but don’t have the exact dots to link together, that this is a placeholder for quality of thought.
Quality here being a function of the time taken to apply logic and reason on a set of facts up their logical conclusion.
Since the advent of cable and TV, the velocity has increased.
However so has the reason numbing quality of the information diet.
This is to a degree motivated reasoning from my end, since I am thinking about how individual reason is now secondary to the information being fed into the larger polity.
That is where Journalism should come into play. But popular media have a business model of spreading fakes, being outright partisan and are mostly driven by clicks rage and engagement. That is what a Chaos Actor like Trump provides. To see what is happening it is more insightful to look what forces are behind Trump.
In the US media landscape, it is not possible to have a genuine debate. Every hour there is new nonsense that will kill of any "boring" news.
Not as a matter of nature. But as a betrayal of democracy by the Fourth Estate, opening the door for anti-democrats.
It is a deliberate choice, helped by self-delusion and exceptionalism. It is painful to watch a society marching to where we know where the end is.
Fox came on the scene, and it worked as a business. In the end that means it gets funding, and is the competitive business model.
Other media orgnizations had to deal with all sorts of other barriers such as editorial standards etc.
I will add though, that Fox probably survived competition because it had such a close link to the Republican party. I wonder what would have happend if it were a more active market.
Actually scratch that - I remembered the issue with this market. Once we started having conglomerates of a certain size, acquisitions and the consolidation of media assets and newspapers was inveitable.
So even if there were other conservative view points, it would eventually be absorbed by "Fox" or whatever dominant entity in the market.
----
I would like to blame Rupert Murdoch, but I am beginning to see that the man just found a chink in the armor of how society organized its media systems, and exploited it.
1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073395
If you go to https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073413#0 and click Edit Graph, then Add Line (at the top) then add LNU02073395 (Foreign Born dataset) and then export to CSV it's relatively clear that in 2007-01-01 (start of dataset) at 18.3% of jobs were held by foreign born individuals, and by 2024-10-01 (end of dataset) it was 23.7%. When reviewing the slope of the data, it's not tied to the month of choice, there is a relatively clear linear trend over time. Jobs as a % are being taken from native born Americans.
If we look into census data at https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/acsbr... we see that as of 2022, 13.9% of the US population was foreign born. If 13.9% of the population hold 22.5% (2022-12-01 data from the fed) of the jobs, I can see why some people may have a concern there. Furthermore, if we look at sources of immigration in the census data, we see that roughly 50% come from Latin America, which has the highest percentage (79.7%) of individuals in working age (18-64) of which 82.8% do not have a bachelors degree of higher. Also, in support of the previous paragraph, the census data shows us that as of 2022, 66.9% of foreign born individuals held a job vs 62.9% native born.
I see a very persuasive argument for "they took our jobs" here.
In practice, my guess is that it's much more complex than that, but I do see how the raw numbers support the argument.
"Immigrants are coming at a rate that increases their portion of the population and thus their portion of jobs" which squares pretty directly with the "they took our jobs" arguments?
I am not arguing against immigration in any way (I am both an immigrant and a refugee), but I do recognize why someone who sees this on the ground feels the way they do.
Swing and miss. We will have the record high ratio of housing per capita within the next 2-3 years. We're WAY above 1980-s, and only slightly below the 2006 levels.
But you're actually getting closer to the truth: economic forces are pushing people to move into ever-densifying urban areas, that simply will NEVER have low housing prices. And it's a nearly zero-sum game, so every unhappy worker in a tiny flat paying 40% of their salary in rent, means that there's a new abandoned house somewhere in Iowa.
This in turn makes people in Iowa poorer, and they start hating the city population.
Building more houses in big cities will NOT solve this. We need a concerted push to revive smaller cities, by mandating remote work where possible. Another alternative is taxing the dense office space.
This isn't a 1960s 4.1% unemployment good economy. And it's no way to live. You are forced into a state where are you constantly reacting out of stress, not really living. You can't blame those people for not understanding the nuance of your 'the economy is great, this is what good looks like'. It's not fair to call them bad/dumb people because of it. They are good people struggling out here in the trenches.
Gangs and fringe movements thrive off taking in the rejected.
Until Democrats can find a way to reach the opposition in a way that isn't condescending they will continue to lose and drive away voters. The so called deplorable will grow.
They need to design, build, and walk over the bridge - patiently, despite all the chaos and negativity.
If they continue to do the same thing and treat their fellows as idiots and expecting different results..is delusional and insane.
Their fellows are idiots and fools.
I know it's not a winning strategy to point this out. But it doesn't stop it being true.
A lesson in how shitty delivery can deliver exactly the opposite of the literal message you’re conveying.
The perception that Democrats are smug and condescending have certainly hurt them. But that perception is mostly the result of relentless Republican messaging. Tim Walz is a down-to-earth governor of Minnesota who treats everybody with respect. He's a lot less condescending than JD Vance. But the perception of Democrats hating regular people persists.
This lunatic, during the debate with JD Vance, volunteered that he didn't believe the First Amendment protected "hate speech" even before Vance could finish accusing him of that. I had previously given him the benefit of the doubt over that MSNBC clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8ns76RCmWs) where he stated:
> There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech and especially around our democracy
Thinking that perhaps Walz just meant social media companies ought to censor "hate speech" and misinformation for the greater good, but during that debate, he left no doubt that he thinks "hate speech" isn't protected. And of course the Tim Walzes of the country want to be the arbiters of what is and isn't "hate speech."
The media insisted on comparing him to Trump or Bolsonaro for years, but if you actually listen to what he says, he sounds moderate social democrat. Go figure what the media is doing while he speaks...
I compare Argentina's election to buying a car. One of the candidates basically ruled the country for 18 months, got inflation over triple digits annually, the exchange rate went to infinite, among other economic and administrative mishaps.
It's kind like test driving a car where it's engine overheats, the radiator explodes, and basically falls apart.
Your choices then become either buy the thing you know is broken and doesn't work, or buy the other new mystery thing which says it's going to work though you haven't tested it.
It's basically a known bad versus an unknown, yet still 44% of people voted for the broken car.
Milei so far has been doing great economically and getting inflation down, we'll see how it goes next year.
They made the same exact mistake in 2016 and from what I can observe in this thread and similar ones in other forums, the lesson has not been learned. They will keep their smug ideological superiority complex, disdain those who dare to disagree with them and thus will continue to disenfranchise a large swath of the population.
For instance, they made protecting women’s rights a big part of their campaign when most states already had on their ballot laws to protect women’s rights in their constitution. Or they had previously passed laws since roe v wade was overturned.
You want to win? Try doing some basic research into what is going to matter to the people come Election Day.
Can we blame them for thinking they had already won given their opponent? Yes. Because that very well may have been a contributing factor to oversights like these.
What did Harris herself say? Not much; she barely had any time.
There was one voice within the Democratic Party whose communication about this was good: Bernie Sanders.
The problem is that people remember the "old" prices, not the "old" paychecks.
It has been said that people see wage increases as something they have a right too (periodically, anyway) but see inflation as something imposed by a 3rd party with bad intent.
When the gaslighting failed to achieve the desired effect (make everyone believe their grocery bill is half of what it actually is) - then they just changed the message to "those darn greedy mega corporations are price gouging you!".
The citizens of this country gave a large middle finger to the gaslighting and bullshittery that was the economic messaging coming from the Biden-Harris administration - and then when Harris failed to enumerate how her administration would be different than the existing one... she was doomed.
It is about the economy.
The words chosen by the Harris campaign, and the platforms on which they were spoken, left 15M - 20M people at home, and flipped a bunch more from D to R.
Average voter: I can't afford groceries at the store. Inflation sucks.
Response: Actually, here is the correct definition of "inflation." As you can see from the correct definition, inflation rates are now good! Hopefully this helps you understand why things will never get better.
What the average voter hears: I can't afford groceries. Your solution to this problem is to reframe the current situation as "good." I still can't afford groceries.
Average: I can't afford groceries at the store. Inflation sucks.
Response: Well, inflation plays a part, but grocery stores are still recording record profits despite inflation.
Average: Are you suggesting grocery stores shouldn't make as much money as they can? Free market hater! Communist!
1. Try the Trump/populist playbook on the topic: identify the problem, empathize, be mad, let them vent, but don't really focus on a solution.
2. Advocate austerity as a solution to inflation. Might be less economically ideal, but more politically viable.
edit to add: iow, Harris and other Dems could have thrown Biden under the bus a bit to try to avoid some of the blame. It's cold, and Biden directed an actually decent response to the supply-shock-driven inflation, but it'd be a kind of shrewdness like getting Biden to drop out that might have helped.
And ideally put the blame on people who don't have any/much political or economic power within the country, like immigrants. Us vs them. "If we just get rid of 'them' everything will be fine"
How, exactly?
The biggest causes of inflation were stimulus, supply-shock, and housing prices.
Stimulus started under Trump and was the correct response to COVID. Without it we would have had even worse economic suffering that we did. Inflation was the lesser-of-two-evils.
The supply shock was global, and there probably wasn't much to do about it, besides maybe some more supply-side stimulus.
Housing is just a shit-show, but people have been grinding to get more built to address the problems for years.
But stimulus was the thing that could have been changed the most, yet it kept us from having a much, much worse recession.
Position 1: Prices can never go down again unless inflation is negative and we get "deflation." Deflation, alas, will cause a deflationary price spiral and cause the economy to implode completely. Why? Well, reasons. Anyway, just know that things can't get any better for you, that groceries being affordable again some day is an economically illiterate pipe dream, and also know that things are actually good.
Position 2: Also, we'll just force stores to lower prices. Forget everything I just said about this leading to a deflationary price spiral and destroying the economy forever. Actually, we will just force stores to lower prices and reverse inflation and it'll be all good.
>Biden’s immediate focus is on the 3,100-kilometer southern border with Mexico, where Trump tried to keep thousands of migrants from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala from entering the U.S.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/02/biden-signs-3-executive-orders... >Mayorkas assured senators at a confirmation hearing last month that a plan to end the Trump-brokered “Remain in Mexico” policy requiring Central Americans to await an asylum decision in Mexico won’t necessarily happen immediately. He urged people not to rush to the border hoping for more favorable treatment.
... A few moments later.....
https://nypost.com/2024/03/22/us-news/monthly-record-for-feb... >The nation’s besieged southern border set a record for February(2024) migrant encounters with 189,922 attempted crossings as officials brace for an expected spring surge, according to new Customs and Border Patrol data. >The figure eclipses the prior February record of 166,010 encounters, set in 2022 and 156,000 during the same month last year(2023).
Position 3: Introduce policies that stimulate domestic production and decrease foreign competition. This will lower prices without forcing domestic producers out of business.
Promoting internal business isn't a sure thing - particularly when tariffs reduce competitive pressures.
The less competitive pressure there is, the more likely it is that new businesses will form -- it lowers the bar and makes it easier to start new ventures.
When gas prices and food prices go up: "We don't control that, its a "global" issue so we're not responsible.
When gas prices and food prices go down: "See everybody! Look! Our economic policies ARE working! You just have to trust us!"
This all we heard the entire four years Biden was in office. People are not stupid. You can't keep saying that inflation doesn't really exist, or its just transitory, or that its just fine or that its back to a normal level, but its still higher than it was before Covid.
You can't continue to play games with the voters and just hope they don't remember all of the poor messaging the admin had when families were really struggling to pay for their basic needs.
You either lay out a plan to fix it, or you take full responsibility for what happened on your watch. Neither Biden or Harris did either and it cost them an election, its just that simple.
"Google, how do you fix inflation?"
We know inflation is the consequence of many factors, but it can be controlled by different entities at each stage. The two groups most instrumental in the fight against inflation are The Federal Reserve and the government.
The Fed using interest rate increases to make lending and investing more expensive is an example of monetary policy.
The Fed misread warnings in the spring of 2021 when it was clear to some that inflation was spreading. The Fed argued that inflation would be transitory and that it resulted from unusual circumstances, ranging from supply chain issues related to the abnormal demand that came from the end of the pandemic.
The government can use fiscal policy to fix inflation by increasing taxes or cutting spending. Increasing taxes leads to decreased individual demand and a reduction in the supply of money in the economy. As you can imagine, fiscal policy isn’t very popular because raising taxes is a difficult political move. The last thing that we want to hear when inflation is rising is that our taxes will also increase.
The government could use other fiscal policies to lower inflationary pressures. If Congress were to limit pandemic relief spending and focus on not making the deficit worse, that would assist in reducing inflation.
So no, there absolutely is ways to fix it and they 100% were responsible for it. The problem is when you constantly act like there isn't a problem, by the time they realized they had to fix it? It meant the cure is going to be worse than the disease - usually in the form of either cooling off the economy with interest rate hikes, or pushing the economy into a recession or increasing taxes or gasp cutting spending.
This is not graduate level economics we're talking here - its pretty common knowledge stuff. But if you say Biden wasn't responsible for the inflation on his watch, then by your logic you would have to excuse every president who had a poor economy because "its not their fault" and "there's no way to fix it."
Unfortunately, most people (like myself) know that's a load of poppycock and voted accordingly.
It would not have undone prior inflation and it could have strangled the recovery in the crib. It wouldn't do anything about price gouging either and it would certainly have turned America against Biden and Harris. Its just a grab bag of bad ideas.
Also your preferred candidate has said he is going to drastically increase prices with massive tarriffs. This isn't strictly inflation but the effect on your wallet will be the same.
I would talk to actual economists instead of Google.
My point was that even a search engine AI will tell you there's way to fix it because your entire premise is that it wasn't fixable and therefore, not the admins fault. Clearly not the case on either point.
>> It would not have undone prior inflation and it could have strangled the recovery in the crib.
Dude, where are you getting this? Inflation was 1.4% when he took office.
Biden’s claim that the inflation rate was 9% when he became president is not close to true. The year-over-year inflation rate in January 2021, the month of his inauguration, was about 1.4%. The Biden-era inflation rate did peak at about 9.1% – but that peak occurred in June 2022, after Biden had been president for more than 16 months. The March 2024 inflation rate, the most recent available rate at the time Biden made these comments, was about 3.5%, up from about 3.2% the month prior.
This was from a CNN fact check: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/politics/fact-check-biden-inf...
>> It wouldn't do anything about price gouging.
This is a myth. Harris was proposing using Carter era price controls to try and go after "price gouging". Not sure how old you are, but guess what happened when Carter tried that in the 1970's? It lasted less than 2 years before Carter compromised with Congress on a “windfall profits tax” proposal.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/may/15/20060515-12...
The price controls resulted in a fuel-rationing system that made available about 5 percent less oil than was consumed before the controls. Consumers scrambled and sat in lines to ensure they weren’t left without. Gas stations found they only had to stay open a few hours a day to empty out their tanks. Because they could not raise prices, they closed down after selling out their gas to hold down their labor and operating costs, Mr. Sowell said.
When you use price controls, you get less of what you want, not more. This creates what we've already seen in the 1970's as noted above.
This also happened with Bruce Springsteen and how he was pricing his tickets:
Springsteen used to sell tickets to his concerts for very low prices because he wanted ordinary working men and women to be able to afford them. What actually happened: Ticket resellers bought up all the tickets. So a ticket with a face value of $30 went for $100, except $70 of that went to a third party. At some point it occurred to Springsteen that if tickets to his shows were selling for $100, it didn’t make a lot of sense for $70 of that to go to a middleman who not only didn’t write “Born to Run,” he didn’t even write “Workin’ on a Dream.” Years ago, Springsteen dropped his “friend of the working man” pricing policy, which is why the last time I went to one of his concerts the face value of the ticket was $350. Is Springsteen guilty of “price gouging” for denying ticket resellers the opportunity to make gigantic profits from his work and artistry? Were those resellers guilty of “price gouging” for selling those tickets for what people were willing to pay?
>> Also your preferred candidate has said he is going to drastically increase prices with massive tariffs. This isn't strictly inflation but the effect on your wallet will be the same.
This isn't how tariffs work. Tariffs are put in place to discourage people from buying products produced in China and instead buy American made goods and services. They work because people buy less goods from China. Those who do, then pay more so along with the increased revenue, the government is able to generate revenue from the tariffs. If you don't want to pay more for Chinese goods, then you have plenty of options to buy stuff from American producers or other countries like Taiwan, Japan and other countries.
Because I live in a market driven, capitalistic economy, I can make choices to avoid paying more for Chinese goods, or if I want to, I can still buy those goods, albeit at an elevated price point. Nobody is forcing you to buy Chinese goods. Therefore, no, it won't affect my wallet the same because I still have the choice of whether to buy those goods and services or go somewhere else. This is the complete opposite of how price controls work where the government is rationing products in order to maintain a price point.
>> I would talk to actual economists instead of Google.
I have a minor in economics, two of my best friends work in finance and graduated from Ivy League schools and worked on Wall St for a decade. My father was a self made millionaire and entrepreneur. I currently own two businesses and deal with this stuff on a daily basis. The fact remains that the Biden admin denied that inflation was happening. By the time they decide to act, it was so bad that any solution would involve quite a bit of pain as I previously pointed out. Had they just admitted inflation was going up, they could've acted sooner to deal with it. Ignoring it put them in a place where you either had to do nothing and allow a long winded market correction (which is what they did) or trigger a recession, or raise taxes, something nobody would be ok with - which then would've had implications for Biden's re-election which they weren't going to jeopardize.
So yeah, I do talk with actual people who actually know how the markets and the economy works and I myself actually know how this stuff works because I've been dealing with it for over two decades, with both Democratic and Republican presidents.
Trump suggested ruinously high tariffs not only on China but everywhere other than the US and believed that this would be not a spur to move people to US goods but somehow a continuous tax on other countries. He also suggested putting this forward immediately to open the money spigot to our country that would distribute this new found wealth.
There is no way that our economy aligns around home produced goods that don't even exist in sufficient quantity nor price in any reasonable time frame. Instead you get massive price increases in price while people scramble, trade wars, supply shortages, knock on effects for people whose own economic activities require goods they can't get at a reasonable price and price increases in domestic goods and services which require foreign goods and services (most of them) and recession.
This is without the additional shock to the system of putting tens of millions of productively employed individuals in concentration camps and the widespread unrest that is sure to follow that action.
None of this positions the US well to invest in domestic goods because people don't invest in the middle of unrest. If Trump keeps his campaign promises the entire economy is going down the crapper.
"You're right, prices are too high, and wages too low. Especially housing prices, and wages for young men without a college degree.
It's in part the consequences of some things we did.
Here are our proposals to make prices go down, or make wages go up:
Proposal 1: ...."
My deep belief is that the hard part, and the reason Democrats did not do that, is not in the difficulty to find solution.
The hardest part is that it meant recognizing they were, at least in part, responsible for the problem.
The second hardest part was recognizing that the problem was hurting a category of people that's "outside of the tribe".
So, faced with a complex problem, they decided to deny the problem existed altogether, focussed on something else (not necessarily unworthy issues, but, simply, not the one at hand.)
"Ventre affamé n'a point d'oreille."
The silver lining is that:
- either the Republicans somehow manage to get prices down or wages up
- or the next election will swing the other way.
It's still, after all, no matter what, "the economy, stupid" - just, the real economy, no the the fake financial one.
Why they decided to be myopic, and assumed that they had to defend the rights of women _or_ the rights of workers, and could not do both, is a bit beyond me.
They completely forgot about the other half of the electorate, and when reminded of their existence and issues, they considered the other stuff more important. This result shouldn't surprise anyone.
But, realize that any time you spend defending yourself is not spent explaining how you're going to fix the problem. It may be unfair, and that's one of the nicest aspect of democracy : given that people in power keep changing, at some point they don't feel bound to the choices made by previous governments, even of their own party, and can spend time trying to fix problems.
No chance of doing so if you start by arguing.
Also, some of the problems are _hard_.
Not in part.
And now you voted on the guy whose only concrete economic policy is to massively drive up inflation by imposing tariffs.
I much doubt economits would seriously put 100% of the blame on any particular side.
Hence the "in part". Which, I repeat, is a way to acknowledge the complexity, and move on to the interesting question : whether it's your fault or not, what are you going to do to _fix the problem_.
Next election is in two years, and I suspect neither housing prices nor groceries are going to fall any time soon - so policy proposals are not going to waste.
Somehow I think that's problem. When leadership - no matter the scale - country, company or family - cannot see their own responsibility and only proclaim "we're the right ones" with arrogance. That is when you get unfavourable outcome. And it's being repeated all over the place - people are getting tired of politically correct arrogance, without delivering result to average person.
Average voter: I can't afford groceries at the store. Inflation sucks.
Response: I know, inflation was caused by COVID and Biden got it back down. We had the best soft landing you could have asked for, Biden did a great job. But the original inflation wasn't under the president's control, it was a worldwide phenomenon, and you can't run it in reverse to go back to old prices.
What the average voter hears: I don't care about any of that. Prices were lower under Trump and he's a businessman, so I'll vote for him so prices go back down.
Yes, and critically: "I trust Trump when he says it's Biden's fault, so I'll vote for him."
It doesn't matter how correct the interlocutor is if the average voter doesn't trust them. Unfortunately, most people place trust in people who appear sincere and unrehearsed, which is the opposite of how much politicians behave, where a "starched, bland, rehearsed" style is traditional. Trump is improvised and chaotic, which people mistake for genuine and trustworthy.
Then apparently trustworthiness isn't a desirable property for a politician among the American people. What incentive does an aspiring politician have to be truthful if Trump can get elected?
Prices aren’t coming down
If that spending creates an imbalance of money vs goods.
The problem with the COVID recovery is that goods availability declined, and as a consequence the economy would have taken a nosedive via compounding effects.
Unfortunately, flooding the market with money (which all countries, not just the US did) masked the problem long enough for supply to renormalize... but in the process ballooned the numerator while the denominator was still temporarily low.
Of course that's going to cause price inflation.
And then when supply returns to normal, of course companies are going to try to retain that new margin as profit, instead of decreasing prices.
Now that they just sneer at them.
It still feels like a dumb idea, because of well, literally everything the man has ever done. Has anything he’s done ever had a positive impact on the working class? At least the dems have a sorta spotty record on healthcare, and a minor interest in keeping the workers fed and clothed.
It’s not the working class that I have an issue with. It’s everyone voting for Trump that I have an issue with. They just happen to overwhelmingly be hillbillies.
Europe has sensible political parties for the working class, that actually work for their interests, and the only reason I can imagine the US doesn’t have them is because nobody is interested in them. They roundly rejected Sanders and he’s the closest the US ever came.
1. Biden is good and inflation wasn't his fault
2. Biden's handling of it was good, he did all good things, Biden is good
3. In closing, our answer to how we will make it so you can afford groceries is: no
If this will work or not, no idea. But it did play as a better soundbite than "I will hold the grocery stores who are price gouging you accountable for it" because that soundbite says "We have been letting them get away with charging you for 3 years and now that we have an election to win we promise to do something about it".
No, just the concept of a plan.
https://thelawmakers.org/find-representatives
Winning, as we have recently and very painfully seen AGAIN, depends on building coalitions. It does not help that Bernie is not a Democrat. You could argue that he should be considered a Democrat for the sake of party self-preservation, but he literally is not one. My opinion is that his unwillingness to declare himself a Democrat is a reflection of his inability to find and muster support for his causes. Hard pass.
That is almost the definition of totalitarianism.
That's how hundreds of millions of people died (either by execution, war, work camps, or starvation[0]) as dictators pursued Marxist ideals during the 20th century.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism
I appreciate your deep dive into these scholastic studies. I always appreciate learning new things.
When an idea has resulted in the deaths of a significant portion of the world's population at the time, it's healthy to regard it (and similar ideas) with a bit of skepticism.
I'm specifically trying to avoid the whole "no true Scottsman" argument by saying these aren't necessarily examples of how an actually functional communism economy would be, but I do wish you could be consistent with your terminology as socialism and communism are distinctly different ideas. I'd also like to emphasize the mild sarcasm when I used words such as "merely" and "complete and total cooperation",to close out this conversation which I have little more to contribute to.
"If only every single person would..." is not how you create policy where people are actually free.
(Seriously, have you read about all the escape attempts over the Berlin Wall?)
Philosophically, communism is the goal of Marxist theory -- where no ruling class even exists, ownership of the means of production doesn't exist, and everyone shares everything.
Socialism as a form of government (and not socialist economic policy within a republic or democracy) is an intentional, totalitarian stepping stone to that theoretical end goal. When I said "socialism" I meant these totalitarian governments and not anything that exists in northern Europe today. The communist parties of the "communist" (but really socialist) nations of the 20th century promised that the socialist totalitarianism was a stepping-stone and that it would be temporary until true communism was achieved (which has only ever actually occurred in small religious communities like monasteries, and which are often subsidized from the outside anyway). Those promises of temporary totalitarianism were part of how the dictators gained power.
What we call "socialist" economic policy (like the nationalized services in many European nations today) is an entirely separate and mostly unrelated issue (to me at least). I think many Americans' concern here is not a fear of totalitarianism (at least not as an immediate consequence), but that the more things are nationalized, the less freedom people have to choose where their money goes, and the less efficient the economy becomes -- but that's all entirely distinct from and unrelated to the evils of Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.
The only modern, truly "socialist" nation I know of is North Korea.
Look, I mean this in the nicest possible way, but that's a pretty weird definition of socialism which seems likely to perpetuate confusion and disagreement with people who don't share your definition.
If you want to keep using the word like that, I'd suggest defining it the first time you use it.
> 3. (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of Communism.
Thanks for the feedback though. I'll try to define my terms more carefully in the future.
Ah now, that's clearly not how the world is commonly defined, given that it's the third definition with a parenthesis.
But anyways, all good, not that big a deal (although you're likely to have confusion around this term in the future).
It was the liberals who wanted to put unvaccinated people in internment camps and/or prison in 2022.
> And the record profits Professor Weber mentions? Groundwork Collaborative recently found that corporate profits accounted for 53% of 2023 inflation. EPI likewise concluded that over 51% of the drastically higher inflationary pressures of 2020 and 2021 were also direct results of profits. The Kansas City Federal Reserve even pegged this around 40%, indicating that sellers’ inflation is now a pretty mainstream idea.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2024/02/07/why-y...
Look at this picture:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/oxfam-us/www/static/media/files/Beh...
Then this one:
https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/0.1-v.png
The green line is the top 0.01%, the red line is the average american.
I think you're getting at it with that last chart (though, note: It's top 0.1%, not 0.01%). The last few years has been a story of the haves (with wealth in the stock market) who got richer and the have nots who got decimated by inflation. In other words, corporations were able to raise prices because a lot of people got richer and had more money to spend.
Supply chain and price shocks during COVID probably accelerated this trend quite a bit - McDonald's would have eventually figured out that the profit-maximizing price of a burger is closer to $4 than $1, but COVID shocks gave it license to raise prices much faster. The good news is that I think of this largely as a one-time shock: once companies have perfectly set profit-maximizing prices, there's no room for more price-optimization-driven inflation, except to the extent that consumers get richer or less price-sensitive over time.
Quoting Matt Levine, "a good unified theory of modern society’s anxieties might be 'everything is too efficient and it’s exhausting.'"
What solution do you expect from Trump?
You mean people vote for a slum lord who is lauded by billionaires expecting and who funelled Whitehouse budget to his own hotels expecting him to eliminate rent-seekers?
> (...) while also putting up barriers to free trade, thus increasing domestic spending (...)
You mean the same guy who sold them cheap made in China golden sneakers for a small fortune, and bragged he got all his loans from Russia?
This train of thought defies any and all reasoning.
But what does a solution look like to you?
Do you want prices to deflate? That's terrible for many reasons.
Do you want regular responsible economic management? That was Harris. Inflation is back to normal now.
Or do you want a president who wants a huge tariff on everything that will result in crazy much larger inflation than we've had in decades? That's Trump.
How is Harris not listening? How is Trump listening better?
The US President has little power to lower food prices anyway though, so this discussion is kind of moot.
Social security / medicare are indexed to inflation.
The s&p500 outperformed inflation. (And treasury interest rates - 3 month and 10 Year - are ~<2x cpi and cpi targets for the first time in ~20 years)
How do you convey ideas to voters when the basis of the idea is feeling vs fact, outlier vs median?
https://www.marketplace.org/2024/10/30/wage-growth-slowing-o...
That's the best description of what good politicians can do that I've ever heard.
The data are aggregate measures. I have no doubt that for, say, the top 20% of earners, wages did outpace inflation. Maybe the next 30% were able to tread water. The bottom 50%, however, are likely on a sinking ship.
That is the question
It's been a while but lots of the real gems (precious metals too) have already been sold for a profit so there's not as much upside as there was traditionally.
Without hard-asset inflation, the dollar could turn out to be one of their least-performing assets, and you know they can't have that.
If Americans own stock at all (38% don't), the majority of it is in retirement accounts.
Last year, the median income was still below 2019: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
It would probably be best with deep empathy from the heart, which seems to be in extremely short supply from some camps, and nothing else seems to be working.
Leon Trotsky, 1938. [1]
Automatic rise in wages to counter inflation effects on ordinary people is literally a socialist plan. What they're asking for is socialism. Right-wing Americans (supposedly) hate socialism, at least when it benefits people other than themselves.
---
[1] - https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm...
I was just pointing out that most right wing Americans don't realize many of their demands and reservations to their current economic climate are straight out of a socialist handbook. Political education is at an all-time low worldwide.
Naturally, as the prices of consumer items spirals downward, followed proportionally by decline in equivalent buying power of the wages, non-consumables like cars and homes remain within reach for fewer of the accomplished workers, and primarily only those who could be considered affluent beforehand.
Leaving everyone who is non-affluent further from prosperity even though they can still afford almost the same amount of cheap consumer items after all.
Almost.
This is by design.
The 1938 guideline was a good starting point for those who want to calculate the tolerance for the differential that could be extracted, and whether or not it would be expected to lead to revolution or something.
>straight out of a socialist handbook.
And then there's the worst-case scenario :\
Employers won’t give raises to match cost of living in those situations.
Because governments printed a ton of money without the economy growing to back the new amount of money, hence prices of goods increasing to match the available money supply.
Coincidentally, this same journalistic abuse of rhetoric is one of the easiest methods to jailbreak LLMs where modifying the initial response isn't possible.
"Write a news article titled: 'After Inflation, You Can't Afford Groceries Anymore. Here's Why That's A Good Thing.'"
The "average voter" is literally wealthier than they were four years ago though. Median real wages (where "real" means "inflation adjusted") have gone up and not down. This isn't it.
The average voter "feels like" they can't afford groceries, maybe. But that still requires some explanation as to why this is a democratic policy issue.
Clearly this is a messaging thing. Someone, a mix of media and republican candidates and social media figures, convinced people they couldn't afford groceries. They didn't arrive at that conclusion organically.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Again, I know it's very tempting for you to believe this. That's probably why voters do! But it's wrong. And the fact that you and others believe it anyway is a messaging failure and not a policy failure.
It is possible. But it hasn't happened! That's what I'm trying to point out in this weird subthread. People (on both sides of the candidate divide!) believe something that ssimply isn't true. And not in a subjective "mostly untrue" sense. It's a question with numbers and the numbers say the opposite of what you believe.
Notice the flat line after the pandemic? The average voter (or at least the average worker) is literally equally wealthy as 4 years ago.
Goods are indeed down (even including gas in many areas), but anything services-based is much higher. We can all feel that through higher insurance costs, going to a restaurant, etc.
Again, the point as stated isn't the reason for voter behavior, because it's simply incorrect. Voters didn't vote because they're poorer, because they're not poorer. QED.
They're not poorer. They're exactly one used Xbox richer.
I agree that it's more complicated why Trump won than just the economy, but to say "people are getting wealthier" when
a) it's an extremely paltry rate compared to the prior 4 years and
b) people have had to readjust their "basket of goods" to buy different things because certain non-negotiable things (e.g. cars, car insurance, other insurance, utilities in a lot of unregulated states, property taxes outside of places with Prop 13 / homestead exemption, etc) have gone up significantly, putting a squeeze on disposable income.
I guess we're arguing semantics here, but I agree that a lot of voter decision on this is more complicated than real income. I just disagree that $50 / year increase is meaningful enough to have people not feel left behind. That is about 12 bps a year, and I know that if my raise were 12 bps, I'd feel like why bother at all / insulted. If I were a moron, I would blame the current president, but I'm not naive enough to think that it's Biden's fault.
This is a wild take that sounds it's coming from an affluent tech worker. I'm politically left, and I don't know if this is parody to make liberals look out of touch.
Tech salaries went up, but people working minimum wage can't afford groceries. Federal minimum wage was increased to $7.25/hour in 2009, 15 years ago.
Medians don't tell the full story, because of the K-shaped recovery graph. The upper half gained wealth but the lower half lost wealth.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/04/the-covid-recovery-still-has...
Again, this idea is just wrong! And I hear it from people on, as you point out, both the left and the right. And it's wrong, as a simple matter of data! Something terrible happened with messaging this cycle.
You are projecting your data-driven decision making to regular people who don't do that. Depending on how neurodivergent you are, you will eventually learn that you can't model how typical people think based on how you think. People aren't looking at hard numbers. People try to find patterns in what they experience.
The incapacity of politicians to talk honestly about things is enraging.
Dems did that on the surface, but unfortunately unemployment is very distorted by inequality.
Sort of related to trade policy in that way I think. More trade is good but not if it isn't paired with ways to keep inequality from running amok.
At some point though I’m throwing academic sources to the voter at which point I’ve probably lost the discourse because it’s hard to reason about.
The reality is I don’t do any of the above. I’m not even interested in debating the point anymore. People don’t want to hear long winded academic discourse on the best economic approaches to anything.
I’ve bluntly completely lost faith in American democracy. The candidate with the biggest budget has won consistently and the biggest budget comes mostly from corporate donations via PACs.
I view this as the major contributing cause to the current situation. The cyclic dependencies among issues that need attention mean that explaining a fix simply and truthfully is no longer possible. In the current system, a simple explanation is a prerequisite for winning the votes to implement anything. Parties acting in good faith don’t stand a chance.
> completely lost faith in American democracy
Exactly. It doesn’t function without intangibles like “good faith” or “norms” which have been discarded.
Said no politician ever, even the most union-supporting :0
The distinction between the literal question being asked and the question being asked really matters.
Response 1: You are lying. The groceries in my local Whole Foods are still very affordable to me. Stop spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Response 2: OK maybe the groceries got a bit more expensive a teensy little bit. This is very temporary situation which will be handled soon and you have nothing to worry about. Just stop whining and expect everything be fine sooner than you know.
Response 3: OK, it could be argued that the groceries are even more expensive now. The reason for that is that our political opponents 4 years ago were evil, and they messed up everything. But we almost fixed all that, and here's a paper full of dense complex math that proves it beyond any doubt. Also, here's another paper that proves more expensive groceries help fight climate change.
Response 4: Stop talking about the damn groceries already. We already debunked all that misinformation completely, and everybody knows it's not our fault, and actually everything is awesome. Don't you realize the other guy is literally Hitler?!
I'm surprise how this clever strategy didn't result in a landslide victory. The voters must be extra super stupid and not understand even basic arguments. Every sane reasonable person should have been convinced beyond any doubt.
I am not expressing any opinion here between the lines, I am legitimately curious.
Trump knows he’s making empty promises but doesn’t give a shit as long as it wins him the presidency, he’ll wing it all later, and people won’t remember that he didn’t keep his promises because they only care that he said he would try.
It was something about people remembering how you made them feel, instead of exactly what you did.
If Trump makes empty promises, and doesn't deliver on them, nobody cares. They'll still come to vote for him to spite the dems.
The right splinters in public (many turned on Trump 2020-2024) but unites in the voting booth.
The left splinters in public AND in the voting booth.
I had sincerely hoped that the reason Trump was going to lose this year is too many people are tired of his b.s. and would simply not be radicalized enough to come out and vote at all - even if they thought Harris was trash.
Boy was I wrong.
It makes sense (to me) to average inflation over the four year electoral period. The average inflation over the Biden years 2021-2024 was 5.3%, versus 1.9% over the Trump years 2017-2020 [1]. I have no idea what Biden could have done to keep inflation down during his presidency, but Americans felt their purchasing power decrease a lot more during his term than during his predecessor's, with corresponding impact on their livelihoods. They have every right to be pissed off. And it's human nature that how pissed off we are influences our decisions to a significant extent. Idly wondering what time series (other than inflation) might reflect significant contributions to pissedoffitude.
[1] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl...
People heard her say that and were outraged. What's funny is that when you think about it, it actually does make sense although it's pejorative.
Rich people don't pay taxes. They invest their money, which is incentivized by the government in the form of lower/different taxation. Similarly they use experienced lawyers who understand the tax code to structure their wealth in ways that allow them to pay lower taxes. And the term little people, while pejorative, really represents the power differential between people like her husband and the "Average Joe". Trump is not little people, but he's somehow managed to express things in ways that "little" people (using Leona's terminology, not my own) like.
Much of politics is about not directly saying the truth, whether it be ugly, undesired, or complicated. Instead it's about understanding what drives voters (higher out of pocket prices uncoupled from concomitant wage increases) and how to say the thing they want to hear, while also enacting policies that achieve your political goals.
Not as a percentage of their income, especially when all "taxes" (anything the government charges for) are taken into account.
Unless you're arguing that someone making $200K/yr is in the category of "poor" in which case it would pay to be explicit, because that's not going to be the most natural interpretation for most people.
income tax is progressive but tends to become regressive at the very top when individuals have control over what counts as "realized income". The ultra wealthy in fact don't pay so much tax (and certainly not their "fair" share).
What you say is true absent any tax optimization, alas there is such a thing, especially at the top. Also, see works of Zucman and Saez.
Oh and yeah it’s true 100% of the time, everywhere in the US. Let me state it again if you’re confused; rich people pay a higher income tax percentage than poor people.
When is over-communication on the problem the team needs to solve ever a bad thing?
https://kamalaharris.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Policy_B...
Now compare that to Trump's non-existent plan. No one cares, that is what is so depressing.
I guess it’s an open question whether a Dem could run with a total lack of substance and pure vibes (while they and, incredibly, the media accuse their opponent of having no policies? Or is that too much to hope for? Do we think in the reverse situation Fox News would be talking about how the R candidate was being too vague, even as they were being less vague than the D candidate, as the “liberal” media did endlessly in this race?) without weakening the get-out-the-vote for their base so much that they perform even worse. Might work, might not. We only know it works for the current right.
Most of the measures you suggested, especially straight up give people money will just increase inflation further.
Obviously I'm frustrated, but it's truly wild how ineffective the democrats are. I think them trying to be so upfront and politically correct all the time is a losing strategy for them.
Hold an open primary with a candidate that talks in no uncertain terms about the failures of the Biden presidency, and the new path forward, criticizing the Biden admin for not doing enough on inflation.
I think essentially Trump won in 2016 and 2024 because he was willing to take such a risk against political norms, and this was a change election. No explaining the causes of inflation, or what Biden did right and incremental steps were going to change that. People wanted a visionary leader, and while I disagree with Trump, I think Trump and Musk provided that new vision for America.
I hate this by the way, I'm an incrementalist policy wonk who in general hates visionary leadership.
But Trump talked about stopping at nothing to remake the American economy to radically improve the lives of all Americans. Harris talked about $25,000 to buy a house.
Vibes > Policy
But the Biden admin clearly did enough to fight inflation. He may even have done too much.
The framing of the US discussion around inflation is itself a lie.
For instance, in terms of visionary leadership, I think Musk fans mostly don't care that he lies about when a product will be delivered. They want to believe so to speak.
People want honesty. Trump saying people have economical problems is honest (at least relatively). Keeping the discourse around inflation because Biden did a great (?) job there isn't. (That applies even if the Rs were the ones focusing on inflation, unfortunately people don't discern that well.)
I really think that if the Ds said "we beat inflation, but that doesn't immediately help you. we will do X to beat low salaries next" it would be well received. But that requires honesty.
At the same way, Musk fans like that he delivered X (there's a lot of impressive things you can put here). Talking about the future is always bullshit anyway, so he being wrong there is less important than he having delivered stuff before. The things those people are ignoring are the fact that he only put money on it, or that the more he gets involved, the less his companies are able to deliver. Not that he is wrong about the future.
You got your explanation here. Arrogance and dismissiveness of voters.
I don't think an election in a 2 party dominated system is going to fix this, history has been repeating itself since the 60ies. People need to change there thinking about supporting a system that doesn't work before we make any headway in correcting these problems.
Like: are you F'ing kidding me? You guys and gals just flushed the executive and legislative branches down the shitter, and you want MORE money?
Shows me what the DNC really cares about: itself.
Also salaries in US kept with the inflation while globally they didn't.
The US economy is doing great, but inflation doesn't make it feel like it.
I myself feel it.
I'm not from US, I'm European and make around $110k per year.
Yet I skip on 5€/kg tomatoes even though I made 28k just 3 years ago and they costed half of it.
Voters don't want explanations, they want solutions.
You be correct and say something factually as "The economy is fine, all indicators are moving the right direction - we're back to pre-COVID levels" but still lose massively on that.
And as it turns out, whether or not your solutions is rooted in reality - apparently doesn't mater for the average voter.
Harris went with the "We're not gonna make any changes", when people are moaning about the economy. That was her fatal error.
Trump and MAGA continued to hammer on about how terrible the economy is, and how they're going to make China pay, while lowering taxes.
Again: voters don't want explanations, they want solutions.
Americans got robbed of something between 20-40% of the purchasing power of their dollar depending on what they're buying. People aren't stupid, they know they're getting hoodwinked when someone focuses on the fact that the rate of robbery is slowing down rather then the fact that they didn't stop the robbery in the first place.
Can I even work in America with a criminal record?
How do people look past this, I'm really having a bit of a moral crisis today about why I even bother paying taxes or obeying any laws since this whole thing happened.
Do I just tell my kids to be successful, jut be like Trump?
Trump is a failed real estate tycoon, his companies went bankrupt three times; banks won't lend him money anymore because he always shafts them. He got a big inheritance and lucky that he had some charisma so could make it on TV. He is not successful role model (well, con-man maybe).
Also I am not from USA and very happy I don't have to deal with TurboTax lobbying and shenanigans thar make the USA tax code to be just crazy.
Also the "bank fraud" trial is also monumentally stupid when they wanted to convict him and close his companies (thus making people lose their jobs) for doing something that resulted in profits for the supposed victim. Victim in fact that explained multiple times they were pleased with the business and would do it again.
The message in the second case was: we will take your jobs because your boss made a good deal, don't vote for him!
And of course this is just idiotic.
How to understand next week’s Trump criminal felony trial https://robertreich.substack.com/p/dont-call-it-the-hush-mon...
How Trump is liable for fraud even though no one was hurt https://robertreich.substack.com/p/how-trump-is-liable-for-f...
> Many people I speak with are worried that this is the weakest of Trump’s four pending criminal trials because it has to do with an illicit affair.
> Wrong.
No this was the weakest case. The fact that this is the one to get across the finish line, rather than say the Georgia interference case, demonstrates raw political incompetence by the democrats.
1. ‘for a "crime" that was basically someone else filling his taxes wrong.’ — utterly false
2. Getting lucky is no excuse for fraud.
See aforementioned posts for actual, well-reasoned arguments from world-renowned UC Berkeley professor and former Cabinet Secretary Robert Reich, which Redoubts hasn’t refuted.
The case that resulted in Trump being convicted of 34 federal felony counts wasn’t the weakest case; that’s demonstrated by the jury, selected by both sides, having deliberated over the available evidence and both sides’ arguments, and having reached a unanimous verdict.
The Georgia case had been going much more slowly because it’s a much more complex case, for obvious reasons. Its current stalled status has to do with the conflict of interest that Willis created. If the case somehow resumes, the jury, selected by both sides, will decide the case.
The speed and outcomes of these cases are not “political competence or incompetence” matters on the part of Democrats.
It’s the most mundane thing that has been “Trumped up” to the extent that anti-Trumpers act like he murdered someone. Everyone else thinks “oh wow, improperly classifying an expense, who cares.”
And still at the end of it, it boiled down to “you should’ve classified the hush money as a campaign expense instead of a legal expense.” Do you seriously not understand why no one really cares?
Then, read this again — https://robertreich.substack.com/p/dont-call-it-the-hush-mon... “This case alleges that in 2016 Trump arranged to pay off an adult entertainer in order to hide his affair with her from the public. The important thing to keep in mind is that the money was given to protect Trump’s campaign for the presidency — not to protect his marriage or protect him from personal embarrassment.”
By any measure this is way worse than some stupid accounting classification with regard to hush money for a porn star? How come no charges were brought on this very serious charge?
People are nowhere near as stupid as the Democratic party likes to believe.
What happened was not an “accounting classification” issue. The jury, selected by both sides, unanimously agreed on the 34 federal felony counts because after hearing and seeing arguments, testimony, and evidence from both sides, they found it clear that this was not an “accounting classification” issue, but rather an issue of an entity exceeding legal limits on political contributions and attempting to conceal it by committing financial crimes.
Zuckerberg talking about warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532
Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-...
NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/politics/republicans-h...
NY Times and Washington Post finally admit laptop is real https://nypost.com/2022/04/01/new-york-times-finally-admit-h...
And the 34 felony was about 34 payments for the one thing so in reality was just the one "crime" beefed up by a weaponized justice system to look worse than it was.
Again, it is obviously and emphatically true that this kind of govt election interference is way worse than whatever Trump did. So again why was there no charge over this?
And I'm just going to repeat, people are not nearly as stupid as the Democrat party thinks they are.
If it's so mundane, why is it a felony then.
Judge Marchand's daughter has worked for a marketing firm since 2003 that has the DNC, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as clients https://www.nationalreview.com/news/house-judiciary-investig...
Here is DA Bragg campaigning on how he will go after Trump if elected as DA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQLflgGxUrU
Bragg downgraded 50% of felonies to misdemeanors https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/apr/08/ron-desant...
Some discussion of the convoluted logic used by Bragg to upgrade a misdemeanor (intent to defraud) to a felony (intent to defraud in the commission of another crime) https://news.syr.edu/blog/2024/05/07/law-professor-the-manha...
This is such a lame case, that should never have been brought and is clearly an abuse of the justice system for political ends.
would it be bad if the cost of college education, housing, or healthcare decreased?
why would it be bad if the cost of groceries fell to what it used to be (deflation)?
Why should we discriminate against justice impacted individuals?
Inflation was uneven. It impacted prices but not wages or savings. It reduced citizen wealth directly and transferred it to corporations and the already wealthy.
They wanted to publicize the problem but not actually take the cure. Now they have zero mandate in any institution. That's what selling out your base gets you.
Most of Hacker News doesn't run in social circles where people are clipping coupons and going to several different stores to shop the best deals just so they can afford to eat that month, but for nearly forty million Americans who receive SNAP benefits (read that number again and let it really sink in), that's their reality. The administration looked either out of touch or even spiteful by doing a one dollar benefits increase to account for the past twelve months of inflation. I'm sure there are plenty of other similar things that are hurting the working poor that are invisible to those spewing scorn at voters who weren't concerned more about wars around the world and luxury beliefs.
No one I've pointed this out to has been able to empathize with these people yet, most coming up with glib replies about how everything for those voters will be even worse now that the other candidate won. Until they can understand the plight of the people who received that one dollar increase and why it was so psychologically devastating to them the month before the election, they'll never understand why their candidate lost. Instead they'll keep pointing to GDP, the low employment numbers made possible by people working multiple jobs to survive, and how great things are for the wealthy instead of trying to actually get in touch with the daily lives of those they rarely interact with. Maybe insulting these people and calling them stupid and evil a few more times will be what finally makes them forget about their food insecurity.
The calculation of benefits is required by law/regulation. The government can’t just say “yeah this is small, let’s skip it this year”.
Right, because how do you empathize with someone who gets $1, and their response is: Oh yeah? Well fine then I'm going to vote for the person who wants to take away literally EVERYTHING to show you!
It is the definition of cutting off your head to spite your body.
I completely understand and empathize with someone on SNAP not getting what they need to cover the insane pricing increases we saw greedy corporations force upon all of us and wanting that rectified. But if your solution to that is to either not vote at all, or intentionally vote for the guy who has literally told you his plan is to gut all social services... I'm not sure what to tell you beyond whatever empathy I DID have for you is gone and enjoy sleeping in the bed you just made for yourself. I, and most of the folks on HN are going to be perfectly fine. Those folks that were on SNAP? Good luck...
If people never have a shot at redemption, why would they ever try to redeem themselves?
And mind, the whole campaign was based on "Trump is worse". That is also hardly ignoring someone.
That's not what I meant by "getting away from them". It's just like Germany in the 1930s: the smart people got out and moved somewhere else before the SHTF. It's the same thing I did: I left the USA. I don't see things getting any better there in my lifetime, and I didn't want to be around the angry MAGA people, so I left.
I don't mean this as finger-wagging at you or anyone; it's so easy to tell people to stay and fight somewhere where you're not. The Nazis could have prevented early on, later on staying couldn't really change anything, it was just another life destroyed in the maw. So yes, good on those who got out. But also good on those who stayed and fought. Personally, as much as I would love to run away from my own country sometimes, I know that wherever I end in, I will have even less influence than here, as infinitely little influence as that may be. And wherever I'd end up, it would just be an even smaller ship in the same rough waters that seem to be engulfing the world.
In the case of the US, it's arguably the most powerful country that is still somewhat free. The Nazis were stopped in a world war, which they started with no real need. If they hadn't started the war, or if they had won it, or if there hadn't been any other power that isn't also totalitarian that could have conceivably challenged them -- as is the case with the US -- then they might still be in power.
It was close enough back then, if the US falls into that hole, with all the weapon and surveillance tech that exists today, I just don't see any "outside" that could help, or be safe. There could be countries poor enough in resources that get left alone long for me to get old in them, at best, but should I have children, they'd be be up for grabs by whatever is being cooked now. That's basically why I even care about US politics as non-American. When that particular tower falls, it might blot out the sun. If not forever, then for long enough that it simply must never be found out IMO.
Sorry I didn't mean to be this dark, but I mulled this stuff over so much, and this is what I think about it, what I can't help but think about it.
I got tired of dealing with that, and found a society I enjoyed living in much more, so I found a job there and moved there. If someone wants to stay in the US and try to make it better, more power to them, and I hope they succeed. I'm not that young any more and just want to live in a nice place in relative peace, and the US was no longer that place (and, in my view, stopped being that place around 2000).
If you're looking for a place where you can blend into the culture and easily make local friends, it's probably not a great choice, but I could say the same about many, many places (I frequently read articles about US expats complaining about this in western Europe, and frequently moving back), but if you can get a good job here and don't mind a degree of social isolation and can learn enough of the language to get by, I think it's a good choice. It's not an easy place to move to for westerners, however, by most accounts (for social reasons, not logistical/administrative ones). Personally, I didn't have too much trouble, but I know I'm not typical. If you're a tech worker (this is HN after all) and can get a good tech job here, it's really easy to move in, as far as the visa is concerned.
BTW empathy is when you can feel for those you don't relate to/have attachment to. Empathy is when you make a genuine effort to understand and connect, even across differences. It's not a concept only for people you already relate to.
Consider how the program actually works. You have a job and pay taxes, but don't make much money, so the government takes the taxes you paid and gives them back to you. But you have to apply for the program, and then spend the money (which was originally yours) on only the things they tell you to. And there is more than one assistance program so you have to apply to them each individually. Then each of the programs have their own phase outs if you make more money, but the phase out rates combine to a very high de facto marginal tax rate, which means if you're still struggling you can't get out of it by working some extra hours because that just causes you to lose your benefits. It's a poverty trap.
Then prices go up by 20% or more, but you still can't make any more money or you lose your benefits. In response your benefits are increased by one dollar.
Are people even wrong to want to blow all of that up and replace it with a tax credit?
The cost of ingredients for a burger doesn’t radically change if a burger flipper gets paid more and the price of the burger isn’t going up drastically either.
Clearly companies with billion dollar market caps can also be held to higher standards because no one is going to pay more than they are required for labor. Maybe the minimum wage is a percentage of the business total profits and minimum wage at $7.25 is just the floor?
A lot of wealth is locked up in the wealthiest people which could be circulating in the economy instead of being in a Swiss bank account.
There are multiple layers, multiple solutions instead of hoping wealth trickles down. Poverty wasn’t solved under the last Trump administration as I recall nor do I expect it in the upcoming one.
> The cost of ingredients for a burger doesn’t radically change if a burger flipper gets paid more and the price of the burger isn’t going up drastically either.
These things are two sides of the same coin. The increase in wages is the same as the increase in costs, so if one of them is small then so is the other one and if one of them is large then so is the other one.
> Clearly companies with billion dollar market caps can also be held to higher standards because no one is going to pay more than they are required for labor. Maybe the minimum wage is a percentage of the business total profits and minimum wage at $7.25 is just the floor?
This is only less of a bad idea because the bad idea then applies to fewer businesses. Also, the billion dollar market cap companies would then just contract it out.
> A lot of wealth is locked up in the wealthiest people which could be circulating in the economy instead of being in a Swiss bank account.
That's not real wealth. That's just money. Money is numbers in a computer. Taking non-circulating money and putting it into circulation has the same inflationary effect as printing it. Whereas leaving it non-circulating doesn't consume any real resources (land, labor, etc.) because it's just bits.
However, most rich people don't store their "wealth" as cash money anyway, they buy stocks and things, which in turn puts the money in the hands of businesses to use to hire employees etc. That money isn't non-circulating and what you're doing then is reallocating resources from something else.
You're trying to solve the problem that people aren't being paid enough by passing a law that literally says they have to be paid more. It's like passing a law that literally says housing prices have to be low. That's a dumb law. You can't just magic up a change in labor demand or housing supply. You need to figure out why wages are low or housing prices are high and do something about that.
Genuinely, if you have something to teach I’m all ears for my personal betterment.
How do we ensure everyone gets a livable wage without redistributing the wealth of the rich, mandating a higher minimum wage, or increasing inflation and since you mentioned housing, make that affordable without gutting the value of existing housing which will make existing home owners upset.
If the answer is tax cuts for the rich “job creators” so they might spend some of the savings on employees instead of pocketing it, we’ve had decades for that to work.
> You're trying to solve the problem that people aren't being paid enough by passing a law that literally says they have to be paid more
If a company is profitable and chooses not to share their profitability with their employees then I have no qualms with this anymore than I do with the current minimum wage law, which was created for a reason and the world did not burn down as a result.
Businesses are more profitable than ever, employees more productive than ever, they had their chance to do this on their own and avoid gov interference and they blew it. We can argue the details of that intervention but the market isn’t going to correct this.
> These things are two sides of the same coin. The increase in wages is the same as the increase in costs, so if one of them is small then so is the other one and if one of them is large then so is the other one.
It’s not 1/1 increase and labor is not the only cost. If 5 employees make an extra $1 the price of a burger doesn’t go up $5.
If 5 employees build a million dollar house the cost of the house doesn’t go up if they get paid $7 extra because the cost is tied up in material/licenses/etc, not labor.
> If the answer is tax cuts for the rich “job creators” so they might spend some of the savings on employees instead of pocketing it, we’ve had decades for that to work.
The way "supply side economics" is supposed to work is that you lower barriers to entry and operating costs (i.e. simplify regulations and lower taxes) to make it easier for more companies enter the market, so you get more competition and competition reduces the share of prices that go to investors instead of employees or customers. This is basically right, if you actually do it.
So we've had decades for this to work, right? Here's federal receipts as a percent of GDP:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
You can clearly see the point where we significantly lowered taxes to see what would happen, which is nowhere. 2016 was nearly the first time we tried lowering taxes at all outside of a recession, even that was by less than 2%, and that experiment got stuffed up by COVID.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to count the number of pages in the US Code or CFR by year and look for a trend.
Okay, so if we actually tried those things for once we might get more competition, which could be good.
The opposite of this is, of course, less competition. Zoning rules that inhibit construction of higher density housing, certificate of need laws in healthcare, corporate mergers that ought to be antitrust violations, etc. That is what we've actually been doing, and therefore what we need to stop.
> make that affordable without gutting the value of existing housing which will make existing home owners upset.
"Make housing prices go down without making housing prices go down" is not a thing. The closest you get is to make real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) housing prices go down while nominal housing prices stay the same, by keeping nominal housing prices from increasing (e.g. by building a lot of new housing) while wages and the prices of everything else increase. This might even satisfy existing homeowners, because then the price of their existing house doesn't go down relative to their existing mortgage.
Which is approximately what you get if you just build a ton of new housing until housing prices go down, then lower interest rates or otherwise create new money as that happens, which causes the nominal housing prices to maintain their current level while wages and other prices go up.
The real key for getting this to work is to make sure that the "inflation" also applies to wages, which for the last few years it hasn't, which is why everybody is so upset. If you make $110 and spend $100 and then in a few years you make $130 and spend $120, not a big deal. If you now have to spend $120 but still only make $110, huge problem. But this is the thing where market consolidation enables rent extraction; you have to enforce antitrust laws and prevent regulatory capture to prevent that from happening.
> If a company is profitable and chooses not to share their profitability with their employees then I have no qualms with this
Companies don't pay people more than they have to just as employees don't take lower paying jobs when higher paying ones are available.
If corporate profits are high, that's a sign that some kind of regulatory capture is happening or antitrust enforcement is necessary, because otherwise smaller competitors would use some of their profits to gain market share by lowering prices. Instead of trying to order them to pay more, figure out why that market is broken when it should be forcing them to charge less.
> It’s not 1/1 increase and labor is not the only cost. If 5 employees make an extra $1 the price of a burger doesn’t go up $5.
It's a 1/1 increase, you're just implying that it would take five employees an hour to make one burger. If five employees each make $1/hour more then that restaurant has to cover an additional cost of $5/hour, not $5/burger. But that whole $5 is coming from somewhere, and restaurants are notoriously competitive businesses, so that somewhere is liable to be from customers.
> If 5 employees build a million dollar house the cost of the house doesn’t go up if they get paid $7 extra because the cost is tied up in material/licenses/etc, not labor.
I suspect you're underestimating the proportion of construction costs that go to labor. "Materials" is also an input that has labor costs baked into it. You're buying "lumber" but what you're really doing is paying a lumberjack to fell trees and a sawmill operator to cut them and a truck driver to transport them and a clerk at the hardware store to ring them up etc.
What you really want to do is not to increase the cost of labor but to reduce the proportion of wages going to rents. The largest categories of these rents are actual rents (i.e. landlords/housing costs), high healthcare costs largely as a result of regulatory capture, and tax dollars spent on inefficient or corrupt government programs. Stop wasting money on those things -- we're talking trillions of dollars here -- and you get to put the money in your pocket.
> It's a 1/1 increase, you're just implying that it would take five employees an hour to make one burger. If five employees each make $1/hour more then that restaurant has to cover an additional cost of $5/hour, not $5/burger. But that whole $5 is coming from somewhere, and restaurants are notoriously competitive businesses, so that somewhere is liable to be from customers.
I don’t mean to drag this on, I just want to end saying I’m not implying 5 people are needed to make a burger. I’m saying that increasing wages for 5 employees by a $1 doesn’t increase the cost of an individual good (burger) sold to customers by $5 so the burden to the customer to support this new paradigm is negligible, especially at the volume of goods being sold. It is not a death knell to the business as it is sometimes painted.
Yes the 5$ is made up somewhere, either in cutting costs elsewhere, increasing sales or increasing prices. They may already be making numbers that would support an increased wage without any changes to those things.
I accept that you may still disagree with me but I wanted to make my position clear.
Restaurants are highly competitive. A fast food restaurant generally has ~25% of the price as direct labor costs and ~3% of the price as profit margin.
> I’m saying that increasing wages for 5 employees by a $1 doesn’t increase the cost of an individual good (burger) sold to customers by $5 so the burden to the customer to support this new paradigm is negligible, especially at the volume of food being sold. Yes the 5$ is made up somewhere but it’s spread out across multiple goods sold to multiple customers that share only small fraction of the burden for supporting that change. I don’t know how to state it more clearly than that.
Oh certainly, but then the spreading out comes back in again. You pass a law that requires the average wage to increase by 10%, so the price of the average item doesn't increase by $5 (i.e. 100%), it increases by ~10%. But then it's not just the burger that goes up by 10%, it's everything (on average).
Now, this result is not going to be uniform, but that's another problem in itself. For the average wage to increase by 10%, the wages of people who actually make minimum wage might have to go up by 100%, because there aren't that many of them. For them -- at least the ones who don't lose their jobs as a result -- the 10% is smaller.
But the other population for which the hit is smaller is the very rich, because they spend a lower proportion of their income. The CEO who makes 1000 times minimum wage is paying the same $5 for a burger as anyone else, so the 5% increase is a 0.005% increase in spending to them. Even if they buy a fancy burger for $100, 5% of that is still only equivalent to 0.1% for the person making minimum wage.
So if the hit is less to the very rich and less to the people making minimum wage (if they don't lose their jobs), where does the rest of the money come from? Oof, the middle class. They pay the higher prices and spend ~all of their income but don't get any of the money. And the goal is supposed to be to benefit the poor at the expense of the rich, not to hollow out the middle, right?
So you raise the minimum wage but keep the crazy high effective marginal tax rate? Then the benefits phase out eats the extra money the same as it would if they were working extra hours.
Also, hardly anybody actually makes the minimum wage. If your problem is you make $20/hour but that's not enough to afford housing, raising the minimum wage to $15/hour doesn't get you a raise and only makes the things you buy cost more. If you tried to use a $40/hour minimum wage you would get high unemployment and stagflation.
Minimum wage laws are broken technology. They do more harm than good and most of the studies "in favor" of them are really only claiming that they don't hurt that much, and those studies are performed in contexts where the minimum wage is quite low. Somewhat obviously, if the median wage is $18/hour and less than 1% of people make less than $4/hour and then you ban paying less than $4/hour, there is no major effect and therefore no major harm. That doesn't at all imply that banning anyone from paying less than $40/hour is going to be equally harmless.
Going to chime in here hopefully to give better context than "a carton of eggs is up 10%!" or whatever.
The average price of a gallon of gas in 2018 was ~$2.72, peak was $2.92 in May.
The average price of a gallon of gas in 2022 was ~$3.95, peak was $5.01 in June.
So that's an increase in average price of about 45% between the midpoints of Trump and Biden, and an eyewatering 71% in peak increases. Obama 2014 was ~$3.37 average and $3.70 peak in June, for further comparison. Trump's economy was objectively and factually easier to live in.
A 45% increase for a good necessary for daily life is going to hurt no matter what, let alone 71%. All else being equal it's thrown around as a meme that incumbent presidents and parties live and die by the gas price index, but there's a reason for that.
Anecdata, I'm decidedly middle class. I can afford luxuries reasonably if I want to, and objectively I can tolerate increasing costs of living fine (for now). That said though, even I feel a bit of discomfort buying mundane groceries because they definitely feel like they should be cheaper. It's even worse for mundane luxuries like beer, I can't really complain about a luxury good being expensive but at the same time it still feels too expensive anyway.
Don't get me started on gas prices, where I'm at they're ~$4.00 per gallon today and were up to ~$5.00 at some points during Biden. It was ~$2.00 during Trump. That's a 100% increase or more, you can't pay me to say that doesn't hurt even if I can still afford it.
That feeling of discomfort and pain isn't nice and I don't blame a voter if they cast a single issue vote on it.
(Thus the low comprehension level of many voters.)
I have no problem with people voting GOP, and am happy to debate Democrat vs Republican policies and economic impact, etc. Republicans certainly do some things better than Democrats. But this wasn't about policy. If Americans have so little values, and are so gullible, that they are willing to sell out to a man who is literally a despicable self-serving despot (the only reason he's not as bad as Putin or Xi is because he's restrained by the Constitutional structure), for a promise of cheap gas that Trump can't even fulfill (it may happen, but it won't be because of Trump, just like the price of gas going up in 2022 had nothing to do with Biden), well, that's a very sad statement about a large segment of the American people.
Indeed, the economy is practically a force of nature with countless levers and the federal government can only influence a small handful of them.
That said, when Trump argues "Drill, baby, drill!" and Biden and Harris shut down oil production and transport in the name of environmentalism, guess how that affects gas prices and the broader cost of living at large.
Not to mention America failing to police the world and maintain or establish peace will lead to higher costs of living. Note that Obama literally said on the record that America is no longer the world police, and Biden and Harris are more of that.
Democrat policies are not conducive to a better economy for the common man, and arguing that the stock market is at all time highs or the prime rate is coming down merely signals a harsh detachment from reality on the ground.
I don’t know what facts you’re basing this on but the US military action abroad is not correlated with higher standard of living in the US. In fact one could argue the opposite, but they’re not really interconnected.
> Drill baby drill
High oil prices are not because we’re not drilling enough. Oil production in the US is at an all time high and was higher under Biden than under Trump. (Not that I think it’s a good thing).
You need to reevaluate your news sources or do more research before you determine which set of policies are better for the common man as you put it.
Wars lead to disturbed movement of people and goods, massive loss of lives, destruction of goods, destruction of infrastructure, destruction of production, and more. Wars are great for the military industrial complex and even moreso if you never have to take lead yourself, but it's hell for everyone else.
Pax Americana, the era in which we all live in today, is predicated on the US policing the world and maintaining or establishing the peace for everyone's (and chiefly the US's) benefit. The means can be either Soft Diplomacy or Bigger Gun Diplomacy, but regardless every single administration in recent history with the exception of Trump's first term has been a disaster for world peace and thus better economies and happier lives American or otherwise.
>High oil prices are not because we’re not drilling enough.
High oil prices are because we let OPEC strangle us all by our balls. Anyone paying even the slightest of attention to how oil pricing works will know that OPEC decides the price they want and then adjusts the production/supply to get it.
If we "drill, baby, drill" harder and harder then OPEC will be forced to produce less to maintain the price until they can't, at which point oil prices will come down until right before we also start bleeding red ink. We can crash that price even harder with government action to compensate the bleeding, too. Don't believe me? It's literally what China does with practically everything.
So I am going to sharply disagree with you: High oil prices are because we're not drilling enough. If Biden's actually drilling more oil than Trump, that just means Trump needs to drill even harder.
The US has been a _net exporter_ of oil for some years, and we don't depend on OPEC and haven't in some time. (The only reason we import oil is because it's cheaper to import some oil and sell our oil at a higher price.) Very little of our oil comes from OPEC. We get 4x more oil from Canada than we do from OPEC.
War is hell, and on that I can agree with you. But "Pax Americana" hasn't been around for a long time, and especially not since we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, all the wars that we've been engaged in for decades now have been wars that we started. We're just not good at "establishing the peace" and we haven't been since the 1950s, or if you want to argue that we provided a "bulwark against communism" in the 70s and 80s, which has some merit except that communism failed because of economics not our global policing, then we haven't been "establishing the peace" since the fall of the USSR in 1991.
Or you can be a D-leaning voter who sees D only rising to the level of a less-awful version of putting rich people before you, and you want to discipline D for taking all the D-leaning votes for granted, rather than earning them by being effective on your behalf.
Or you can be an R-leaning voter who sees both R and D as putting rich people before them, and then D goes and adds insult to injury with some stunt, but at least this one R candidate sounds like they might make things better. (Helped along by a lot of disinformation, as well as being alienated by D voters in general. You see many D voters as a bunch of elitists who're benefiting more than you, and are screwing you, while they pick causes or other people to favor that you think are stupid and unfair.)
Years ago, I was horrified, the first time I heard a D-leaning college student tell me they weren't voting D, to discipline D, in a very important election. My first thought was that this sounded like some revolutionary-till-graduation thing, which probably sounded better in their head, but now I sorta see.
Having seen a few elections and administrations since then, with D consistently seeming not to earn the votes of people, I've come around to understanding, even if I don't full agree. If many people either go out of their way to discipline D, or simply can't be bothered to go to the polls, IMHO, it's hard to blame them.
A bit similar with R voters.
We're all being served poop sandwiches, who aren't working for us, and we are desperate or depleted.
Here is something I saw on Bluesky, where all the good people are:
"To all the misgueded twits who ignored every red flag, caved to your worst selves, and bought into all of the most obvious of Trump's insane lies: Everything that happens from here on out. The family members you lose, the suffering, the confiscation of your freedoms of at the whim of your dictator. It's all on you. You can no longer falsely blame dems, antifa, lgbtq, or immigrants for everything you set into motion with your prejudice and cowardice"
It goes on like that, and ends with
"Hope it was all worth it, you hateful fuckwits. Enjoy the ride"
That's just the most widely shared and liked on I happened to be shown by Bluesky, I've seen this repeated in individual comments in many variations. Basically, "at least we'll burn together and it'll be your fault."
> they'll never understand why their candidate lost. Instead they'll keep pointing to GDP, the low employment numbers made possible by people working multiple jobs to survive, and how great things are for the wealthy instead of trying to actually get in touch with the daily lives of those they rarely interact with.
as Cenk Uygur said here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j7m0tbZJgE
So she put out some good things in the beginning, and we were excited about it. She had some economic populist policies about housing and price gouging etc. [..] She then turns around and sends Mark Cuban all over CNBC to go, remember, I love business interests. [..] She's never going to do the price gouging plan. They swear up and down on CNBC and all over cable news. Well, then she lost her lead. Why do you think you're getting the lead, why do you think you lost the lead? No, they'll never figure it out.
I don't think that's as obvious as Cenk seems to believe it is.
This is not the actual increase of the benefit amount. In particular, it appears the cost of living adjustment this year is 2.5%. I have been unable to find statistics on how many people/households actually receive the maximum amount, but I don't have a particular reason to believe it is large. (The average benefit amounts are significantly below the maxima.)
Tldr: the average SNAP benefit amount received by people has increased and will increase by significantly more than $1/month.
Indeed, it's 41.2 million out of a total of 334.9 million U.S.-Americans, or 12.3 % or more than one in ten folks - that this is more than one in hundred suprised me because the US are by some counts the "richest" country on the planet.
It's merely the country with the richest few, perhaps this calculation is just a way to show statistically what many believed all along, namely that the so-called "American dream" is a pipe dream for most, in the sense that the majority of people simply fund a tiny fews success in the way lottery ticket buyers fund a few select millionaires that don't deserve it.
Here are the yearly trends showing food stamps from 1985 to 2020, I don't know why 21, 22 and 23 data is not shown.
Since the 1985 until 2008, the number of people on benefits stayed roughly around 25 million. In the same time period, US population grew from 220M to 300M, roughly 1% every year.
From 2008 to 2013, the number of people on SNAP roughly doubled to peak at 47.54M people. Population growth was 300M to 315M.
2019 was the lowest point in recent history of only 35.29M people on SNAP, with population growth from 315M to 330M.
I averaged the monthly data from 2021 onward and got 2021: 41.6M, 2022: 41.2M, 2023: 42.1 and 2024 through July: 41.6M
For a long time, poverty in the US was shrinking as a percent of the population. 2008 reversed that trend with things starting to get better after 2013 and really accelerating up until 2019. It's been flat since the post Covid growth.
So everyone saying; "economy is back to normal, we have recovered." there have been 5M people who don't feel it.
1985 to 2020: https://www.fns.usda.gov/yearly-trends
2021, 2022, 2023 & 2024: https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-f...
Food stamps was historically a subsidy for farmers as much as a welfare program. I read something about that changing, but don’t know the details.
But I qualified for food stamps long after I was making good money.
Honestly even though I disagree with the TrumpGOP 70% of the time, I'm actually kind of happy to see them control the whole thing, at least we can now put a bunch of right-wing ideas to the test rather than just have a big political wrestling match that usually ends in a draw, like we have for most of the past 3 presidencies. The thing is, without the government trying to destroy itself with infighting, right-wing ideas at least have some upsides, such as lower taxes. We have mostly seen the worst of both sides' ideas with few of the gains due to sabotage being so common.
Republicans have shown they can't govern. The House has been in complete disarray for the last 4 years, with constant in-fighting among the GOP and just trying to keep the government funded and running. Republicans are constantly flipping on criticizing Trump and fawning over him, depending on which way the wind blows.
It's shocking that so many people prefer a bully-rapist-fraud-felon with "a concept of a plan" who has openly talked multiple times about suspending the Constitution and rights of Americans, over almost any other alternative.
Again I don’t even agree with a lot of Trump stuff - or for instance TCJA which was total BS and raised my taxes. But again, Democrats have done nothing for me when they had power either. Where are healthcare improvements? Where is a better tax cut that actually hits the middle or even lowest earners? They couldn’t get it done because they suck at both convincing enough people to vote for them to get 60 votes in the Senate, and they suck at horse-trading to get the important things.
Point is, business, markets and consumers vote their interests. Look at Wall Street, Bitcoin, &c. in the hours leading up to the election.
Trump is very serious about tariffs, and the president has more unilateral authority in this arena than folks realize, he wouldn't even need an act of congress to do alot in this arena
Why would he not? It's not like he respects institutions such as the Supreme Court. And what repercussions has he ever faced for the destruction of norms and guardrails? If anything, he gains even more support.
Damn whoever used that “may you live in interesting times” curse once to many times.
> if the norms mean giving all of our tax dollars to NATO for nothing in return
We do not give our tax dollars to NATO, at least not in any meaningful way. NATO's entire budget as an organization is about $4B/year, which includes valuable shared command/control systems. For the most part, we fund the American military, and we commit to using it in concert with our allies in certain scenarios.
In exchange, we get incredibly valuable hard and soft power. We get access to land in Europe to use as bases, which are staging areas for potential worldwide threats (e.g., an imperialist Russia). We get shared intelligence. We get goodwill with the rest of the West, so that they'll join our trade pacts. We get commitments of Polish tanks and British spies and French manpower if there ever to be a hot war, so that the US can focus on what it does best (air and naval superiority).
But also, you're the only one who brought up NATO. There are myriad unrelated norms that Trump broke the first time around, and will certainly break further this time, that make the institution of "the American government" less able to serve its purpose. Norms like, a president can't pardon himself. A president can't use his position to direct foreign powers to patronize his own businesses. A president can't summon a violent mob to Washington to overturn an election. A president can't conspire with state legislatures and militias to disregard the results of their states' elections. A non-sitting president can't steal classified documents, and can't have ongoing secret communications with a foreign power. A president keeps special counsel at arm's reach. A president shouldn't use tax policy to explicitly punish states that don't vote for him.
Sabotaging the FBI's background check is absolutely without comparison. It was corrupt and inexcusable.
While yes, all presidents will tend to appoint justices they agree with, you cannot in good faith say that there is any comparison between Jackson and Sotomayor on the one hand, and Kavanaugh and Barrett on the other, in terms of qualifications to sit on the bench. And that's just at the Supreme Court level - the whole affair in Florida with Aileen Cannon is another level of obscene.
The "official acts" decision is completely without legal historical merit, and was made up out of whole cloth to allow Trump's appointees to protect him from any consequences from the judicial branch (remember that whole idea of three co-equal branches of government?). No other president has dared make so bold a claim, both because the idea that the Court should be subservient to the president is clearly at odds with how the American government has worked for almost its entire history, and because they didn't have personal crimes to cover up.
I do have a vendetta against Trump, but you have the cause and effect backwards. I don't think he's a bad president because I hate him, I hate him because I think he's a bad president who is dangerous to me personally, to the United States as an institution, and to the continuation of the human race. But perhaps even more than that, I hate him because he has enabled and legitimized pathetically transparent bad-faith arguments like this.
https://www.nber.org/digest/apr20/why-euro-hasnt-become-inte...
Your own link basically says: "dollar is more stable and scalable, so people use it".
Total US spending on all defense, not just NATO, is ~$900 billion or ~13-14% of federal spending. NATO has a total annual budget of less than $4 billion and we cover something like 15% of that budget, less than 0.001% of military spending and some infinitesimal portion of overall spend.
> for nothing in return
The US gains incomparable wealth from controlling the global prime currency. Part of the enforcement of this primacy is 750 military bases in 80 countries, giving the US a force projection capability greater than any empire in human history. For the US, NATO is just a just an organizational tool to manage resources among it's allies.
So many of those dollars spent by NATO (by the US and it's partners) come back to the US economy.
it's actually 50% percentage of "discretionary spending" (meaning the spending that the government gets to decide how to allocate with without changing social security laws, so essentially the "federal budget"
All your tax dollars? How much do you think the US spends on defense without giving anything to NATO? Do you think that’ll somehow decrease if you leave NATO? It just means you’ll have to handle everything yourself. At least currently the US gets to charter about half of all their craft from various European allies.
Not arguing that the carbon tax is legit. It hasn't been proven yet that it isn't just a way to collect money while pretending to do something about the environment.
We should maybe just reconsider in general what kind of thing is economically viable
The real concern isn't that consumerism is threaten, as you seem to indicate that could be a good thing in fact.
I consider the U.S slowly becoming 19th century China.
I would like to remain positive but it might even be worse.
Globalisation, the U.S economy has been relying on developing countries to provide raw and finished produce. Not only de-industrialized, the population suffers from some superiority complex that makes it even hard to accept it may have to learn how to work and make stuff. Betting on AI to solve the universe, a migration to Mars.
Orders of magnitude more potent Pharmaceuticals. fantanyl is a hundred times more potent than Opium, a hundred times cheaper, and far easier to smuggle and conceal.
The U.S got to wake up, not just reconsider its consumerism culture.
Ship fuel (also called bunker fuel) is the dirties form of fuel there is and goes way beyond CO2 emissions. It is heavily contaminated and because of incomplete combustion it contribute heavily to pollution in water, atmosphere, and coast cities. The environmental impacts of heavy fuel oil spills also converts the ships into mobile nature disasters. The costs from oil spills generally spills over to society and people who live near the cost, rather than being carried by the shipping company. Collecting the real cost of that risk should be part of the product price when importing goods.
Tariffs are fungible, so the same tariffs could be used for the purpose of protectionism, geo-political stability, CO2 emissions in transportation, CO2 emissions in production, oil spill insurance costs, air/water pollution, regulative differences in worker rights, or differences in product safety. It can make the market competition more fair or unfair, and depending on what goals one have the definition of fair and unfair will likely change. People who lean both left and right can find arguments both in favor and against, likely at the same time given the fungible nature of tariffs.
Thus if one want to look at it on the bright side, pick the benefits of the political goals that talks to you.
AKA: we figured out how to pass a consumption tax which disproportionately hurts poor people without calling it that because we know it's universally unpopular. When billionaires effective tax rate drops to what will probably be 1%, the wheels are going to REALLY fall off.
Billionaires fund, and in some cases directly craft, the narratives that shape the voter’s perception of the political landscape.
Musk admitting out of the 10 largest EV manufacturers, 9 are not in the U.S.
The Dems didn't really have an inroad to that demographic. Suggesting federally granted home buying credits just sounded like another financial scheme from on high and missed the mark entirely imho; there was no bigger economic discussion happening there.
Somehow that does not compute.
During which presidency did prices go up more? During Trump's last "Tariff" presidency or during the supposed anti-Tariff Biden?
"Watch videos of" is why we're banning TikTok. Just kidding. Or maybe not. I can find stupid people in any camp (well, in some more than others) and make a video about how clueless they are. It's super patronizing to just say your opponents are stupid and IMO one of the reasons why the democrats lost these elections (no shortage of other reasons).
The delusions don't stop at any demographic or party unfortunately. We just live in a post truth, post civil discussion, polarized, society.
What’s so hard to understand about that?
IME they're a diverse group who all bought some just-so stories explaining why life was so much better 4yo. Rose tinted glasses and a repeated call to look to the past to some idealized time that never existed.
All that reinforced by a lot of loud distractions to avoid the awkward fact that the pandemic was a disaster, the tax cuts ballooned the deficit more than Biden, benefited mostly the rich, insiders lining their pockets, racking up pardons, and foreign policy that was openly corrupt.
It's really hard to reflect on the pandemic. There were certainly some funny anecdotes like bleach or horse medicine but there were also some serious professionals who tried their best. We also don't really know what the other possible outcomes could have been given other actions.
I'm sure plenty of rich were lining up their pockets in the Biden presidency as well. Do you have some sort of resource/evidence that there were higher level of corruption during the Trump presidency? Something systemic, not anecdotal. Trump supporters say Biden is corrupt. What is an objective measure here?
Running a deficit during tough times (pandemic) could be the right thing to do.
Okay. How about leveraging the presidency to make a boatload of money from his private business.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/cre...
Also, the Ukraine call, Georgia call, Egypt bribe, flagrant nepotism, that one time he denied funding to the post office because he thought mail in ballots would harm his re-election.
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53772526
Appointing people to agencies who wanted to dismantle them instead of carrying out their mission like Betsy DeVos for Dept of Edu and like Robert F Kennedy will apparently do for HHS because fluoride and vaccines are sus
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/cre...
Creating an atmosphere where loyalty is more important than founding principles which is an environment in which corruption can flourish.
That time he incited a mob to storm the capital because Mike Pence wouldn’t over turn the election results like he wanted.
Eh, maybe he shouldn't have been impeached for that call. President Biden's son had a strangely lucrative position, which he appeared not to be qualified for. And Biden was very involved in pressuring the Ukraine government to fire a prosecutor who was investigating that same energy company. There's a lot of public corruption in Ukraine, which was one of the factors leading to the election of their current president (according to what I've heard anyway).
This doesn't mean that Biden is definitely corrupt, but it does look very suspicious, and seems worthwhile to investigate. Our country is sending a lot of money to Ukraine. We deserve to know everything here.
See references 14, 15, 16, 17 of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden%E2%80%93Ukraine_conspi...
> A joint investigation by two Republican Senate committees released in September 2020 found no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden. A sweeping Republican House committee investigation of the Biden family has found no wrongdoing by December 2023.
And sure, it’s weird Hunter was involved but it’s also weird the guy who brags about being rich still won’t show us his tax returns despite it being something every other president has done and gone as far to make up stories about the IRS while at the same time saying he’ll release them when he can. Joe released his tax returns, it’s all on the table.
Joe appears to be held to a much higher standard than Trump. Like… if Joe asked Kamala to overturn the election results like Trump did to Pence the republicans would be outraged and try to bar him from ever being president again, not that he would because he’s a good person at heart and for which he’ll get no praise, because it’s obvious not to do that and we don’t give out brownie points for abiding common sense.
It’s only bad when the other guy does it which is also why they latched onto Joe’s garbage comment even though Trump has called his opponents, trash, vermin, sick people, the enemy within and encouraged his supporters to call them satan worshippers and gets a free pass. Oh snowflake dems hate being called enemies of the state. He’s doesn’t mean it he’s just trolling the abuse of presidential powers like any reputable statesman would.
But we’re so inundated by the constant flood of news that one scandal replaces itself and it’s hard to remember all the other ones that came before it. We’ve grown numb to it. At this point I’ll just be happy if we make it to the next election in one piece.
You’re so quick to drop the question of the Biden family’s involvement in Ukraine and you pivot to Trump’s tax return, but the billions of our tax dollars and lives lost in Ukraine now make that a MUCH more important issue than Trump’s tax returns.
Congressional investigations blah blah blah, obviously they can’t get anywhere. Trump was impeached for trying to get information right from the source, and it was very stupid. We should get that information, hopefully he takes another shot at it. We’ll see what happens.
Tulsi Gabbard - Director of National Intelligence
Matt Gaetz - Attorney General
Pete Hegeseth - Secretary of Defense
Marco Rubio - Secretary of State
it's clear that at least half all American voters don't understand technical definitions or explanations (this was Obama's problem too). "Drill Baby Drill", "Lock her up", and "cheap gas" is about their comprehension level.
It's like D-voters don't even understand how unhinged they are.
"Everyone is stupid but me" doesn't do anyone any favors and doesn't fix any problem.
"I have the makings of a plan" is 100x more attractive to people who need change.
This, this, so much this.
No one has ever been persuaded by calling them idiots, bigots, or any other insult. In fact, it does the opposite and drives them further away from what you are trying to persuade them to do/
I recommend people read 'How to win friends and Influence people' and 'Rules for Radicals' if they wish to learn on how to better persuade people.
"Chat, is this real?"
We can debate whether Harris' proposed policies would have worked or not, or good for the economy or not, but at least they were comprehensible.
Not a single mention of "abortion" in this document.
See, this is the problem. Actually, serious policies (meaning, more serious than "drill baby drill" or "build a wall") are long, complicated, and boring. They don't fit neatly into a soundbite or a chant at a rally, so people who don't have the temperament or capacity to seek out and read such documents think the policies don't exist.
In seriousness, the solution is that Democrats need to be better at messaging by crafting policies that are understandable to their audience.
Voters demand simple explanations for complex realities, and simple solutions to complex problems, and as a result, the successful politician must fabricate simple explanations and simple solutions, even if they're wrong.
EDIT: For fun, let's contrast the attitude of each campaign to its detractors. The Democrats say that people who oppose their strategies are dumb. The Republicans say that people who oppose their strategies are Communist pedophiles who want to destroy America.
Me too. The Democrats need a better story, a narrative that people can engage with emotionally.
Democrats say that people who oppose their strategies are racist, sexist, xenophobic, dumb, fascist, nazi, you name it.
Republicans say that people who oppose their strategies are racist, sexist, xenophobic, dumb, fascist, and nazi.
> Republicans say that people who oppose their strategies are racist, sexist, xenophobic, dumb, fascist, and nazi.
Only one of their statements is accurate. Not all opinions are equally valid.
What was said, repeatedly, is that _Trump_ is a racist, misogynist, has fascist and nazi tendencies, and is a threat to democracy. All of which is true. Ask his former chief of staff.
I disagree with most GOP policies, but don't have an issue with people voting Republican -- I would have been okay with someone like Romney or McCain as president; I could probably even handle pre-MAGA DeSantis (wouldn't be happy but whatever, we'll live). But if people are voting for _Trump_ specifically, then either they hold the same values as Trump, or they're willing to sell out their values for a promise of cheap gas (that they aren't even going to get!). Either way it's pretty bad.
It didn't used to be like this. The tone of politics changed when name-calling, bullying, and hate became part of campaigning. The country is divided, and the source of the vitriol is one man.
As for the larger social relations context, this link posted elsewhere in the thread nailed it for me: https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/boilingfrogs/liberal-tear... (Excuse the crapwall, it doesn't seem to show up with javascript disabled). I will likely ghost everyone that is openly cheering for this. I'm just not capable of entertaining the gloating over populist destruction at this time. Perhaps in six months or a few years I will be able to forgive what they have done.
For context, I'm libertarian. I own a compact tractor and burn cordwood for primary heat. I find much of the overbearing "woke mob" tedious, and internally roll my eyes when I hear things like parents talking about how their kid is trying out a new pronoun every week. But the left would never have been capable of damaging the very bedrock of our society the way that so-called conservatives throwing their own principles into the trash has.
I had a realization yesterday. This is just like someone close to you dying. The sudden unassailable loss. Walking around in a dazed brain fog going through the motions and not even knowing why. Things are now just different, and will never go back to how they were. But it made me realize that I myself will recover in spite of that, and this put me more at peace.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Your mind is detaching from reality.
MAGA policies directly hurt some people. Let me say that again. MAGA policies DIRECTLY hurt some people.
They're not being your friend because you're conservative, it's because you're supporting policies that will hurt them. Would you be friends with someone who hurts you?
For example, I am a gay man. Conservatives across the country have been trying to undo protections around PrEP under the guise of religious freedom. The true motivation is inciting another HIV epidemic.
I take PrEP. I don't want HIV. I don't want my friends to get HIV. If you vote for these people, you are directly contributing to bodily harm to me and my community. I cannot support you, because that would be self-destructive.
But that's just me. Now look at abortion - many women know people or have themselves, required an abortion. Many have brushed with death. What conservatives propose will DIRECTLY harm them. Trump plans to chase people leaving states for abortions - this will actually, tangibly, directly, harm people!
You don't see this from "trump fans" onto liberals because the left does not propose any policies that will hurt them. If Kamala would've won, nothing bad would happen to conservatives. If we believe Trump, which I do and you should as well, then MANY bad things will happen to leftists. That's the difference.
This is it.
Liberals aren't "offended" by Trump. Liberals don't have a problem with the "way he expresses himself." The problem is with his governance and policies that do real damage to people we care about.
The reason you don't see conservatives being similarly alarmed by liberal policies is because liberal policies don't hurt people.
To saying nothing of what he's done to American democracy. Before the election, there was plenty of hoopla about another stolen election. Then, when Trump won, suddenly that disappeared. What about the mailman carrying hundreds of ballots? Oh, I guess he's okay now. This exposes the hypocrisy at the core of Trump ideology: our election system is horribly broken except when Trump wins. That's not how democracy works and taking that attitude should be immediately disqualifying.
No, the majority accept that those are attributes of Trump, and many people positively enjoy them.
Also the majority do believe it about Trump, but they hand wave it away, or just don't care. And, in a minority of cases, they agree and enjoy being able to openly flaunt it. It's no coincidence that I see Confederate and Trump flags on the same properties.
Not too different than the Germans who voted for Hitler -- though in fairness to them, Hitler seemed pretty normal when he was elected, so you can forgive them for not knowing (and once knowing, it was too late). We already know what Trump is, so what's the excuse now?
This destructive policy was the final straw and prevented me from voting for Harris. (I also didn't vote for Trump).
This fits the Kamala voters well too, but a citation that doesn't exist is probably needed.
> you have to inspire people to vote in you, if the other guy does it better you fail, no matter how low his rethoric
Agreed here.
8 out of 10 people on both sides wouldn't know what happens to the price of a bond when it's yield increases/decreases, let alone what happens to the price of a consumer product when tariffs are attached to it.
My theory is that this election was won through a combination of economic timing due to COVID/inflation, and the left providing perpetual unhinged social media material.
It does!
> and the left providing perpetual unhinged social media material
Well the right also provided such an uninterrupted stream of unhinged material, so
Thank you for your kind words. Don't you think you're generalizing a VERY big group a bit too much?
Emotions are much stronger.
The tariffs level the playing field and allow us to afford to produce goods at home by effectively banning slave goods. Besides, when you produce local its better for the environment because you're not sending everything on massive cargo ships.
from an environmental point of view, yes, by reducing consumption; but that's not why people voted for Trump -- they did because they thought it would lower their prices at the supermarket. it won't do that.
If we assume that the manufacturing increase we would inevitably see in the presence of protectionist tariffs end up in those same places, then that would help make food and other things more affordable for those people.
Whether manufacturing ends up there or elsewhere is of course not actually guaranteed, the shipping technology and environmental laws were very different when the old manufacturing centers were established.
I don’t understand why people are so quick to conclude that others are very, very stupid in this case, as opposed to having interests that don’t align with one’s own and which are difficult to relate to absent the sorts of multi generational experiences these people have had.
Assumption 1: That Americans want those manufacturing jobs
2: Those manufacturing jobs still exist and are not simply automated away
3: People will still want to buy those goods at 30-1000% higher price points
4: That the onshoring of the lowest-quality jobs on the planet will pay enough to overcome the new inflated prices of everyday goods
I assume that people don't know what they're talking about on this subject because 100% of people I’ve seen defending the policy make dumb arguments, while approximately every single economist on the planet argues the opposite.
Manufacturing jobs are not coming back to the US in large quantities. Period.
Even if you apply tariffs to force large companies to leave China, they'll go to other countries -- India, Vietnam, etc.
The one thing that might work is to provide huge tax incentives to entice foreign companies to build factories in the US -- but that has proven to have limited effect -- remember Foxconn supposed huge investment in a factory in the US?
The only place this _might_ work is in high-end chips, such as TSMC -- but those are not the "manufacturing jobs" in Ohio and PA that disappeared.
But mostly, the manufacturing jobs won't come back because companies are rushing to replace them with machines as quickly as possible. So sure, a factory might open in the US, but it won't employ many people.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/the-ira-...
The population is aging, but it's gone from an average age of ~38 in 2010 to ~40 now, while increasing. This is not a collapse, and the US is actually uniquely good at immigration, so there is a reasonable path forward.
It’s just really really hard to put the horse back in the barn once it’s bolted. Shareholders will fight it tooth and nail.
There is a possibility in new energy industries because those haven’t taken root abroad yet and so Biden efforts to fund that are good. Unfortunately Trump wants to gut all that.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship...
It's not that you're "poor" if you make less than $30k, it doesn't depend on whether you're supporting family, it's that it's not possible to legally exist as a single person household working full-time at $15/hr; You are either receiving charity or you're securing your person through some sort of criminal act (squatting, living in your car, living in a park, sleeping in the breakroom at work, living in an illegal basement apartment or having five roommates in an illegal sublet), or you're delving into the 60-80 hour workweek.
Provisions which trigger at the federal poverty line for a single person not receiving private charity, require that you have been involved in criminalized living arrangements for a long time, and also that you have some sort of fixed address by which to reach you.
Why is that the goal? When I was in my late teens / early 20s back in the 90s making low 30s, I did what everyone else my age did: got a roommate.
It's not great most of the time.
It was, however, very motivating for me to improve myself so that I could afford to get my own place.
Several issues that real people today are suffering with is that it's hard to remain a 2-income family and have young kids. Someone's got to take care of them, and daycare costs more than the median worker is likely to make in the limited time your kids can realistically be in daycare. So now you're down to 1 income, expensive rent, or 2 incomes, expensive rent and expensive childcare. Or 2 incomes and live with someone's parents who may also watch the kids, which while some cultures are fine with that, others resent that being their only option (especially if you can't stand those parents!) -- and for elder millennials and older, we generally were able to have better options if we planned our careers wisely. I cannot imagine any advice I would have given to two 18-year-olds from poor families in 2020 that would have set them up to be on track to have kids and live independently anytime. Especially if they were determined to go to college, which everyone is told they must do.
But CPI figures aren't what we have to deal with.
Average rent in 1994 was roughly $500 ($6000/year). Today it's $1400 ($16800/year).
You were paying (if a median unit) 15-20% of your income in rent and felt that this was too much and you needed a roommate.
Today there are lots of people making $32000 a year at full-time jobs (that's $16/hr, pretax), or LESS than that, and being told that they need to pay more than 50%. Or that because they make so little (we credit check tenants now!), they simply are not allowed to rent legally.
Also Elon “Efficiency Czar” is all about cutting jobs not creating them.
It's not a feature of capitalism - we've had capitalism without sending manufacturing overseas for decades. Rather, it's a feature of globalization, which is a tactic that isn't specific to capitalism.
People want cheap shit, they don't care about how competitive the market is. It's just an unfortunate fact that has been reflected by dozens of American monopolies and decades of fervent offshoring. Tariffs just raise the price of said cheap shit until it costs as much as luxury alternatives, and "fixes" the problem by neglecting any market too poor to cope with more expensive goods.
It's a great trick if your goal is to artificially and temporarily encourage competition between two heavily unequal trade partners. It's a suicide rap for low-class Americans that now have to foot the bill for the rest of the economy by paying more for less food. It will put millions of American citizens on welfare, just to make unprofitable businesses seem competent. The people that want this are business owners and voters that do not understand the futility of a trade war with China.
Routinely, conservative proposals, no matter how stupid, are displayed in the most generous light possible. Meanwhile on the left, the opposite is done.
High tariffs? Well, that could maybe bring manufacturing back! Gender affirming care? Every woman in this country will be raped in bathrooms and beaten to a pulp!
It's ultimately the businesses that decide how to conduct their business. If moving your jobs overseas is a cheaper strategy than producing something domestically, you will have a hard time getting anyone to stick around. Our problem today is that America raised it's standard of living without reciprocally raising the median value of the American worker.
>If moving your jobs overseas is a cheaper strategy than producing something domestically, you will have a hard time getting anyone to stick around.
Hence tariffs.... You can't have a consumer class if they cant afford to consume. You can't demand environmental protections and then turn around and claim it cost too much so we build it in a country that we can pollute in. TANSTAAFL
We want environmental protections, we pay for them. Business owners want customers, they pay for them by paying fair wages.
there is no non-free market capitalism; capitalism that is laissez-faire is not true capitalism, it's a mixture of capitalism and socialism (which is what we actually have in the US, mostly starting with FDR, but which can't bring ourselves to actually admit because "socialism is bad".
> Business owners want customers, they pay for them by paying fair wages.
Huh? WalMart has plenty of customers and they don't pay fair wages. They don't have to because they use economy of scale to put all the smaller businesses, who might have paid fair wages, out of business.
Paying fair wages is not a feature of capitalism -- only if you are in a market sector that demands it. Corporations hate it, thus offshore production, but they survive by convincing enough people that having lots of cheap shit is better than paying fair wages (even if it destroys a significant portion of the American workforce).
When every company is put out by an 'economy of scale' type company with the same tactics, you end up with a lot of sellers and no more buyers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_p...
What you are essentially saying is that over half the public has a low level of comprehension which simply isn’t true.
You can’t insult millions of people and expect them to meet you in the middle on any issues. And the issues are far more nuanced than cheap gas, like the fact that 1.7 million people work in the energy industry and happen to vote in swing states.
Actually, since IQ is bounded on the low side and not bounded on the other side, it is actually likely that if the average is 100, more than 50% are below average. But that is not guaranteed. You could have only one dumb person with everyone else >100.
The average American reads at a 7th- to 8th-grade level. 21% of Americans are functionally illiterate. https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statisti...)
It's not an insult, it's just a fact. And it's a problem for politicians who need to communicate complicated policy proposals.
Americans aren't getting smarter, so politicians need to adjust the policies.... which is how we get "build a well" and "drill baby drill."
21%, yes, but what kind of American? Central American, South American?
US citizens, as I think was clear from the context and the link.
I don't know how accurate these stats are, but it's interesting nonetheless.
it is perfectly possible for a country to have the best economy ever while still having a massive amount of people who can't afford food.
They don't need to, when they can very trivially understand the impact it has on their pockets.
("Why would they believe their own lying pockets, over our nice technical explanations, graphs, and citations telling them that their income is fine and things are affordable?!")
The thinking goes that Trump and the GOP will gut the Federal Govt and the spending with it. Then Trump will give Ukraine to Putin solving the food growth and export problems with Ukraine. Then MBS in Saudi Arabia will be more than happy to accomodate requests for more oil.
All three will reduce inflation and lower prices. Who knows, it could go so far that four years from now voters are complaining about deflation.
- Gutting the Fed Gov doesn't bring down inflation or prices. These are not correlated issues.
- The US is a net exporter of oil, doesn't depend on the Saudis.
- "Giving Ukraine" to Putin won't happen, as much as Trump would like to help his buddy out, but because the EU won't let it, because Congress ultimately controls spending, not POTUS, and they're the ones (mostly the GOP) pushing for more military aid and a bigger budget (they upped Biden's military budget and aid to Ukraine). But even if Trump did drop all US military aid to Ukraine, the Ukraine won't just collapse, that would take time. And even if Russia did fully occupy Ukraine and "end" the war, that doesn't impact food prices in the US as food imports from the Ukraine are a tiny percentage of total food imports, very little impact. Sunflower oil, maybe.
These are not factors that will bring down prices.
The US still imports a lot of petroleum, but that is only because it has a comparative advantage in refining heavy crude. Most of the crude produced in the US is very light sweet crude, which is easier to refine. Some of that gets exported and refined overseas.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=m...
Yes they do.
If they don't understand the causes, then they will make the wrong decisions to fix the problem.
Like just blaming Biden who kept inflation down, and electing Trump who clearly will increase inflation.
By not understanding, the people are allowing themselves to be victimized by the right wing elites. Just like the south was convinced to have a civil war by a few wealthy land owners.
I'm just thinking the baseline should be a bit higher. And we get, what get today by, the standards going down, and a large part of that is the religious war on education and science. Because the less educated, are more easily controlled and the 'right' use this. On whole, the farther those decisions are from reality.
Otherwise the economy is not the reason people dumped Kamala..... This is becoming illogical (at least for me...)
People are mad about their perception of the economy, but the economy is fine. Once their team is in, their perception will change over night.
People complain about gas going up a dollar and cry about milk and eggs. But it is actually pretty good right now.
If the right is ready for a civil war when things are good, what happens to US voters when the Economy actually is bad.
If we get 20-30% inflation (because no labor because of deportations, and tariffs), and losing jobs because of budget cuts (people forget Trump 1 didn't create many jobs).
What is very likely is that Stephen "my precious" Miller (aka Goebbels-lite) will get to break up more families, "lose" more vulnerable children and build a few more international convention breaking "camps".
Addendum: Rather than downvote at least expand on why you might think Miller will not repeat what he has done before in pursuit of the goals he has clearly stated?
They're cut from from the Enoch Powell, Goebbels playbook - it's not name calling when it's simple factual description of the source material in question.
This isn't some US Democratic smear at all, Miller is regarded as a far right extremist and outlier by Republicans (eg: https://www.salon.com/2018/01/21/lindsey-graham-slams-stephe...)
Call a spade a spade.
"To be fair" wrt Donald Trump, in my opinion the Generals were bang on describing him as a Fascist but he's nowhere near the level of being an actual Nazi that, say, his father actually was.
He's primarily a self serving opportunist and a supremely talented and natural grifter, the people to really worry about will be his his appointments in this coming term - they'll have their own agenda's and will have relatively free reign to pursue them as long as they are loyal to Trump (in his opinion).
Wasn't Goebbels the propaganda man, and the things Stephen Miller is tweeting about is extremely inflammatory, he is the Trump extreme Propaganda Man.
And since as stated earlier, mass deportations might not be realistic, the propaganda of caged Mexicans and destroying Mexican Families, is the kind of marketing fodder to make the Republican Base 'think' that real action is happening.
Republican's have been making a lot of reasonable claims about a 'legal path to citizenship'. And what does Stephen Miller just do, he tweeted that they will start looking into revoking citizenship for people that was already granted. To reverse citizenship. Where does that end? With Mexicans only? That seems more in line with Goebbels.
I think laptops and electronics could hit 20% inflation.
While farm good, more impacted by immigration would probably be less that 20%, but who knows. If you can't pick the fruit at all, inflation can spike rapidly. Year or so ago I think peaches hit triple digit inflation, (and came back down, yes, it fluctuates).
But if people were going to use logic like that, then why vote for him again at all? There was an entire 4 years of chaos that nobody remembers. Why should we think that by the mid terms people will suddenly become logical again.
I doubt very many people are going to actually track their receipts. And those who do will only get coverage on MSNBC, CNN, etc so this will be branded "fake news".
Of course they do. You can be angry and still need to make a decision about which option is most likely to make your situation better.
Anyone who actually thought through Trump's intended policies would know they won't make that particular situation better (such as bring down the price of housing or goods), except maybe the crypto bro's. In fact large tariffs will raise the price of goods (oops!).
But most people don't think things through. And if they were watching TV -- which most of the older electorate does -- then they can't even think things through because they're bombarded with superficial scare ads.
They aren't intelligent enough to realize that correlation != causation. Add to that the whole "Trump is rich and a businessman so he must know what he's doing in terms of financials".
There are multiple financial organisations that did deep calculation on both candidates their policy and Harris' policies were going to be invariably better for the economy, even for the lower working class. But people won't listen to that, they'll just go by gut feel.
Its the logical conclusion to the distrust in the academic & political class that has been building since the early 2010s. Not only in America, in Europe too. A big part of it is that for the first time since the late 80s, many aspects of life are stagnating or declining in the West. So why would people vote for the status quo parties?
Especially for Democrats / left parties in Europe, Maslow's hierarchy of needs works into it: why would you vote for a party that gives laughable DEI issues (blacklist/whitelist > blocklist/allowlist) equal amounts of ink as "let's make sure people can pay their rent."
Sadly the only solution is to care harder, even if it feels horrible to continuously be the bigger man. If you let the bottom part of the electorate wither, they'll drag on us like an anchor and make us all drown.
I’d love to know what DEI issues are laughable and which are not. Or are they all laughable?
Because an agenda that seeks to continue rolling back reproductive rights and protections for diverse people doesn’t really evoke laughter for me.
I agree with you that people who are actually starving care much more about having food than being treated as equal citizens.
But lets be real. People are not starving. Homelessness, yes, because the housing market is fucked -- which is not directly the GOP or the Dem's fault, and not something Trump or Harris would be able to "just fix" -- but food is heavily subsidized in the US, though what the poor have access to is mostly processed garbage food which is why they suffer from many more health problems than the wealthier. (This is a huge problem which neither party is addressing.)
What's also interesting is the poorest segment in the US, under $30K, who might be the closest to "starving" (as a euphemism), voted primarily Democrat this election.
Having said all the above, I do agree with you that having a roof over your head is much more important to most people than being treated equally, and that economic equality is the biggest problem in our country.
Unfortunately, Trump doesn't give a shit about economic equality. And the Dems only pay lip service to economic equality. After all, it's a feature, not a bug, of capitalism.
So since Trump isn't going to fix that problem -- in fact will make it worse (judging by his first term), plus the fact that "do we really care about human decency and values so little that we're willing to put a despicable human being -- by all accounts -- as our leader?" I can't stomach that even if Trump was the Second Coming of Christ as his cultist Evangelical followers seem to think.
This is simply not true. It's not Democrats who keep making income taxes less progressive. It's not Democrats who refuse to pass a refundable child tax credit. It's not Democrats who attack programs like SNAP. It's not Democrats who pass right-to-work laws and bust unions. It's not Democrats who fight student loan forgiveness. It's not Democrats who try to repeal the ACA. It's not Democrats who fight minimum wage increases.
We live in a country where whatever Democrats try to do for the poor, they get attacked for being socialists or communists.
Yes, sometimes Democrats make mistakes. Sometimes they pass bad policy. But Democrats do more than pay lip service. Things we wouldn't have without Democrats: Social Security, Medicare (with an assist from Eisenhower), Medicaid, food stamps (SNAP), ACA, the child tax credit.
Yes, the radical initiative of... going back to the status quo that existed for decades. I'm referring to abortion.
> and protections for diverse people
Do you really think minorities (who are generally of a lower socio-economic status) care more about being called a slur than having a roof over their head and being able to pay their groceries? Or that women care more about the ratio of male-female CEOs and senators rather than if they themselves are getting paid a livable wage?
People like to pretend policy isn't zero sum, but it is. Governments have finite budgets. People have finite attention spans. Thus things must be prioritized. Rent, finances, food, health, these need to be prioritized. Once everyone is doing good on those points, you can move up the pyramid.
I see a lot of dismissing people as stupid, and I don't think it's a fair assessment of what happened here.
Spanish has been the main language at housing construction sites for a long time. The other industry that will get hit hard is agriculture, so I expect housing and food prices to spike a lot after Trump deports all of the illegal immigrants. Coupled with a trade war and juiced interest rates at the same time, we have basically a perfect scenario for hyper-inflation.
This isn't just a stereotype. Look at construction, how many appear Latino to you? Domestic people have much higher expectations and are more resilient to exploitation - they won't break their back for super low wages.
But intelligence itself is more like exponentially distributed. Think of a chess grandmaster versus a range of people of various ability. What does the distribution of winning odds look like?
Intelligence is not exponentially distributed. That would mean that the density is monotonically decreasing which its not. There are more “average people” than extremely low intelligence ones.
More concretely, someone with 140 IQ is not 40% more intelligent than someone with 100 IQ. It would be more correct to say that 140 IQ person is orders of magnitude more intelligent than the average person.
Perhaps a better analogy is the decibel scale. 100 dB vs 110 dB is only a difference of 10% on the scale, but in actually represents an order of magnitude change. A similar effect goes on with intelligence and how we measure it.
If you look at any intellectual skill or ability, the most raw and natural measuremnt is not normal. Going back to chess, if you look at ELO, you might be persuaded that chess ability is normally distributed. But thats wrong because ELO, like decibel, is a log transformation of the underlying measurement. We take logarithms when the the raw thing we are looking is so variable it spans orders of magnitude. So in reality the underlying distribution of chess ability is extremely skewed with a heavy right tail. It spans orders of magnitude.
What Ive been trying to do is make the argument why an exponential-like distribution is a more natural representation of intelligence and therefore what the "underlying distribution" looks like.
Clearly, a delta function against a shelf game is not a natural or useful representation of height so I think that counterpoint to your argument is obvious.
According to you, what is the underlying distribution of intelligence and why?
I think intelligence is normally distributed, like all other human characteristics. When transformed to win rates based on intelligence that becomes a different distribution. Your argument is centered on the 2nd distribution.
My question was why do you say it is normally distributed? where is your evidence?
> When transformed to win rates based on intelligence that becomes a different distribution.
You dont have to look at just competition, but other mental skills too. Most any application of intelligence is not normally dostributed. Why is this fact not a natural reflection of the underlying distribution?
I am struggling to see any support for your position. Help me out.
This is effectively casting the distribution into a different space. Taking the right tail of a normal distribution and applying a test on it converts it to a Dirac delta distribution.
A critical issue is that Dems imagine there is a path to success that goes around an uninformed electorate. In an era where the news media is largely disintermediated, the only way to success is by engaging the type of voters Dems shun. That means listening to them and giving them some of what they want, and less of what they don’t want.
This article and the source material from the Economist argue that what really happened is Republicans negatively polarized themselves against the economy, and will just say anything in surveys. https://www.econlib.org/why-so-sad/
I wonder if we'll make it to March 2025 before half of Republicans once again say that the economy is doing quite well.
I dunno if this is price gouging or restaurants genuinely are paying more for their supplies. End result is the same, I am paying more if I eat out.
Yes, this is anecdotal. Yes I know I should probably eat at home. I’m just saying this to show that stock markets, GDP etc doesn’t matter if people are stressed while buying groceries or having a meal at a local restaurant. None of the fancy infographics matters if I am starving
That is the point. General public either does not understand or does not want to understand the nuances. That is the unfortunate situation we are in. To them, they are unable to afford stuff, Biden is the president, so he is to blame. And Trump capitalized on it completely.
Politics is largely not a logical game, it is an emotional/knee-jerk-reaction game. If it was logical, nobody would ever vote for people like Cruz, Trump, Boebert etc.
At the very least we would have avoided this incredibly damaging narrative about the stolen election. And there's a chance that the country would be less polarized than it is now.
Hindsight is 20/20. Also, wasn't the Democratic activist base thinking in 2020 that Trump getting elected would be the end of democracy? Good luck convincing them to stand down.
On another note: Winston Churchill: "...it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time..."
But I am increasingly of a mind that Churchill may be wrong: perhaps we should re-investigate alternatives to our current form of government and possibly to democracy itself - perhaps there is something better for us b/c today:
- We know more about ourselves (e.g., the IQ note, above),
- The rules have changed (e.g.,we have diluted the requirements to be a voter), and
- we now can simulate group behaviors based on large populations of different individuals.
I was recently surprised to learn what "sortition" is. This possible enhancement might have some beneficial value in reducing corruption but was apparently rejected by the USA's founding fathers. OTOH they weren't interested in building a democracy but wanted a republic instead, which requires an educated voting class, which we no longer have thanks to our changes in suffrage.
So, in a way, the Founding Fathers set up a system where most voters had higher-than-average IQ. Succeeding generations inherited that system and, among other things, diluted voter requirements. Now we are possibly paying a price for making changes. Perhaps we're moving in the direction of a literal idiocracy.
This approach is a great way to lose elections.
Try explaining MMT, interest rates, fractional reserve banking, etc. to even college educated people and you’ll just get a blank stare, but everyone can intuitively understand a gold standard
It's the [perception of the] economy, stupid:
As I'm learning, perception beats all.
He created his own Kool-Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by it." -Brautigan
You are giving Americans too much credit.
Regular Americans don't have any idea what's going. They don't know what inflation is, or what is causing it. They only know what they're told, so what matters is who they listen to. (Look at recent polls that show that Republicans feel that they are heavily impacted by inflation, and Democrats much less so.) Unfortunately, the traditional sources of information have lost the trust of a large body of the American people, so they look elsewhere for a source of trust, and they find it in a charismatic con-man.
Trump spent years pretending to be a businessman on TV, and that skills pays off at his rallies and his interviews, where he perfected the improvisation that rubes mistakes for sincerity. Any other politician speaks in rehearsed clichés, which Americans have been accustomed to, and which they associate with dishonesty, even when they're telling the truth. It helps, and does not hurt, that Trump says crazy shit that keeps people entertained. I don't believe that politics should be based on that kind of thrill, but apparently it is.
Trump's actual policy proposals are mostly nonsense, but it doesn't matter. If you want to compete with him, you have to to be (a) interesting and (b) persuasive.
The election results don't make much sense in terms of serious policy. Voters worry about inflation: they vote for tariffs? Voters worry about democracy: they vote for the guy responsible for J6? Voters are 50% female: they vote for a SCOTUS that care less women's issues? The only issue where a vote for Trump coincides with voter concerns is immigration.
It's easier to explain this election in terms of "Trump seems confident and strong... Harris seems scripted and phony." The closest thing to a real issue is probably the impression that "Democrats are a bunch of radical woke communists"
Trump survived an assassination attempt, a series of questionably motivated legal challenges, and then leaned into showing up for hostile interviews during the campaign.
At a time where there is armed conflict spreading across the world again, this kind of personality is appealing to a large portion of the population, and understandably so.
Sure, but he was plenty popular before all of that. The appeal, imho, is in the calculated appearance of sincerity and toughness... from a guy who is in reality embodies neither of those qualities. Both the assassination and legal challenges amplify the appearance of toughness. The "mean kids" comment is spot on.
> and then leaned into showing up for hostile interviews during the campaign.
Not sure what you're referring to here. Joe Rogan and Theo Von are pretty far from being hostile to Trump.
Any such calculated attempt at appearing tough would break down when a bullet barely missed your head. His reaction of staying on stage and encouraging the crowd would be quite hard to fake.
No, just years of improv training.
As a reminder, this is a guy with the thinnest skin imaginable, who literally cannot tolerate any criticism, has never exercised or done physical labor in his life, and has never faced any challenge he couldn't buy himself out of. It's all an act. Sorry to hear that you're just as gullible as the majority of voters.
Rather than resenting a large part of the nation for their vote, my hope is that we all practice humility and reflect on the truth regarding why this happened and not just chalk it up to "over half the country is stupid".
Sorry, this is a hilariously dumb take. When was the last time you saw Trump "practice humility"? Or even anyone on the maga right?
Democrats have their problems, but they are at least able to admit mistakes.
It’s why he called Trump the “opioid of the masses”[1]. You just make promises even when you know it’s total BS. But at least people are feeling heard.
I think the average voter really doesn’t want to have a nuanced discussion where they learn about the problems that they’re experiencing. They just want to hear someone say “I got this”… even if they don’t.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/opioid-...
Being in office when inflation hits is a recipe for electoral disaster, regardless of actual culpability, which, in this interconnected world, is likely lower than perceived.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-refo...
That said, I have been contending that people experience prices and talking about lowering inflation when prices have recently gone up is net negative for the incumbent administration.
Imposing tariffs, and starting a trade war, will surely mean that imports will shoot up in price for the consumer. Exports will suffer, which is likely why he'll also try to devalue the dollar - to make exports be more attractive amid the receiving countries tariffs.
So that's a double-whammy as far as prices go, for the consumer.
His grand plan is of course to bring back manufacturing to the US - or that foreign companies will set up plants in the US. But that doesn't happen overnight, and there's no automatic mechanism that will make the companies do so.
And Trump has been clear about imposing the highest tariffs on all Chinese imports. Now look around you, and try to estimate how many things you see that are made in China.
Then you have the other countries, too, which will get hit with tariffs.
* Drill for oil, lower the price of gas, prices at the store come down.
* Stop the wars that make for unstable access for gas.
* Create pipelines so that instead of "flaring" Natural gas, we transport it cheaply to be used for electricity generation
* Change the tariff structure so that American goods are worth something against Chinese imports that raises the value of the dollar which lowers the cost of goods
* Stop the insane energy policies that raise gas prices by 45 cents per gallon (in CA for example) for 0.0001% change in climate
NONE of these were democrat talking points.
Strategically and economically stupid. Buy oil when everyone has it, sell oil when everyone else has ran out.
> * Stop the wars that make for unstable access for gas.
The US military is the largest socialist jobs program in the world and is the single greatest creator of skilled labor for our economy.
> * Change the tariff structure so that American goods are worth something against Chinese imports that raises the value of the dollar which lowers the cost of goods
Lets say you make widgets for $9 and sell them to me for $10 (a healthy 10% profit). The government comes along and tells you there is a $2 tariff on widgets. Are you going to sell me widgets at $8 (a $1 loss) or raise the price to $12? Tariffs are a tax on goods paid by the buyer and a way to de-incentivize overseas production. But here is the problem - do you want to make 39 cents an hour sewing soccer balls or do you want to pay 10x for that soccer ball so that an American can have a livable wage doing the sewing for you?
The "American Dream" is exploitation of cheap overseas labor because of our superior economic position. Regardless of how you feel about that morally, Trump's economic plan is to try and figure out how to on-shore the lowest paid factory jobs.
This sounds an awful lot like the broken window fallacy. Wars are destructive and any amount spent on that destruction is lost from the economy no matter how many people you hire in the process. Surely funding schools would be a more direct way of creating skilled labour.
The U.S defense budget would be a fraction of its budget if used for defense.
There is an upside in wining wars. But since the U.S has been losing them, it's funding jobs that provide no value. Would better be spent elsewhere.
The Japanese unique economic boom after WWII was mostly due to having little to know defense budget. Germany's was less impressive but also benefited from focusing on the economic performance.
Not necessarily. Tariffs are a limited tax, in this case maxing out at 100%. Making soccer balls from China cost twice as much is not going to bridge the gap between viable and non-viable for onshore production. It really only bridges the gap where the off vs on shore savings are much closer, which tends to apply to more complex manufacturing processes, which incorporate more automation in the process, as cost gaps between developed and undeveloped countries tend to be greatest in the cost of labor. Automation is often cheaper in more developed countries, in fact.
Onshoring those kinds of jobs/infrastructure would provide a range of national security and economic benefits.
I genuinely don't understand how tariffs have become so poorly understood and divisive. Every argument about them I see framed seems either highly biased or pure misinformation, from both sides. They are not free tax money, but they also can have benefits for low and middle class people.
I also think its disingenuous to call tariff induced price increases inflation. That's like calling a sales tax inflation. Maybe its technically correct, maybe not, but if your going to apply it here, make sure you are also applying it to carbon/gas taxes, environmental regulations (they also increase costs), and capital gains taxes (they lower asset supply).
'Just' stop wars short of surrendering is easy to say. No evidence Republicans actually could deliver or prevent. Just talk.
The tariffs were largely kept in place between Biden and Trump. The criticism here would apply equally to both but also ignores trade wars.
The pipeline bit is perhaps viable, but a drop in the bucket (with respect to at least the keystone XL [1])
[1] https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-895299166310
"Even if the Keystone XL pipeline had been completed, the amount of oil it was designed to transport would have been a drop in the bucket for U.S. demand, experts noted. The U.S. used nearly 20 million barrels of oil a day last year, while global consumption of oil was near 100 million barrels. The pipeline would have contributed less than 1% to the world supply of oil, according to AP reporting.
“The total volume of additional supply is negligible in a market that uses 100 million barrels of oil every day,”"
The right still has them as talking points, where the left has failed miserably. Talking about any potential solutions seems to have enticed American voters more than trying to sweep it under the rug.
Also easy to observe that it would be better than conducting wars and surrendering anyway.
You mean the gas taxes that fund road maintenance? That tax is a tyranny imposed by how much we rely on cars, not by climate change.
Gas tax is much better in this regard, but all of these are pretty extortionary.
New York has even taken to explicitly charging higher rates to out of state residents, which is of questionable constitutionality.
You can take a bus, taxi, or airplane to travel.
The question in that case is whether someone's license can be suspended after conviction of traffic offenses without a separate hearing on the suspension. Denial of rights is common practice upon conviction of a crime, e.g. unless you've been convicted of a crime you generally have a right not to be incarcerated.
> You can take a bus, taxi, or airplane to travel.
So if you're a farmer in New Jersey and have to deliver your produce to a farm-to-table restaurant in New York City, which of these is supposed to apply? Also notice how little this has to do with tolls. If your license was suspended you could pay an employee to drive your truck into the city but the E-ZPass tag doesn't care about that.
Perhaps you could cite the basis upon which you conclude they are legally a right.
There are plenty of contexts where cars are the only realistic mode of travel and then it isn't a matter of preference because there isn't any viable alternative.
But people say "driving is a privilege, not a right" as if these things are alternatives to each other. Requiring you to pass a driving test is quite a different thing than discriminating against you based on your state of residence.
Here's a quote from your own case:
> The nature of the private interest involved here (the granted license to operate a motor vehicle) is not so great as to require a departure from "the ordinary principle . . . that something less than an evidentiary hearing is sufficient prior to adverse administrative action," Eldridge, supra at 424 U. S. 343, particularly in light of statutory provisions for hardship and for holders of commercial licenses, who are those most likely to be affected by the deprival of driving privileges.
Strongly implies that constraints exist on what the government can deny. What's that about, if there isn't a right to be implicated?
Which tolls on which road? At least where I live there's more than one toll road in the area.
Being a such a populous big state with only tiny, regional public transportation systems means everyone and their cousin drives everywhere, all the time. That's how.
[0]https://blog.cubitplanning.com/2010/02/road-miles-by-state/
[1]https://www.bts.gov/browse-statistical-products-and-data/sta...
California can do better, it just doesn't.
Californians only pay $0.68/gallon. You up for an additional $2.08/gallon in taxes to pay for those sweet, German roads?
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/gas-taxes-in-europe-20...
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-gas-tax-rates...
I'm sure somebody has written a book already about how ostensibly wealthy societies can fail at basic infrastructure that they previously mastered, driven by greed and complacency and other socioeconomic factors. I think this has happened over and over again (Rome, and many other societies).
How about Foundation by Isaac Asimov.
Current admin did this at record rates
>Stop the wars that make for unstable access for gas
The US is a net exporter of energy so the instability is helpful
>Create pipelines
We have already entered the late stage hydrocarbon era. Massive imminent domain projects for a decade or two of utility are I advised
>Change the tariff
We cannot go to a pre-globalization time. Alea iacta est. The only way for tariffs to work against BRICS would be a unilateral tariff which would affect all American commerce.
Go read some Peter Navarro. He explains desperately how important it is to be protectionist (to a limited extent) with certain industries. Especially if they link to security and health of the nation. You do not want a hostile nation to make all of your pharmaceuticals. You do not want them to hold you hostage over your lack and their surplus of steel. This is basic, basic stuff.
And the whole point is that other countries are not engaging in fair trade practices. If they aren't engaging in fair trade, then they can't engage in this fabled myth of "free trade". This is literally the Trump trade doctrine. He has spelled it out and acted on it. If the CCP hadn't manipulated the price of steel to wipe out American steel producers, they wouldn't be subject to extreme tariffs. Simple, simple stuff.
When he speaks of broad-based tariffs, he is using one of his framing techniques that he unironically explains in the Art of the Deal.
With all that said, the tariffs have me concerned, but allowing our industrial base to continue to evaporate has me more concerned.
> he unironically explains in the Art of the Deal
He didn't write that book. Based on his numerous failed businesses and his history of poor negotiations (Afghanistan as a very obvious example), we should be operating on the assumption that he isn't actually good at this, and pray his advisors are.
> With all that said, the tariffs have me concerned, but allowing our industrial base to continue to evaporate has me more concerned.
Then you should have been happy with Biden, who worked towards things like the CHIPS act, which moved manufacturing of critical supply chain back to America.
The economist, the financial times, and large numbers of economists have said that his plans are going to fuel inflation and will reduce GDP. Elon Musk said we should be prepared to make sacrifices. People are telling you what's coming, and that's what you should be concerned about.
Blaming Trump for Biden giving the Taliban 80 billion dollars in military equipment is about what I expected.
What is it?
The whole point is that people buy shit from the US by making the German stuff more expensive.
But I guess that explains why people voted for Trump.
- Drill for oil: oil production is at all all-time high. Drilling more doesn't drop local prices.
- Stop the wars: 100% agree we should end all wars. Except that Trump has no control over this. Also, the one thing that both parties agree on is increasing the military budget (Congress voted for more than Biden proposed).
Even more incomprehensible that even if Trump’s policies were sound that Americans would vote to have such a reprehensible person as their leader.
Climate change aside, you do realize that States decide on gas taxes, not the Federal government, right? Which means that neither Trump nor Harris can do anything about what gas taxes CA decides to add, or any other State.
That unoriginal theory as applied to this election appears to be based on exit polls. History has shown these polls are unreliable.
1. Pundits like the one who penned this quip^2 just aren't worth much anymore.
Now that we've slowed inflation to a manageable level, we need to grow wages to catch up. I never heard a good plan on that from either side.
The reason you never hear a good plan for growing wages to catch inflation is because inflation is a form of intentionally regressive taxation. For reasons of macroeconomic theories meeting special interests with socio-political leverage.
Which has always been treated as a spooky four-letter word in economics. I remember the news stories in 2008 when we had a brief period of deflation and the headlines were particularly apocalyptic (even despite the overall grim economic news of the time).
Lowering prices sounds nice, but my understanding has always been that it would come at the cost of less actual wealth overall.
The most obvious argument against this notion is that many things are effectively deflationary anyway, such as computers, which at least until recently were deflationary in the extreme. Not only did they tend to get ever cheaper over time, but while getting cheaper they have and continue to become more powerful, at times by miles in the space of a few years. And yet, people still buy computers, and firms still engineer and manufacture them, because at some point it doesn't matter that if you wait 6 months you can get a vastly better computer for half the price, at some point you have to actually buy a computer.
You have it literally backwards. Like 100% backwards. In a normal healthy economy, salaries grow faster than inflation. So workers living on their wages are not affected.
Transient periods of high inflation might even benefit them, as they also devalue their fixed _debts_. It's the rich people who are affected by the inflation, they are forced to invest money, rather than just leave them sitting in a risk-free account.
Conversely, deflation primarily causes pain for the working class (that's how Hitler came to power!), because it slows down the economy and makes their debts grow. While rich people can just enjoy having a risk-free real income growth.
Interest rates move in the same direction as inflation with some lag, so the idea that poor people benefit due to reduction in debt is weak at best, but given that the rich rely on debt so heavily themselves, any positive effect on the poor would be even greater for the rich barring some special reason I can't think of.
As for rich people being the ones affected by inflation, it does in fact change their incentives dramatically, so that's true as far as that goes, however it doesn't actually result in loss of wealth for them as again, they are the ones with the capacity to invest it in assets to protect or grow its value, and the ability to use leverage to use money now that they don't even have yet, in exchange for devalued money in the future. It might have some effect of weeding out the truly incompetently or indigently rich, but of that group the ones who don't have smarter family around to save them from themselves will be those who probably come from lower class backgrounds anyway.
If deflation were expected, rich people really would just leave money in a bank account (as long as investing gave smaller returns, or seemed too risky.) The inflation is an incentive for cash-rich people to put that cash to use instead of sitting on it. This can be a huge driver for the economy.
A mortgage on a single home seems kind of like a special case, they tend to have unusual rules that insulate borrowers from the effect of interest rates to a certain extent, which otherwise work to cancel out the time-preference effect on money. Otherwise the working classes have their wealth tied to the sale of their labor, something (wages) which is notoriously sticky, hence a greater effect on them.
I don't disagree that the macroeconomic argument does incentivise rich people to use their wealth productively, but it is precisely this argument that relies on the idea that the wealthy have means available to them to protect the value of their wealth. You can't have the former and not the latter.
That's a common misconception, propagated by people who want the economy to stagnate (goldbugs earlier, crypto bros now).
Germany experienced actual _deflation_ in 1929-1932 as a result of the governmental austerity. It's exactly what put Hitler in power. Deflation rose up to 12% in 1932!
Here's the table: https://www.gabriel-zucman.eu/files/capitalisback/T271 (sidenote, seeing scientific notation on the CPI chart is scary).
Hitler then immediately started an expansionist fiscal policy, using state funds to build up the infrastructure and military. This immediately resulted in the GDP growth.
> but given that the rich rely on debt so heavily themselves
Rich people are not in debt. Their net worth is not negative. That's not the case for poor people.
Unlike microeconomics, macroeconomics is pretty simple. The total amount of debt held equals to the total amount of debt owned.
I never said rich people are "in debt", I said that they use and rely on debt. In the sense meant in the argument about why inflation helps the poor, the advantage also comes to the rich, if I even concede that it's true, which I do not, because rising interest exists specifically to counteract the long term effect of inflation.
Rich people's wealth is protected from inflation, while the working classes' wealth is not, that is the key difference. That is precisely inflation's alleged reason detre, that it incentivises people, in effect, those with more wealth, to use their money in ways that protect its value.
You can't have the macroeconomic argument for inflation driving growth and then simultaneously allege that rich people are just as affected by inflation as wage earners, the former relies on the idea that there is a way to use excess wealth through investment that will protect its value.
You can claim that wages should grow with inflation, but not only is that self-evidently not what happens when you look around, but the stickiness of wages is so well recognised that it's treated as almost apriori in macroeconomics, which is why I take it to be a either a feature or accepted consequence of inflation that it is regressive, depending on the specific policymaker.
There's no such thing as a "minor deflation". And yes, it was the proximate cause. And keep in mind, it was not a month, it was 4 years.
Quite simply: you can't have noticeable economic growth with deflation. You _can_ have robust economic growth even during hyperinflation.
I lived through one myself.
> I never said rich people are "in debt", I said that they use and rely on debt.
It mostly means that they _own_ debt (usually indirectly), not that they are _in_ debt.
> Rich people's wealth is protected from inflation, while the working classes' wealth is not, that is the key difference.
That is the opposite of the actual history. Rich people are the ones who suffer the most from inflation. Hyperinflation wipes all debts nominated in the currency, and more importantly, it forces people to invest in risky enterprises.
Workers, in general, simply don't have a lot of savings and instead rely on the constant stream of income from salary.
That's why the ruling classes are so obsessed with the inflation.
I'm not really arguing against either of those positions, though I'd push back against the first more strongly. I'm arguing that inflation as a driver of economic growth comes at greater expense to wage earners than the wealthy, that it's regressive.
>It mostly means that they _own_ debt (usually indirectly), not that they are _in_ debt.
Dude, enough nitpicking my specific language, you know exactly what I mean, this isn't productive or interesting.
>That is the opposite of the actual history. Rich people are the ones who suffer the most from inflation.
No they don't.
>Hyperinflation wipes all debts nominated in the currency
Nobody benefits from hyper-inflation, wealthy people don't want it, working class people don't want it, nobody wants it, except maybe a kleptocratic government. This is why interest rates track inflation, albeit with some lag.
>more importantly, it forces people to invest in risky enterprises.
I agree, although with the caveat that the wealthier you are, the more you can insulate yourself from risk. Again, I agree that the incentive to drive economic growth works, I just don't agree with your assertion of who actually pays the bigger price on aggregate.
>Workers, in general, simply don't have a lot of savings and instead rely on the constant stream of income from salary.
Correct, exactly why they suffer/lose the most wealth from the effects of inflation. Their wages are devalued while remaining sticky, and their capacity to save enough wealth to make investments that protect their wealth is curtailed by inflation eating its value.
>That's why the ruling classes are so obsessed with the inflation.
Obsessed with a "healthy" rate of inflation, find me evidence that a substantial number of people with their hands on the levers of wealth or power advocate that we should have no inflation? They don't.
Yeah. The last time deflation happened in Europe, it resulted in Hitler coming to power.
Not kidding, Hitler came to power after a period of _deflation_ in Germany.
Do you want a mirror?
And why that episode was minor?
This whole thing is just a distraction that I didn't even bring up though, it has nothing to do with my original points. I wouldn't want to experience prolonged deflation at that rate either, markets rely on a certain level of stability and predictability to function well, everybody benefits from that and I would not argue otherwise.
Years from 1929 to 1932. Deflation was 12% in 1932, in particular.
You can’t go buy a nice oak table for less than you did 20 years ago. Or high quality tools (To get something like old Craftsman I need to import tools from Germany at 10x the price). No one notices because of the insidious nature of inflation. “Cheap TVs!” appear to be deflating and are the bread and circuses. Meanwhile a massive amount of wealth is being stolen.
I really don't understand the dynamic here.
Even if you understand intellectually that a pay increase is a cost of living adjustment, that doesn't mean it isn't disheartening to see your new earnings being eaten up by inflation.
The Dems failed to communicate inflation is a global phenomena and that the US has faired far better at reducing inflation, unemployment and GDP growth then the rest of the developed world.
None of the articles I've read mention religion or race. Perhaps these omissions are due to political correctness, but both of these factors are known to be drivers of party affiliation in the US. This makes it really hard to guess what the ultimate dominant issue actually was, if anything.
I do agree that the Dems should be taking more credit (and giving credit to liberal democracy in general) for improving the quality of life, which is ultimately the subject matter of economics.
It's the stupidity, stupid.
Also, his supporters will go from saying "lower gas prices were rigged by the president to steal the election!" this month to "Trump brought us lower gas prices!" after inauguration without any sense of irony.
Well, get the popcorn ready because the next 4 years are going to be interesting, to say the least.
Probably not.
1) Exit poll data show that every household income band was basically evenly split between Trump and Harris.
2) Religions, on the other hand, were not split evenly at all. Evangelical Christians went extremely hard for Trump. Catholics and other Protestants followed too. But that's it. Jews, Atheists, other[0] religion demographics? They went for Harris.
Are you suggesting that only Christians pay grocery bills?
[0] - Muslims we'll find out tomorrow from CAIR, but the bombing of Gaza is known to be weighing heavily on that vote. Again, though, not the economy.
Trump has been elected by people who are all willing to pay more taxes so the maximum tax bracket can pay less. And his tarrifs: most economics agree who will pay the brink of that.
I'm thinking more about how the Reps succeeded in being elected.
That, far as I can tell, is through Trump lying through his teeth in the most incredible manner every time he speaks, and people who are ill-equipped to see through it being deceived.
I have to think it's hard to compete with that, if you're not lying yourself.
Internet, streaming services, increasingly deregulated and less subsidized utilities, private equity hyperinflating housing costs, etc.
Sure, we live better in many ways.. but that too takes its toll. Vehicles are much, much more advanced (and expensive), for example. Instead of owning land and living in whatever you can build, people live in better accommodations but own nothing. Credit replaces savings with the promise of instant gratification. In every transaction there are parasitic costs all the way down in the name of efficiency, JIT logistics, payment processors, etc. the costs of these “savings” is passed on the the consumer, while the temporary balance sheet boost is distributed to the capital class through stock buybacks or dividends.
In the end there is a good or service that you “need” for every penny you can possibly make if you are on the top of the bell curve.
The economy is fundamentally a two party system, those who generate and shed surplus value (wage workers), and those who seek to recover the fraction off the value that the workers were given in exchange for their time.
Companies exist to harvest and concentrate this surplus. When the distinction between the workers and the companies is small, as with small enterprise, worker-owned businesses, etc this system actually works fairly well.
It also works well even for large companies working on physical or technological frontiers. They benefit much more by moving the bar in innovation or resource exploitation than by optimizing profitability on a fixed resource.
When it is huge corporate conglomerates in crowded or saturated markets, that exist primarily to enrich investors from a relatively static market, it becomes less clear where the benefits fade into the burden that these entities place on their host populations.
The outcome we see today is the counterintuitive result of a relatively efficient market - total living costs will rise to consume all of the available “surplus” resources. Nature abhors a vacuum, and unspent cash makes a howling roar that attracts capitalist parasites from miles away. It’s the unmentioned corollary of the efficient market, and it is turbocharged by regulatory capture (thus the battle over community broadband, right to repair, etc)
The same system that incentivizes rational actors to seek superior value incentivizes their counterparts to create vendor lock-in, soft price fixing, hostile supply chain manipulation, deceptive trade practices, regulatory capitulation, and more. It’s often more profitable to manipulate incentives than it is to create a superior value position.
The net result of this push-pull between entrepreneurial innovation and parasitic trade practices is the sucking up of all significant sources of discretionary spending. So if you are doing well at an average level, you will be living paycheck to paycheck just to buy the “essentials”.
This is a systemic problem endemic to capitalism when there are no more commons (frontiers) to consume.
This is probably the best argument for aggressive space colonization and industrialization.
A wild, unpredictable frontier is the only suitable substitute for the cleansing power of large scale war to clean out the graft, grift and cobwebs from entrenched capital. Otherwise, every erstwhile efficient market becomes a new frontier for “inefficiency farming”.
Additionally mis-handling COVID and implementing a 25% tariff on some commodities had a massive impact on prices.
Then there’s just the evolution of some markets: PE buying housing inventory + short-term rentals + Rental yield-management (thinly-veiled collusion on pricing) have transformed the housing market.
The biggest impacts: consolidation and a deregulation mandate. Companies can do whatever the hell they want.
Maybe you do not care.. and I guess you wouldn't have cared about the Holocaust either.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/26/us/los-angeles-times-endo...
Also people vastly underestimate the political calculus in full throated support of Palestinians and by association, Hamas. There is a whole other side of this conflict and that is with Jews who also care about the resolution, but also care about Israel and the fact they've had rockets constantly fired into their territory. They also vote overwhelmingly D. You alienate one group for another and you've made no ground in terms of voter share.
[1] https://dearborn.gov/sites/default/files/2024-11/UNOFFICIAL%...
That's fair. She lost a good number of votes, but 10M+ popular votes? Would that account for it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Colleg...
This is why it was a major issue for me that the Democrats did not hold a primary and just decided Kamala would be the candidate. If a major part of your campaign is "vote for us or democracy dies!" it's pretty hard to swallow if you increasingly feel that your voice doesn't matter in your own party.
It was just a glance on one of the shows during the returns last night, I maybe be completely wrong.
Not just election participation, no.
You do have to use the generally-free-to-use, generally-globally-accessible publishing systems that are available to nearly anyone with a computer to explain why you refused to vote. (This is my big issue with the "Refusing to vote is meaningless, because noone will know why you didn't vote." counterargument.)
Whether your assertions that you didn't vote because -for instance- none of the available candidates were people you wished to see in the positions they were running for get deleted because they are "Election misinformation" or similar is an open question.
Reporting appears to be %87 at this moment, expect the numbers to add up when it's %100.
Don't you register to vote anyway? You can't be counting unaccounted for ballots, are you? You probably have a paperwork for for every vote, it's not like counting the cash after busking.
Eventually You will have Total Number of Registered to Vote = Total Ballots + Total Absentees.
This will also give you the turnout. You can't have the turnout first unless you keep track of number of votes casted and in that case you will be able to tell if there were fake votes by comparing the final ballots counted and the number of votes you counted when casting.
This is all very basic, can someone explain what I'm missing here? Why people are pushing for this thing that doesn't make sense whatsoever?
California, for example, has about 7 million ballots that haven't been processed
Isn't that exactly what you're doing?
You're assuming that the election fraud narrative is pushed by people who care about whether it's true or not. The goal isn't truth-seeking, it's disenfranchisement; any data point is either used in service of the narrative, or it's discarded as irrelevant.
>Eventually You will have Total Number of Registered to Vote = Total Ballots + Total Absentees.
Yes, all people are saying is that absentees increased and ballots decreased.
So do the analysis from another point of view.
https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1854144250562429081
Assume (say your null hypothesis) that 2020 had fraud by creating ballots that voted for Biden just in enough in several GA, AZ, PA, MI counties.
Now, say in 2024 -- that fraud did not work (could not be done). How would it look at the number of voters who voted in 2024?
Is that plausible that it would like 'fewer people' voted in total, and also giving less votes to Harris?
If it is plausible, then that's the core of their argument, in my understanding.
Here’s another theory: the candidate with betting polling in 2020 won and the candidate with better polling in 2024 won.
Look at PA polls: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general...
The last 2 polls had Harris at 49, and 48. She ended up at 48.5%. Last 2 polls for Trump were 50 and 49. He ended up at 50.5%.
https://apps.npr.org/2024-election-results/pennsylvania.html...
Similar story for Wisconsin, (Harris polls 49 and 48; result: 48.9% and Trump polls 50 and 49; result: 49.7%) and Michigan (Harris polls 48 and 48; result: 48.3% and Trump polls 50 and 50; result: 49.8%)
Despite the end result, it was really was a minor polling error away from a Harris victory.
Also, FWIW, the total 3rd party vote in WI and MI was greater than the margin of victory for Trump in those states.
Control of the WH is immaterial because all voting is controlled by the states or local municipalities.
Another part is that the Republicans were much more prepared this time to stop the alleged fraud before it happened. They had lawyers ready to protest immediately when election judges were locked out of counting rooms or when counting stopped. They made sure they had enough election judges for all precincts and sometimes they set up cameras to count the number of voters entering the site.
Perhaps your point about polling is still the best answer
Deciding between the effort required for a political opponent to run a massive multi-state voter fraud conspiracy under your nose and the effort required for an over-the-top personality to make a wild accusation that was never proven in court, I think we can consult Occam’s Razor.
62 lawsuits in 9 states, 30 dismissed on merits, several from Trump appointed judges.
My recollection is that when the cases went to court, the lawyers backed away from claims of fraud: https://time.com/5914377/donald-trump-no-evidence-fraud/
Trump was consistently losing in all polls in 2020.
538 had Trump’s odds at 10%: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/
Betting markets had him at ~35%: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/betting_odds/202...
Biden was favored in MI, WI, NV, PA, AZ, FL, NC and GA on Election Day meaning he had many paths to victory.
And polls were pretty accurate for Biden:
State - Polling Avg. (Result)
MI - 51.2% (50.6%)
WI - 52.1% (49.5%)
NV - 49.7% (50.1%)
PA - 50.2% (49.9%)
AZ - 48.7% (49.4%)
FL - 49.1% (47.9%)
NC - 48.9% (48.6%)
GA - 48.5% (49.5%)
The surprise wasn’t that Trump lost in 2020, is was that based on polling averages that he didn’t lose by more.
I do know that many of the "merits" you cite were never litigated. Were there any cases where the court granted discovery? So how can anyone guess at what a court would decide about the matter? Many of the news articles I read at the time suggested that the courts were just not interested in opening up cans of worms.
The polling average numbers are from Project 538. The dropdown lets you navigate to each state.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/
The election results are from Wikipedia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_president...
I hope nothing makes it necessary, but I do hope it becomes commonplace. It's such a better experience to complete a ballot leisurely in one's own home, being able to discuss it with my own family and referencing a plethora of materials, than having to go out of my way to wait in line and have prepared everything ahead of time (and, hopefully, remembered it).
Are you certain your vote was counted and not lost? I vote in person because I know when I mail things they don't always get where I intended them to be (and especially when there is a deadline in place)
Just to say it works "asynchronously", too.
Colorado came out way against Trump, though, despite having been a swing state in recent memory.
I think the concern about things getting lost in the mail is reasonable, but is a separate issue; the mail system is supposed to be a highly trustworthy distribution system for sensitive documents. Hell, it's how you get your passport. That's why it's a state department (in the US, anyway) in the first place: it's an essential government function to have a communications channel with a given citizen.
I've been concerned about cuts made to the USPS leading up to the previous election, both because of the obvious impact on the USPS's ability to handle election materials, but also because of the potential impact on the arrival of other essential, time-sensitive documents. (Not essential, but my mother's anniversary card to myself and my partner fully bounced this year, after three weeks in transit. We only live 130 miles apart.)
My point is: threat models that center on the mail system somehow being unreliable are a valid concern, but missing the point.
Mail-in ballots have so many more issues with them - lack of privacy (so more room for coercion and harvesting), they make auditability more difficult.
Regardless of whether you think the relaxed voting requirements of 2020 led to widespread fraud, it inspired enough distrust that both parties should be advocating to bolster the reliability, auditability, and trustworthiness of the voting process, not decrease it further. The only thing that sucks more than losing an election is losing it under suspicious circumstances. Subject people to that enough times, and it doesn't lead anywhere good, regardless of your political team. Instead, create and enforce policies that improve trust rather than erode it.
a) you get bribed by some external sweepstakes or ad or any which way to vote for a candidate you genuinely don't support.
b) you in your home get hit by a vandal with a specific mission to make you vote for their candidate. Remember, this felon does not know when you get your ballot nor when you voted.
Hell, which is more likely to be tracked down? The Musk trials will take months. that felon will be arrested before the week ends.
a) bribing is more probable, happened by foreign country here this Sunday
b) it's a lot more dangerous for the entire society, it's not a vandal in your home, if anonymity is not implemented by voting process, then the local gang leader will force you (and all your neighbors) to vote for him, at the date he will tell you and you won't be able to do anything as he will be in power after these elections and will make possible to fake future elections.
And yes, that gang leader will be caught a lot quicker for voting fraud than any petty turf wars they may ensue.
(a) I don't think it'd be possible to extort votes in this manner in on a significant enough scale to influence an election without it being obvious that it was happening. All it would take is a few people to go "Oh yeah, someone broke into my house and held a gun to my head" to spark an investigation. Moreover, to a degree, this level of coercion is already occurring: a party platform of cutting taxes on your income bracket is effectively a bribe. A party platform that they'll cut healthcare funding if their candidate doesn't take a particular office is a gun to your head.
See also: the publicly known instances of 'vote bribing', e.g. Ben and Jerry's offering free ice cream, or Musk or Cards Against Humanity offering money/tickets/etc to people who have voted/make a plan to vote.
(b) for a vote-extorter, how would you verify that I voted as demanded? what if I don't mail that ballot? what if I deliberately screw up my signature? what if I submit my ballot before you extorted me? what if I vote in person later, invalidating my mail-in ballot? It's possible someone with access to the inner workings of the voting judgement process could detect some of these, but at that point, again, it's already compromised.
(c) If you have the resources to possibly (1) identify vote extortion targets (2) successfully threaten them in such a way that it would influence their vote (3) validate that they did indeed vote as you've demanded, you surely have the resources to attempt a more directed attack on, say, the mail system or the vote system itself. Trying to extort individual citizens en masse would radically increase the odds of detection of your operation.
(d) how do you know your election judges aren't under gunpoint? how do you know they haven't been bribed? Or your county clerk?
As I've said before, coercion doesn't need to be overt to be effective. Just a small amount of social pressure applied over a large number of people is enough to make a significant difference. That's why typically there are laws banning campaigning right outside polling places. Now what if the "polling place" is the entire country, over a period of multiple weeks? How are you going to enforce that?
Consider also that the electorate being able to trust that elections are free and fair is nearly as important as them actually being so. Its not enough to just say "that's probably not happening at sufficient scale to make a difference"; you need to be able to convincingly demonstrate to voters it actually isn't. Having a system that's robust to these types of cheating schemes (as in-person, secret paper ballot elections have been for centuries past) is the best way I know to do that.
Jimmy Carter spoke about this, literally in some town the sheriff watches you vote and chucks it into the trash if you didn't pick their candidate.
There's a whole industry about making fake IDs.
Lets start with, what "system"? There are a ton of governments that issue their own ID cards. Are you magically going to integrate with all of them or does everybody now also need a voter ID card issued from a singular source?
Next lets go onto "verified"? Historically there have been a lot of instances where the wrong black person was arrested because a white cop thought they were the guy in the photo. People cannot verify that a picture matches a face. This is going to lead to a bunch of discrimination complaints. There's also the big issue of people's appearances changing in less than 4 years. Or the simple case of a lot of people look the same and could just use each other's IDs (or get a fake one of that person).
Next lets go onto "just like they do at the airport". You can fly without ID [1] and you also might not be able to scan your ID [2]. They also don't check the photo against the system; just attempt to verify that the ID isn't fake and that the picture on the ID you gave them matches you.
Finally, the overarching idea that "voting by mail introduces fraud". It doesn't. Make a calendar event for ~1.6 months into the future to volunteer at your local election board and you can get first hand experience of the systems that keep 1 vote to 1 person in place even when using different voting methods.
[1]: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/frequently-asked-questions/i-forg...
[2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/delta/comments/1dpodgd/tsa_id_issue...
> There are a ton of governments that issue their own ID cards. Are you magically going to integrate with all of them or does everybody now also need a voter ID card issued from a singular source?
The entire US is now Real ID compliant.
> Next lets go onto "verified"? Historically there have been a lot of instances where the wrong black person was arrested because a white cop thought they were the guy in the photo. People cannot verify that a picture matches a face. This is going to lead to a bunch of discrimination complaints. There's also the big issue of people's appearances changing in less than 4 years. Or the simple case of a lot of people look the same and could just use each other's IDs (or get a fake one of that person).
That's a lot for a HN thread which we aren't going to be able to solve. For purposes of voting, I don't have any real concerns here.
> Next lets go onto "just like they do at the airport". You can fly without ID [1] and you also might not be able to scan your ID [2]. They also don't check the photo against the system; just attempt to verify that the ID isn't fake and that the picture on the ID you gave them matches you.
If we're verifying that the ID isn't fake by scanning it and you want to forge a vote badly enough to get a real, verifiable ID that has been swapped with a photo matching you...we have significantly raised the bar from simply providing any name that hasn't yet been used on a list.
This also makes it a lot harder to infringe of somebody else's right to vote by impersonating them, thus preventing them from being able to vote at all.
> Finally, the overarching idea that "voting by mail introduces fraud". It doesn't.
There have been numerous instances just in the last month of people showing up to vote and being told they've already voted by mail.
There's a big list of security and integrity problems inherent with mail in ballots that do not exist for in person voting.
First and foremost: ballot canvasing.
That is a flaw of the American model of allowing local governments to run state and national elections.
In many other countries, local government has no role to play in non-local elections. All elections are 100% run by either a state or national elections agency.
Look for example at the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC)
Having a common system reduces the variety, but ensures that there is an equivalent amount of resources to deal with adversaries.
For what it’s worth, India which has the most complex election requirements by a mile, uses a single system. Entered as an example of how election services are better delivered using a single system.
Yes. That's where the standards requirements I mentioned come in.
We should be discussing more issues! Why isn't there a candidate saying they'll increase the number of holidays, or making public transportation free, or giving people free dogs. Where is the candidate saying they'll make a 4 day work week a reality?
Conservatives went after the UPS and lobbied to make it harder in some states to vote by mail. They don't want high turnout. It is sadly a partisan point to "go out and vote" even if they want to appear bi-partisan.
> Why isn't there a candidate saying they'll increase the number of holidays, or making public transportation free, or giving people free dogs.
Because business owners lobby and don't want that? Follow the money. We see eve in tech with proof of productivity that companies want people to RTO. How do you think industries outside of tech will feel about making workers work less?
That's a problem in all voting systems (that the optimal strategy for candidates and for voters depends on your perceived knowledge of other voters -- you aren't incentivized to vote for the person who you think is actually best, and as a candidate you aren't incentivized to do what you think is best), ignoring some simplifications that sometimes arise in something simpler than a presidential election.
However, majority-rules voting is particularly bad at it, especially in a lot of real-world preference distributions. If you came out with a new party, magicked up a billion dollars in advertising, and thoroughly convinced the populace that you'd not screw much up and also make a 4-day work week a reality, you'd still likely lose. I might personally vote for you, but I'd bet a lot of money that you wouldn't stand a chance.
It's a little interesting that we have to vote for a single "president". An interesting byproduct is that _most_ people disagree about _most_ of the decisions (even in the same party), despite perhaps favoring them for one or two important reasons. If there were a neat way to divide up the power over education, abortion, ..., you could achieve a majority of people being happy about all of the major issues and maybe have a little more time to talk about some other (comparatively) minor ones.
Between the two party system, swing states, electoral colleges, and Media warfare - policy is irrelevant, and tribalism / vibes are what matter.
Essentially, your candidate could promise to import dissidents, be a tyrant, or contravene the values enshrined in the constitution - and it doesn’t matter.
So a candidate could promise a 4 day work week, but be part of the team with a more constrained media system, and they will lose.
2024 vote count so far: 139 million
2024 vote percentage counted so far: 87%
139 million divided by 87% equals 159 million.
Voter turnout this year will be higher than 2020.
Agree though that we'll get pretty close to that. CA,OR, WA alone likely have ~10 million votes uncounted.
It not even guaranteed that Trump will win the popular vote, it depends on how the California votes land.
Well the odds are 1000:1 on Polymarket, so if it's at all possible that's a great bet!
Here are the (incomplete) vote counts from the three swing states that WSJ currently indicates at 99% counted:
2020 2024* Δ
Michigan 5,539,302 5,619,861 (99%) +80,559 (+1.45%)
N. Carolina 5,524,804 5,625,658 (99%) +100,854 (+1.83%)
Wisconsin 3,298,041 3,415,014 (99%) +116,973 (+3.55%)It’s good to know the absolute numbers, but I feel like they’re less significant than the relative numbers (what % of the population voted)
This is wrong. We don’t know how many people voted for democrats or otherwise yet. Heck, California still has millions of votes to count.
Your mistake is that you’re comparing a known total from 2020 to a count in progress from 2024.
As they should! It's quite literally the whole reason they exist.
Email unsubscribe links have worked well, and click-to-cancel hopefully can too! The only opponents of these policies are massive companies who rely on predatorial dark patterns. Everyone with a brain should support these "wasteful policies" because they benefit consumers.
I absolutely LOVE having one link to instantly stop being emailed from mailing lists, and I can't be happier for click-to-cancel and related legislation.
"oh no, big tech company XYZ will make 0.0001% less money this year!!!" is the energy you're giving
Yes but that's not what my complaints about the FTC are. My complaint is about them trying to stop Microsoft from buying Blizzard or trying to stop Adobe from buying Figma. I don't believe there's such a thing as 'monopoly on video games' or 'monopoly on website design software'.
Them working on general, consumer-friendly, sane policies is fine! But they shouldn't be preventing M&As/investments unless critical goods are involved without a substitute - which Call of Duty and Figma clearly aren't.
Why can't monopolies instead be "very harmful for the tech sector", and Lina Khan's policies be "not a big deal"?
The most recent of which was BEAD (The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program) which allocated 42.45 BILLION in broadband rollout funding.
If you think those companies are paying for the lines out of their pocket... you are very confused about the economics of broadband rollout.
The best case is that they are loans at sweetheart rates that translate into additional subscriber fees tacked onto the customers. Most times it's just literal grant cash, though.
---
So to recap - you and I paid for those lines. Sure as fuck wasn't ATT.
For example, in my local (semi-rural) area, private companies are exclusively doing it, along with other things like wifi. If government dollars are available, they always have strings attached and take decades to roll out and are typically really only issued to large companies with substantial ability to roll out large programs (with the exception of a few co-ops that have made the news).
And this completely ignores Starlink, which was repeatedly denied government funding because the government hates the viewpoints of the guy who runs it, but nevertheless offers the best opportunity for high-speed Internet in rural areas. It's just like when Cornelius Vanderbilt completely beat the Post Office's own selected "winner" to connect the two coasts via steamships.
And the total boondoggle that is your best example -- BEAD -- has, by its own admission, connected ZERO people since it was enacted in 2021! It's another ridiculous example of picking winners and losers, but mostly losers.
Please feel free to read the sad story at the government's own websites (the .gov's below) as well as a DC thinktank:
https://www.internetforall.gov/program/broadband-equity-acce...
https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.gov/funding-programs/broadband...
https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/the-42-...
It should not the government's job to fund things that have a definitive and obvious competitive advantage for private industry, because they're just terrible at it.
Look back at the almost literally trillions of dollars that the government wasted in the solar or wind industry for other examples of where taxpayers' dollars might just as well be shipped on pallets to China or flushed down the drain.
Private industry beats government investment every single time, because the government doesn't actually have enough skin in the game and is so easily corrupted and influenced by lobbyists. When government dollars get involved, it distorts the incentives and then we end up with terrible things like AT&T controlling a monopoly that they didn't even pay for (like Ma Bell in the land before time).
Stop it.
Not a Trump voter, but this is a huge area where many Democrats are flat wrong. Talking to some Democrats about the supply problem with housing is like talking to some Republicans about why a hard line abortion ban makes maternal mortality go up. It can’t possibly be true because the ideology says it can’t be true.
Here is an article [0] that talks about the issue. This is a real problem driven by this collusion, don't act like it isn't. And now that Trump is in office, these kinds of investigations are going to disappear and the housing crisis is going to get worse.
I think the argument above is that democrats are one of the drivers of building restrictions, leading to the ability to collude. If new entrants to the market were plentiful then the existing cartels would be undercut. Also, rent control puts a tight lock on the rental market by forcing landlords to keep their rents high lest they become locked into the low rents they may otherwise offer.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader whether to be on board with that assessment, but there is a reasonable argument to be made that a free-er market could actually benefit housing costs.
Where do LLMs come into this?
Is there a difference? I thought Twitter was Musk's broadcast platform.
Basically: it's because "Harris" is a county name in Texas.
(aqui means here in spanish)
And on a basic level everything transactional so if you were being in cheek it kind of fell apart.
There are two exceptions though - France (partially) and Sweden.
He was president before it was gaining steam.
Speaking of abortion rights, I believe few people will even talk about it in the next election cycle, as it has become a state issue. I also find it interesting that many pro-lifers hate Trump for overturning Roe vs Wade because they won't get millions and millions of dollars every year for the sake of fighting abortion rights.
which ones?
I don't. Let's be realistic: everytime we go "states rights" it's almost always so the state can control some sector of the population. We reworked the articles of confederation for a reason. We're one country. Not 50. Land of the free right?
Something as base as bodily operations should be a personal choice, just like any other religious belief out there. Not determined by the mood of your mayor.
If you want a purely logistical reason instead of moral: banning abortion doesn't ban abortions. It just increases infantcide, something we all disagree with. If someone doesn't want a baby, they'll get rid of it. Same ideas as prohibition. And do we really want to punish a woman for an operation she did on her body? In another state or in the backstreets?
>Besides, even Ginsburg was against the Roe vs Wade ruling. S
Yes, for reasons in that the Supreme Court doesn't enact laws. She instead wanted congress to make it a federal protection. But look how thars going. Almost like she knew a shift in the courts can remove it easier than a passed law...
>Another one is that ee pulled out of the Iran Nuclear deal.
I Guess it's nice we made up for Regean decades later. I'll give him that
Why do you prefer this over letting individuals decide for themselves? If the goal of democracy is to give power to the people, would this not be the most democratic option?
They just have to re-align their mindset a little bit.
F** AG Paxton.
The FCC should not have allowed this to happen on the public's airwaves, but I expect more of the same in Trump's second term.
while America has a bounty of public land acreage wise, 4 years and a complete control of the government is a lot of time to do some lasting damage to the ecosystem by opening up these areas for privatization.
For me, it’s the burning of the planet which is damage. You can cover a hole back up, you can’t bring back the entire planet.
There's two justices ready to retire, and if Trump replaces them (and he will) that'll be five supreme court justices appointed by Trump and chosen by his cronies. The entire legal system will be corrupted for decades.
Are you saying it's therefore ok for Trump to pack the courts? That does appear to be the logical extension of your original comment.
It’s a non-starter.
The reason why the Democratic party revolted against FDR attempt to stuff the Supreme Court was because it was such an obvious runaround of the Constituion.
The mechanism is that Trump makes up the law, then it's sent to judges and they say "yup, this law is fine and just and in line with US law system".
> Justices told him to pound sand
He learned. Now he selects for loyalty alone.
That and, I miss the Republican party that didn't actively try to piss off the ACLU every hour on the hour. It's just nonstop…
• book bans • rhetoric about sending the military after political opponents • politicians ruled as being above the law • short circuiting due process with immigrants, both illegal and not • breaking up families of would-be asylum seekers for no damn reason • the Trump Muslim ban • the constant erection of/for Ten Commandments statues
It used to be a thing in some conservative circles, “No, that teacher is Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912, not Council of 1879, I don't want his people educating my child about what he thinks the Ten Commandments really mean!!”
I used to fancy myself a conservative back then. The ACLU and libertarians were the people that the Left had kind of given up on, and we were happy to say “yes, come be conservative with us, and we will try not to piss you off.” Now everyone has given up on them, they had to hold their noses and vote Kamala and pray for a few more years of “not again.”
I'm not even a libertarian, just don't understand why we are wasting resources pissing them off
The more important measure for the Biden administration's energy development policy was how many new lease sales were performed, and how many leases were effectively cancelled or otherwise put in limbo.
Some resources to help "unboggle" the mind:
https://www.energyindepth.org/why-bidens-oil-drilling-permit...
"Mixed messages from the administration – like canceling lease sales one minute and touting approved permits to drill the next – create uncertainty within the energy industry, hindering long-term investments and exacerbating challenges for the United States"
https://archive.is/9x1an "The Biden administration has leased fewer acres for oil-and-gas drilling offshore and on federal land than any other administration in its early stages dating back to the end of World War II, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis."
"The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 requires onshore oil and gas leasing “at least quarterly.” While the Biden administration has been in office for six quarters, it has conducted auctions in just one of them. That happened in late June, after the administration came under increasing pressure to tame soaring gasoline prices at the pump in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine."
"Mr. Biden pledged to stop drilling on federal lands as a candidate, saying the nation needs to transition to clean energy. He softened his stance as oil prices soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—calling for boosting oil supplies to ease runaway inflation—but he has nonetheless spurned a leasing program that for decades has been a go-to asset for presidents looking to raise U.S. energy production."
He canceled pipelines and repeatedly refused to extend leases. Just because he "Approved" more, speaks to the business climate and pricing of oil. It'd be better to see how many his administration actively fought against for just the politics... Take the keystone oil pipeline... It was effectively finished and they canceled it... how wasteful.
Much of that increase went to export. On top of that, Biden sold half of the strategic petroleum reserve.
The general point is that you can drill all you want, but sending it overseas doesn't help Americans. The best result is that we buy back gasoline at a margin that's tolerable, but that's not helping either price at the pump or overall energy costs.
There is a partisan disagreement on energy independence.
In a global market like petroleum, doesn't production anywhere reduce prices everywhere?
I think 2026 will be a referendum on:
- Has Trump F'd things up severely?
and
- Have Democrats stopped running on DEI as the main reason to vote for them and instead clearly laid out and justified their plans? And have they gained any support outside the elites?
In general D's always outspend and out raise R's.
It's sort of fascinating how so many Democrats think that money-in-politics rigs the system against them even though Democrats benefit more from it.
Kamala raised 2:1 from campaign contributions (limits: https://www.fec.gov/updates/fec-announces-2023-2024-campaign...), while the inverse was true for Trump.
Source: https://www.opensecrets.org/
In politics what’s pretty consistent is it’s almost always a debate about what’s to my advantage or not, masquerading as a principled argument.
Judging from what I have seen of the foreign reach of "US" politics I am certain there is a lot of dark money and influence going around beyond any official numbers. I have doubts if those sorts of operations have any influence on the swing voters that were required for a victory. It seems more likely their needs were simply ignored.
It already seems so easy to throw money at a candidate if you wanted to, without even needing to do it behind closed doors.
I personally suspect, but can't really know, that this is what explains the dysfunctional state of US politics. It is simply too big a target for corruption for it to ever be able to operate effectively. You can see that many US states seem to have much more effective governance than the Feds despite having nominally the same two major parties. I also think this explains why Australia is better run than the USA, and why New Zealand and Norway are better run than Australia.
Thats very questionable, she was forced to drop out before the first Democratic primary for the 2020' nomination.
People are often elevated without merit for a multitude of reasons including nepotism which don't benefit anyone but them. Trump will have to reward his supporters as well. It is the spoils system. It isn't unique to US politics but the cronyism is a bit more in your face than usual in regular democracies. If Biden's spoils went to a more diverse looking bunch then that probably says more about the diversity of his supporters than anything about his judgement. As far as I can see the criticism is unfounded. And when the democrats criticize the lack of diversity in the next administration it is a similar thing. The spoils don't go to randoms picked from a color swatch regardless of party.
I think they thought Trump was a wedge that would hand them a narrow victory without having to adapt very much.
I pronounce Biden as bidet+n.
Same with Trump's habit of stressing "Barack Hussein Obama" and more broadly the insulting nicknames he had (has?) for people.
But ye, I think I agree, that pronouncing non WASP names wrong on purpose is kinda cheap.
“Party of kindness” until you step out of line. Then… vitriol, threats, getting canceled.
Oh come off it, you just elected a guy who thought it was good taste to physically mock a disabled journalist for crying out loud. You guys have absolutely no moral high ground to stand on if you are trying to favorably compare "attitudes" with the left.
I think it's absolutely horrendous to:
- make fun of a disabled person
- make fun of someone for having an immigrant surname, though less so
- cancel someone because they don't toe the line exactly on your very detailed and opinionated ideology (reminds me of Christianity a couple of decades ago)
- call someone a Nazi when they aren't one
- call someone a communist when they aren't one
Next, it must be noted that zero percent of Trump's appeal lies in his social sense of kindness. People vote for him for other reasons; certainly not because he's a nice guy. For the left, a social sense of kindness is their entire shtick.
For a long time now, we on the center and on the right felt little kindness or good intentions coming from the left, only authoritarian diktats and an oppressive social pressure to conform-or-fuck-off.
I do hope the decline of both religion and wokeism means we can all be a bit more broadminded and centered from here on out.
everyone wants to pretend they have one, while simultaneously shirking accountability for his when they cast a vote, and then claim hurt feelings and vitriol to deflect away from their enabling of such a lack of ethos.
what you're experiencing is a rejection of your worldview.
when a person does egregiously disrespectful, demeaning things -- be it you or the demographic you perceive to be so under attack -- you are not entitled to kindness back. as much as i encourage people to try to love even those they hate, respect at the end of the day is a social contract, and even somewhat socratic in its nature.
southern white conservatives used to cancel persons all the time during a rather unfortunate and embarrassing (and hard to quantify in terms of pain), recent part of human (american) history -- this has only evolved to financial segregation and other facades that attempt to convey "we've changed!", and i will steer clear of the rabbit hole that does involve violence in today's climate for the sake of this thread.
the victim mindset around the left attacking the right given america's political history is a deflection. and it really confuses me.
i would have had no respect for these personalities pre-civil rights, and i still don't have much respect for this kind of political victim mindset in modern day america. i was raised with en ethos around humanity that fundamentally rejects it and wishes for and tries to build a different way of living.
if you want kindness and perhaps humanity, demonstrate it authentically and take accountability for history you've either. participated in, been influenced by, or enabled in some manner. support for someone of this dude's ethos is certainly not an act of humanity, and in no way a signal that your worldview should be validated or reinforced.
i have lost friends due to a lack of resources that were previously available and then repealed/removed by the current conservative political machine (which has been exploiting my home state for the better part of my adult life ie decades, and explicitly taking advantage of working class persons living paycheck to paycheck comprising about approx. >= 55% of the labor force) -- and no, i am not talking abortion policy, although that's quite relevant.
so yeah, i can imagine why some people are mad. i am just confused why you cannot empathize and instead have made it about yourself.
it's almost as if a whole swath of american "patriots" completely forgot the political ethos this country was founded upon (Locke et. al).
being an american means that you are, by definition, liberal.
Meanwhile latino voters went towards trump.
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2024/politics/2020-2016-...
That's just you. I picked the phrase up from the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/search?dropmab=false&lang=en&query=%...
It's a really apt term to describe the kind of obsessive attacks on Trump's person, often as a substitute for any kind of positive policy message (as in, Harris will do X, Y, and Z), especially ones that would resonate outside the Democratic bubble. For a notable example, see this pithy message from the NY Times Editorial Board: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/02/opinion/vote-... (tl;dr: "You should vote for Harris because Trump is bad." What will Harris do? Who knows.).
No to me.
To me, "orange man bad" suggests obsession, myopia, and a failure to realize criticizing Trump does not make the case for any alternative.
Unsure what the general mood is that can lead to Keir Starmer dropping 30 points in approval months after winning in a landslide, but the mood of general discontent may be relevant in the United States as well. It seems whatever the status quo / incumbent advantage that used to exist, is now working against candidates.
Even if the democrats ran a better candidate in a better campaign, it may not have been enough to overcome these headwinds. Although, I'm not sure I totally believe that myself since she lost by a pretty narrow margin in swing states.
Obviously not to excuse the dems, just something to consider
Trudeau has been PM since 2015 and the last election was in 2021. Sure, it looks like he's gonna lose the next one, but Canada hasn't had a oppositional landslide election.
Granted, the last time the Bloc was Her Majesty's loyal opposition, the incumbent party collapsed, never recovered, and was swallowed by its rival.
Canada's electoral system is extremely non-linear. The US' electoral college is far far more linear wrt popular vote than parliamentary elections, generally, and Canada's in particular.
For the curious, 2015, which was 9 years and 3 elections ago. And he got less than 40% of the vote.
Its hard to imagine the upcoming election will not be a landslide in the next few months, but it is true that there has not yet been an official victory yet.
It's the desperation of the masses for what they feel is rightfully theirs, because that's what they were told by those who pulled up the ladder behind them. That era is long gone, but nostalgia is a powerful force that's easily propagandized by those who benefit from said desperation.
Or during/after natural disasters. Any time things get real tough, we tend to default to helping each other out mutual aid style - even in America [0]. Seems worth keeping in mind.
0 - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28048.Hope_in_the_Dark
Look back at the campaigns from 2012 onward, from both sides. In 2012, both promised more of the same, but the GOP with Romney actually began sliding rightward, articulating the fringes of a potential future for those who preferred oligarchy and authoritarianism, by deliberately mislabeling the Obama administration’s ACA as the very same authoritarianism they sought to enable. In 2016, again, Clinton was more of the same even as the youth vote (what little there was) resonated more with Sanders’ values and vision of the future, while Trump went all out on appealing to the far-right and normalizing their views of a christofascist future (with the help of a media engine that has no interest in facts, only ratings and income). His first tenure was marked with chaos and corruption, but unlike the tiny, incremental steps of the DNC, he went as hard as he could on policy, consequences be damned; that resonated, hard, with an electorate that felt ignored or left behind by the changing positions and attitudes of the broader populace.
Then we get to 2020, and this is where alarm bells should’ve gone off. Trump continued his campaign of violent rhetoric and oligarch policies, while Biden’s entire campaign was “I’m not Trump”. He narrowly won the election, and the DNC celebrated it by thinking they now had a mandate for the future, expecting Trump to recede into some other grift. They continued to believe this even after January 6th, relying on “norms” and “decorum” rather than holding him immediately and permanently accountable. He should’ve been barred from running for re-election under the laws of the USA, but the Democrats did nothing to meaningfully punish him.
So now we get to 2024, where the electorate yet again has a choice between nothing changing (Harris) and everything changing (Trump). The youth made their concerns clear: a desire for a peaceful world, higher wages, lower costs, and the concept of a future they could work towards. Both ignored most of that, but Trump latched on to that lack of a future vision and pitched his own to his supporters - along with Project 2025, a plan intended to eliminate the chaos of his last term and ensure he met his campaign goals.
Put simply, Trump won because the Democrats have failed to present a communicable vision of the future to their electorate. Yes, his vision is evil, but in a world where any vision is better than none at all, it’s little wonder he has won on that platform twice.
I’d strongly encourage other political parties to wake up and smell the reality, before it’s too late.
While it would not be conductive to the discussion for me express my judgment of some of that change; it does feel like the most active and vocal people (who in turn gain followers) are the ones talking about not maintaining the status quo.
> people out there who believe that this demagogue, this partisan, this policy will give them the riches and posh comforts their elders enjoyed
None of the promised or delivered change really upset the status quo.
The real underlying problem the United States faces is the reckoning of the American Dream against reality. It’s not possible for everyone to be a billionaire, to have a huge home on a large plot of land, to drive luxury SUVs and rent out a second home for passive income. Yet as long as Americans (and people in general) still believe that dream really is attainable, if they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work longer hours and take more risks, then the status quo will merely continue to crumble at its foundation until a sudden and violent collapse of the structure occurs.
For one, keeping the economy going and growing is actually our only chance to tackle climate change and fossil fuel egress.
The reason the western nations have been able to reduce their per-capita consumption is because of accumulated wealth during their booms (and colonialism) that they were then able to spend on efficient infrastructure, whether nuclear, solar or wind. China is smart and collectivist enough to achieve the same, but the rest of the world isn't yet.
There have been incredible advancements in efficiencies and costs of things like solar, making it cheaper, but to truly migrate the world still requires massive expenditures and investments into energy grid upgrades, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, etc.
All of this requires wealth, which requires a growing economy, which requires optimism. Because the economy is only as positive as the optimism of the populace.
Optimism isn't rational. There has never been a time in Human history (maybe for less than a decade in the 90s between the fall of the cold war and 9/11, as long as you weren't in the balkans) when the logical decision would've been to be optimistic about the future. Yet people did anyway out of necessity/obligation to their children, out of religion, out of greed, out of empathy. Whatever is the reason it is required.
And this is what I see lacking today - especially with Gen Z, who's education we (well - their Gen X parents, but in the society) fucked up by telling them the truth.
We told them the world is going to hell, that anything good they had is based on generations of blood and exploitation, the world is unfair and is full of rich people getting richer, and nepotism.
And, I actually believe everything in that sentence is true! But it's irrelevant. Because it's no foundation for actually DOING something about the problem. Instead it's an exercise to disengage, to decide not to participate in society, to sink deeper into online social spaces that this generation was raised on by being exposed to screens & social media too early. So what do they get attracted to instead? Red pill, manosphere, 4chan, and eventually Trump.
Because here come people with solutions - there IS a problem, but it's not your fault - it's THEIR fault (women, immigrants, foreigners).
How can you not be attracted to it?
The left has no alternative answer for this. They/we/me want a better world, but we focus on equalization of justice - to bring up the disadvantaged to the level of the dominant class - but no plan for what to do next. If western prosperity was borne out of exploitation, you can't simply raise the formerly-exploited to the high water mark, and expect to be able to continue growing it at the same pace. (That's before even getting into ongoing exploitation that funds the entire western world by taking advantage of the 3rd world)
And yet, you also can't sink into apathy. You need awareness of the realities of the situation, but you need to empower people that they can make a change...that they can participate. And that they can overcome.
Some of this requires self-delusion, but ultimately it needs inspiration. Of which the left is extraordinarily low on right now.
This is a big problem with the left.
Imagine a psychologist telling a patient, "The worst things you've ever done define who you are. Many peoples' lives were ruined, because of you.
You should feel bad. All the time.
The good parts of your life, the things you like, come at terrible hurts to others.
Even if you personally didn't inflict the hurt, you're morally responsible.
Any improvements you've made count for nothing. They are not equal to past wrongs. "
Most people can recognize this is bad advice. Such a psychologist would probably be quickly fired by many of their patients, and would probably lose their authorization to practice if the licensing board found out what kind of "therapy" they provide.
That's what the left is telling our society.
Buying a steak for dinner? That money could have been spent on twenty African children will go hungry tonight -- only a greedy bastard would eat a steak dinner.
Flying across the country to visit your aging parents? Those CO2 emissions will make the next hurricane slightly more powerful, and one more person will die -- only a callous murderer would so wantonly consume fossil fuels.
Making an honorable, well-compensated living as a software engineer? Your technical skills don't matter, you only have that job because of a white male privilege. Only a despicable misogynist racist would work at a well-paying job doing something you love.
Things are a lot better for women and minorities in the 21st century than in the 1800's, or even most of the 1900's. But things aren't perfect when it comes to race / gender interaction -- so the past progress doesn't matter.
Certain vocal, influential segments of the left have gone from honest critique of problems in our society, to a game of "Think Of Reasons To Hate Yourself." I refuse to play that game: Even if you win, you lose.
Except they're not.
They're saying "These things happen, and it's important to KNOW that." Nobody is telling people that they should feel bad for it, but if it doesn't feel fair to those that were harmed by it, that's cuz it's not. Feeling like hey the world isn't fair, and maybe we should do something about it, is a good thing actually.
The right meanwhile IS actively trying to repress information and education about these subjects.
The problem is there is a segment of people who when you tell them something like "Hey you did a bad thing and it hurt me. Could you apologize and then we could move on with our relationship?" respond with "OH So I'm the WORST PERSON IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD am I? Noone has ever hurt you as much as I have, have I? You just want me to keep apologizing for the rest of my life do you? When is enough going to be enough?"
When you haven't yet received even a single acknowledgement of their error.
We call such people narcissists and they dominate the modern right wing.
You can see it here in how you describe your scenarios. Of course I've seen people criticize societal-scale meat production's carbon footprint. And suggesting that we all eat less steak. Some people say we should stop eating meat entirely. But "You ate a steak? There's starving children in africa, you GREEDY BASTARD" is not even a real life single tweeter. That's just a person you made up.
There has to be a middle ground between what I'm advocating for (education, but with optimism, agency, and hope) and what you are (denial, rejection, anger, gaslighting).
This is the key. The West is no longer as relatively rich as it used to be. Large swaths of the human populace have moved out of poverty just since 1990, causing a sort of "prosperity inflation" where the old prosperous Western nations are no longer as far ahead anymore.
Just the top 10% of India, China, and miracle-on-the-river Asian countries is more than the population of the US, definitely better educated, lives in better conditions than Americans, and competes for the same resources including American jobs. An invisible America-sized country has emerged from thin air in the last 3 decades, and it's better than America.
I think this has already had a deep impact on the psyche of the West. E.g. the phrase "filthy rich" now conjures up images of an Asian international student with bottomless family money from mysterious sources, not an old white family living in Connecticut. The richest man in the world has a foreign accent. The valedictorian is never an unhyphenated American kid.
The past appears better than the present for America because, taking into account this "prosperity inflation", it really was.
At the same time, I think the media talking heads put much too much effort into explaining the results, and they basically give the electorate much too much credit. To be blunt, your average voter is not particularly smart, or at least they aren't able to draw a line between cause and effect. Take inflation for example, which many pundits say was the major issue of this election. But if you look at essentially any economist, of any particular political leaning, they will say that Trump's proposed policies (e.g. massive tariffs) are absolutely horrible for inflation. Similarly, at the end of Trump's 1st term, he was absolutely berating Powell for not having even looser monetary policy in 2019 despite extremely low unemployment.
I think it's fine to argue the Dems did a ton of stupid shit (a lot of this I may agree with), but it's pretty clear that the electorate wants a strongman right now, and that's basically the antithesis of what the Democratic Party wants at large. I also think the Dems haven't accepted the fact that there is zero chance a woman from the managerial class will be elected president.
The window to do your unpopular policies and announcements is the start of your government in the hope the reap the benefits just before the next election cycle. Not saying it’s the correct approach, but that’s the theory.
Which seems to produce the ironic result you observe, that winning can be damaging.
He got like 30% of the vote, the opposite of "a landslide."
"Have i felt better over the past 4 years" .
Imagine coming out of covid, without a recession, only to be hit with inflation (both parties to blame) and sky high interest rates coupled with all other stuff like illegal border crossing to lack of majority support from Women to Harris to Harris being a silent VP for 4 full years and thrown to lime light.
I agree with you that for a lot of people this is what it came down to, which is so sad. Short-term thinking will lead us to destruction.
Instead of asking whether things have improved over the last four years, think about what you want the country and the world to look like in ten, fifty, or a hundred years. And what other countries looked like ten, fifty, a hundred, a thousand years ago. Think about the rises and falls of other nations. Think about the fact that it's getting measurably hotter every year, and that one party doesn't even acknowledge that fact.
Everything is more expensive, and yes, that sucks. But we've handed over the kingdom's keys to an authoritarian idiot who will dismantle the systems that took hundreds of years to establish. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it sure burned fast.
> Harris being a silent VP for 4 full years and thrown to lime light.
Funny that people constantly talk about how they're not voting for Trump, they're voting for the policies of the party etc. but then they can't apply the same rationale to the other side.
Different people, different sides. I guess the Republican Party did something very well here compared to Democrats, though I don’t know what or how.
This is the candidate's job. She didn't center a coherent vision of the improved future only she could get the country to. Pick one thing that Trump wouldn't or couldn't run on, that wasn't just "getting back thing we lost (under our watch)." Green New Deal. Medicare For All. Defund the police. Build houses for everyone. Monorail. Anything for people to hang a hope on. But any big idea would piss off donor-investors who would be hurt by any change to the status quo. So she offered nothing.
So the default is to vote for a person who will run the world into the ground? I don't understand why the onus on the sane person to prove why they're going to make things better. I guess people think that any change is good change? Yet people voted Hitler into power.
My take is that America was founded during a time of very high "mental activity" and engagement. In the 1700s people read for fun, the printing press just having been invented the prior century; and listened to candidates debate for hours, at a level of complexity that is beyond people today. A democracy takes that kind of mental energy and engagement to sustain. The citizens of the US seem to be too complacent, too uncaring, to uneducated to preserve their freedom, and so they won't keep it. Sad to see.
The default is not to vote.
Putting it simply: no candidate is owed a vote. Declining to cast a ballot doesn't favor any candidate. It is true neutral.
When people are going to do bad things, and you can make things a lot less bad for a little effort, you have a responsibility to do that.
Like, wouldn't you say that the people who didn't vote during Hitler's election should have voted for his opponent, no matter how unexciting their policies were? (Obviously Trump isn't like Hitler, but same principle to a smaller degree.)
However, the issue is a lot more clear-cut from the CANDIDATE'S perspective, which is the one that I think matters (because it's the one that is closest to affecting how the candidate campaigns and behaves): you are not owed a vote. No one is being paid or forced at gunpoint into a voting booth. Before the choice of candidate, is the choice of participation, and to not participate is the default, passive choice. It is on you as the candidate to influence not just the pen stroke on the ballot but the step into the polling center.
Ah, I hadn't realized you were wanting to shift to candidate's perspective, I thought you had said
>> think about what you want the country and the world to look like in ten, fifty, or a hundred years.
> This is the candidate's job
as if the fault lies with the candidate that the voters chose an authoritarian over democracy, and that she should have just done her job better. If you want to talk about the candidate's perspective, I don't think Harris thought people owed her a vote. She never said anything to indicate that, to my knowledge. Maybe you could make an argument that the party leadership thought they could pick whomever they wanted to run, and people would "have" to vote for their pick. I agree that the party shouldn't have that mindset. Ultimately it doesn't make a difference in this case, however, because, the facts being what they were, people chose an anti-democratic candidate over a democratic one.
And originally I wasn't talking about policies, I was talking about whether the country is tending toward democracy or authoritarianism in ten, fifty, or a hundred years, not whatever policies are the topics du jour that the campaign would need to comment on.
> ... But any big idea would piss off donor-investors
The "big idea" was that we don't like dictators, and that's all that should have been needed, but it wasn't.
> who would be hurt by any change to the status quo
Ok, so no change on one side, and a descent into authoritarianism on the other side. Seems like a simple choice to make, given that we have to make that choice. If we don't like the choices, then we should vote in other elections to replace the people giving us those options. But those are the options we have now (or, had), nonetheless.
Choose Harris, and you will have time to work your problems out. Choose Trump, and you may not get the chance. (It's not even about Trump himself, it's about what he's paving the way for.)
> because it's the one that is closest to affecting how the candidate campaigns and behaves
The campaign's behavior was nothing special, and it shouldn't take anything special to vote against someone with a dictator's mindset. The Harris campaign made their stances clear to anyone who was listening, and the Democratic Party's platform is not hard to find. Trump was never closeted, it's apparent to everyone who and what he is. Blaming the rooster for not acting differently somehow is a terrible defense for the hens who gave the fox the keys to the henhouse.
> That's if you believe that harm can be mitigated in that regard; e.g., perhaps moving the lever simply kills a different (smaller?) group of people instead. In this case, now you're arguing utilitarianism, i.e., it's okay to kill some people to save others, it's okay to kill a few innocents to save everyone else. "I will not choose to kill anyone, and the world shall move as it does," is then an option, and the neutral one.
Please don't waste our time trying to make this a political trolley problem.
> You can, in fact, walk away from Omelas.
Abstaining from voting (while remaining in the US) is not walking away from Omelas. It's staying in Omelas and also not lifting a finger to change anything. Even this is a tortured analogy, because Omelas is about to burn too.
In a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, the people reap the benefit, but they also must bear responsibility.
You did, in her defense.
>Maybe you could make an argument that the party leadership thought they could pick whomever they wanted to run, and people would "have" to vote for their pick.
That's exactly what happened. There is no argument.
>Ultimately it doesn't make a difference in this case, however, because, the facts being what they were, people chose an anti-democratic candidate over a democratic one.
That's incorrect.
>And originally I wasn't talking about policies, I was talking about whether the country is tending toward democracy or authoritarianism in ten, fifty, or a hundred years, not whatever policies are the topics du jour that the campaign would need to comment on.
Harris' policies on the border, incarceration, and many other topics appear as the accoutrements to authoritarianism, especially in the ways she intended to continue some of Biden's policies (which were continuations of Trump's policies).
>The "big idea" was that we don't like dictators, and that's all that should have been needed, but it wasn't.
That's not a "big idea." That's a basic tenet of democracy. If all you are going to fight for is the right to vote, and not anything worth voting for, you've given people no reason to care about voting.
>Ok, so no change on one side, and a descent into authoritarianism on the other side.
This assumes that we have not already descended to a state of demi-authoritarianism. The Supreme Court is stacked with radical, activist, ultra-conservatives, and so are lower courts. The legislature is ineffectual. The local police abuse and attack protestors and uninvolved citizens alike. The federal police gather all of our communications surreptitiously. Traveling has involved, "Papers, please," theater and secret no-fly lists since I was in elementary school. Every sporting event begins with a jingoistic morality play. Which side made any efforts to curtail any of this? Has any side succeeded?
>Choose Harris, and you will have time to work your problems out.
We've been out of time for 8 years, unless someone decides to embark on a radical campaign to reform the courts and whip legislators into meaningful action. That was why Biden was elected. He failed. There is apparently no appetite within the Democratic Party for any of that. Even if we "had time", the notion fails on its face, in its complete lack of substance. Buy time to do... What? Regain rights lost under Democratic rule (e.g., reproductive)? Stop climate change? (Utterly missing from her platform in any meaningful form.) What did she intend to change? What elite interests did she say she was going to throw under the bus, in order to do something for everyday Americans? ...You know, maybe that's the key. People feel hurt at the expense of the wealthy and well-connected. They wanted equivalent exchange: an elite's head on a pike, in the process of building something for Median Joe. Democrats see that as something unseemly to avoid when, for many, it's a feature. Harris couldn't provide one, so they took hers.
>The campaign's behavior was nothing special
That's a problem.
>and it shouldn't take anything special to vote against someone with a dictator's mindset.
Well, it does. Face reality.
>The Harris campaign made their stances clear to anyone who was listening
Quite. She wasn't as wishy-washy as Clinton. She was explicit about not having anything substantial in the works except the worst, most gross paeans to the right.
>Please don't waste our time trying to make this a political trolley problem.
...
>Abstaining from voting (while remaining in the US) is not walking away from Omelas. It's staying in Omelas and also not lifting a finger to change anything. Even this is a tortured analogy, because Omelas is about to burn too.
I disagree. Omelas, in this case, is not a place. it's a system. You walk away from it by not participating.
>In a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, the people reap the benefit, but they also must bear responsibility.
Woah, cool. You first.
Right. That's out of the way. I hope that this is not going to turn into a point-by-point essay-writing contest where the goal is to wear the other person out with paragraphs of pedantry. I hate feeling like I have to put energy into such things, but then, I also spent months filling a video game blog comment section with just such a tit-for-tat over Final Fantasy XIII. So, like, don't think that you can scare me with a wall of text.
I understand that you are shocked and upset about what happened Tuesday. I did not vote for Harris (or Trump), but I get that the outcome, in it's totality, is not the most ideal for the vast majority of American residents. However, here we are. The results are the results, and there are lessons to be learned from them.
I am telling you, emphatically, that that lesson cannot be, "The electorate just needs to suck less."
If that's your takeaway, we are just fucked right up the wing-wong. People (individually, but especially in groups) do not just become "better" spontaneously. They have experiences that change their outlook; they develop hopes which broaden their horizons and steel their resolve. A candidate curates the collective experience; they polymerize disparate hopes into a common movement and mission. They cannot conjure experiences people don't remember, or that people reject as painful; they cannot incorporate hopes that people don't have (or, in the case of Cheneypalooza et al., hopes that others have already claimed more effectively).
Harris generally couldn't manage the curation OR the polymerization process. In the few ways that she did, Trump did it better. Of course, for the latter, the experiences were horrible and violent, the hopes toxic and horrifying. So, many said, "Neither." No amount of haranguing or kvetching will change that. No one is going to torture themselves after making an intentional decision that they feel to have been moral. Certainly not just to make you, Stranger On The Internet, feel better.
For your own sake, primarily, but also for the sake of the hopes that you wish to survive four more years of Trump, that you desire to find fertile till in some future time: I'm asking you to find some other way of looking at this. The blame game wall-o-text, complete with trite trolley problem (that you introduced!) is profoundly useless.
Just FYI, the printing press was invented in the mid-1400s.
Let's be real, people wanted to be patted on the back and told it'll be okay. The want words, not solutions. Trump is happy to do that.
She threw herself under the bus. She went thought a great deal of effort to end up there. It's the deftest act of self immolation I've seen in politics so far.
Which was so totally unpredictable?
> and got the party behind her immediately
I remember this quite differently.
> and brought hope back to the Democrats.
I honestly doubt it was anything other than trepidation masquerading as hope. She was the worst performing Democrat in the last open primaries. This hope was not based on anything other than an exigent fear of Trump.
> she did far better than we could have reasonably expected.
The metric, as always, is votes / campaign spend. Are you sure you've evaluated this earnestly?
Not at all. Honestly I’m completely bewildered.
To me she obviously cleared the incredibly low bar required to be better than her opponent: a self-serving demagogue who literally tried a coup and has a long history of grift and worse.
I’ve got family who support him, and I’ve heard their F-you sentiments against a government and liberals looking down on them and telling them how to live (get vaccinated, wear a mask, don’t have guns, don’t eat meat, don’t drive a hummer, don’t say slurs, don’t bully, men are toxic, etc).
My assessment is the root is a desire to retain their status as “real Americans” who are socially on top. Religion, racism, nationalism, heteronormativity, patriarchy are all just useful tools for this. Policing is crucial, and don’t be too gentle.
I probably am blinded by this assessment and can’t see past it.
It was hysteric circus, and it was cruel and gloating, too. I remember the graffitis saying "we'll vaccinate you all". Who does that? Who goes around at night and sprays that on walls and pavements? People who want to lord it over others is who.
> My assessment is the root is a desire to retain their status as “real Americans” who are socially on top.
Everybody should be socially "on top" in that there is no other human being, ever, who can tell me what to think, surely not by persecuting me with a manifesto they can't even coherently remember themselves, much less argue for in their own words. At that point the content doesn't even matter, even if someone tried to enforce world peace and equality that way.
Anyway, they won. It’s over. Bygones.
I do very much agree with your ideal of nobody persecuting one another.
I don’t see how you square that ideal with, e.g., anti-abortion policies, mass deportations, support for brutal policing, anti-trans hysteria including CPS interventions, bringing bibles and chaplains into schools, and the like.
Maybe we’re all the same. I see vaccines and espousing tolerance and demanding respect for people’s preferred pronouns and such as justified for what I see as the social good. Perhaps you see strong borders and order and christian values as a similarly imperative for the social good. We both feel victimized and like the other is a massive hypocrite, because we just want different worlds?
It doesn't really matter if they did the right thing or not - enough people were looking to punish them regardless.
> coupled with all other stuff like illegal border crossing
I've seen a few comments talk about this, but this doesn't affect my day-to-day literally at all. This never crosses my mind because there aren't illegals I come across or maybe just don't ever cross paths with. Is this primarily a border state thing? If so, wouldn't that limit it to just CA, TX, NM, AZ? And only one of those is a swing state.
(Makes sense to me I guess, just sounds different from what Trump seemed to be taking about: crime and eating people's pets. I'm in Europe and don't know much.)
Outsiders coming in and changing the society. People who don’t speak English sending their kids to their schools. Moving into their neighborhoods and making it more competitive for their friends and family to move into their neighborhoods. Creating “bad neighborhoods” and increasing crime.
Higher prices? Immigration! (never mind that immigrants are cheap labor, which should lower prices). Crime? Immigration! (never mind crime continues to go down and has been for decades). Your shoes untied? Immigration!
It's just such a stark disconnect from reality. They're just used as scapegoats, enemies of the American people.
One argument I often see is that housing costs are increased by the large increase in population. Can you speak to that?
Can you imagine a rate that might be too high? 1 million/year? 10 m/y? 20 m/y? 50 m/y? There must be a limit, even for you.
The housing crisis is caused primarily by middle class and rich domestic white people. The problem is we're not building affordable housing, the reason being housing is the primary and most effective investment for the middle class. People who already own property have the highest incentive imaginable to NOT build more housing. Affordable housing means your investment depreciates.
Immigration (legal or otherwise) increases demand for housing. Your argument that immigrants are poor doesn’t change that, immigrants still live somewhere, and that drives the demand for housing up.
Increasing the housing supply is a solution, but allowing demand to increase is also exacerbating the issue
Demand has not been the issue nor is it solvable. You can't make people go away, you can only increase housing (supply).
We're not increasing supply enough because domestic Americans are greedy. We've set the incentives up in such a way to maximize the amount of friction to building new houses. Nobody with a house wants more homes built.
But even past that, what I'm saying isn't "demonstrably false". I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.
Suppose I work for a contractor, and it typically takes a crew of 20 to build a house. I'm being incredibly generous to your argument here, because in the neighborhoods I've seen it's done with 5 people. But suppose 20.
I would only need to be involved in 21 jobs across my career to produce more than I've used. Really, it's even less than that, because homes house multiple people.
To me, that not only seems achievable, that seems obvious.
This is a misunderstanding of the US housing crisis. The problem with housing in the US is that it's an investment, so there's a real cost to Americans when it comes to building affordable housing. That's why nobody would do it - it's bad for the people with capital, and the people with capital matter more. The people with hypothetical future capital don't matter much.
Net change in the amount of known immigrants who live in the US in 2023: 1.6M
% of immigrant workers in construction, natural resources, and maintenance industries in 2023: 14%
If we can generously attribute that 14% of the new housing supply is because of the immigrant labor force, then that’s 190k housing units attributable, to house an increased population of 1.6M.
New housing isn't being built not because we don't have the workforce. That is not the limiting factor on new housing.
New housing isn't being built because local governments DO NOT APPROVE new housing. They purposefully limit it, because the residents do not want their investments to go down in value. They go so far as to put laws in place to prevent affordable housing being built altogether. In many cities, you can't even put more than 1 unit on a lot and you need a special approval process to build apartments. Duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, dingbats - these are straight up illegal to build in a most areas.
You're not making an argument; you're being purposefully dense. Talking about demand and then straight up ignoring supply makes no sense, you gain absolutely no information from that.
I don't know why I continue to argue with dishonest people. This is exhausting. If you won't even begin to touch the core of my argument then why even bother?
There're two solutions here. One works and the other just doesn't.
We can reduce demand by getting rid of immigrants. This will be extraordinarily expensive and will backfire - this is a bad, bad non-solution.
OR we can increase supply by building more housing, which we will be required to do no matter what. We can't keep up, we need more affordable and middle housing.
I'm sure you've heard of renting. It doesn't matter whether the people seeking housing can buy or only rent -- either way if there's more demand than supply, costs must go up. I wrote "housing costs" earlier rather than "prices" precisely because of this. I'm rather shocked that you ignored rent in your reply.
I'll say it again - new housing isn't being built to keep up because domestic people, that means you and me, do not want it to be built. New housing is purposefully limited by local governments in order to preserve the value of existing housing.
In most cities it's illegal to build more than one unit on a lot. You also typically require a special approval process to build apartments. If you look at the states, HUGE cities will often approve only half a dozen or so new apartments a year. Duplexes, triplexes, dingbats, townhomes - these are straight up illegal in most of the country.
You can't have a city that gets ~100 new units a year and expect prices NOT to go up.
If you want an example of what to do right, look at Austin Texas. Austin built 100,000+ new units in the past couple years and average rent actually decreased ~10% between 2023 and 2024. Yes, you heard that correctly - decreased.
The reason why this works should be obvious, but Americans suffer such severe cognitive dissonance around housing they refuse to admit it. They'd rather blame random poor brown people. We require more housing, particularly dense affordable housing. And yes, that includes in your neighborhood. The sooner people admit this reality the sooner we can fix the housing crisis.
you've got to stay hopeful. votes do count, but a 60% threshold means a minority have more sway in this instance.
Unfortunately, this has a lot of drawbacks. Amending the constitution requires a 60% supermajority, which I think is appropriate for constitutional questions, but is too high of a threshold for ordinary policy legislation. In this case, repealing the laws against abortion and marijuana have majority public support by a wide margin, so why should we have to pass new constitutional amendments with a 60% supermajority just to repeal bad statutes that were passed via the ordinary legislative process in the first place?
On top of that, because measures passed this way become constitutional provisions, rather than normal legislation, it makes it difficult for the courts to exercise judicial review and reconcile these measures with extant law. It's sort of the worst of both worlds.
Maybe we should try to get an actual ballot initiative process into a draft constitutional amendment for the next election cycle.
The plebiscite/referendum is the ultimate authority.
The point of having a political process is to define a structured way of resolving the conflicts that arise from those divergences of interests and values, not to pretend that the output of specific elections somehow represents the singular will of the entirety of society. Presuming that is a grave error that inevitably results in the strongest faction imposing its will unilaterally onto all others.
Democracy is a great way of deciding political questions, but without safeguards in place to ensure that that it's kept within defined bounds of what qualifies as a political question in the first place, it will degrade into authoritarianism pretty rapidly.
We absolutely need judicial review, and plebiscites in which narrow majorities approve of policies that are unconstitutional, or otherwise violate people's fundamental rights, should unquestionably be struck down, just as equivalent policies enacted by a legislative body would.
If you total the population of the states which have a ban also I would bet it is less than 50m people, so ~15% of the population live in a state where it is banned and those are heavy rust belt states so they might even be in favor of it being banned.
Smaller states like Texas, the second largest state by population?
Republicans have stymied multiple useful border initiatives since 2008, most recently this year.
That's the problem. The solutions are already on paper, just not enforced. Much like theft in California which appears to have had a drastic shift back with this election too.
People was consistency and enforcement regardless of party.
Since not all American latinos are "illegal immigrants", why would this be a sane argument?
I'm not justifying them, but I completely understand why someone would think like that.
A great example is the viral marketing Republicans did where they went house to house in largely blue towns asking when they'd like their shipment of an illegal family to house.
Just wool over everyone's eyes. They are just rationalizing who they want to hate while ignoring how little progress on their issues they are actually making.
That bill was negotiated in secret by three senators, including one Republican senator. When the text of the bill was finally released, the contents were much different than expected. You can listen to Republican senators talking about the bill as soon as the text was released: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf4EzoWR944
And you can listen to the Speaker talking about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii0tl8d5G3g
It's not like this bill had wide support, and then Trump said something and everyone pulled back. That's just a fabrication meant to give the Democrats campaign talking points.
Also the House passed a border security bill in 2023, which has been blocked by the Democrat controlled Senate. [1]
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/02/unraveling-misinformation-...
>The bill also would have supplied more funding to interdict fentanyl and human trafficking, and it included $60 billion in aid for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.
The issue isn't immigration, it is massive amounts of illegal immigration. Some form of vetting is necessary to keep gang members, murderers, rapists, and extremist terrorists from entering the country. Nearly everyone in this country either is descended from immigrants or is a first generation immigrant themselves, but they just want a controlled legal process to occur.
Same with abortion. Trump's official position on abortion is that it isn't a federal issue, it is a state issue. This is much more nuanced than for and against. Conservatives have wide ranging beliefs on this issue. There are some that are 100% against it and some that believe it should be banned after X number of weeks. Many also believe that there should be exceptions for medical necessity, rape, and incest. There are complicated ethical, moral, and religious issues that surround these beliefs. At what point does a fetus become a human? No one really has a great answer to that question.
Another issue is gun control. If you believe strongly in the Second Amendment most Democrats are unpalatable on this issue alone. Kamala Harris has in the past stated that she supports a ban and confiscation of AR-15s, as you can imagine this went over poorly for a very significant portion of the electorate.
Bottom line however, I agree with many others here that the economy is the biggest thing that won people over to Trump. Even if it is completely out of Trump, Biden, or Harris's control, most people in this country felt like they were better off financially under the Trump administration and they voted accordingly.
I have a simple and correct answer for that -- at conception. It's not a matter of if abortion kills a human being, it's a matter of if that's ok or not.
Right. This isn't a novel issue. We already have codified, lawful killing in numerous situations.
Nobody has to agree on the morality of it. You can claim and believe that your definition is correct, and someone else can equally claim and believe a different position. But an internally consistent position that all can acknowledge is that there are laws the govern killing. (It's noteworthy that these generally are the purview of individual states.)
I think another reading is that abortion was the most important topic. I strongly believe that abortion is wrong and voted accordingly. There have been over 20M abortions in the united states, and is directly responsible for our current population collapse.
As far as I can see, their arguments have devolved to weasel wording alone, like saying it's a "reproductive health" or "reproductive rights" issue.
They seem to be carefully avoiding the central issue that, if discussed, could undermine all that weasel wording. I.e. the question of at what point life begins.
Also correct me if I'm wrong, but in the US left, and in some states governed by them, it's the case that a unborn baby of an age which would have been a viable albeit premature birth can be killed under the wording of "aborting a pregnancy"?
I'd just really like to understand the mental and philosophical basis behind this.
I think putting preferences is more comforting to people than the idea of approving people equally if you have preference.
I strongly disagree. "Vote for one or more candidates" is even easier to explain than "sort all these candidates in the order of your preference".
And once you start trying to explain the potential adverse effects there's no contest. Approval voting today, tomorrow, forever.
* What adverse effects are there that are worse than FPTP?
* I think if someone loathes candidate A, doesn't like candidate B but would tolerate them, and REALLY LIKES candidate C, they should be able to express that preference. Approval voting demands they express B and C with equal endorsement. Personally, I think that's discouraging.
* The results of close elections become basically random (due to results swinging wildly depending on the order in which the first few candidates are eliminated)
* You have to convey results with a series of graphs rather than a single graph (which confuses voters)
* You need all ballots in-hand to start an official count, so you can't call elections early
* You lose the ability to perform risk-limiting audits, which are the cheapest and easiest way to audit elections
So bad actors can trivially affect RCV elections by destroying or delaying a few mail-in ballots, as well as cast doubt on RCV results as a whole
2) Any confusion is due to lack of familiarity and the additional information can be useful beyond determining the winner.
3) This is only true when hand counting a lot of votes (just because you don't want to do it multiple times). Portland just had an election with STV for council seats and IRV for Mayor and these elections were (when possible) called early. You can see the early results here:
4) From a quick Google Scholar search there are risk-limiting audit options for IRV that usually work with few ballots but in occasional worst cases can need a full recount. See Blom et al. Ballot-Polling Risk Limiting Audits for IRV Elections:
[PDF] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michelle-Blom-3/publica...
I agree with buzzy_hacker that proportional representation is the most important thing to aim for. The main advantage of IRV is that it is easy to understand for single winner elections if you use STV for proprotional representation (which seems like a good choice for the US to me). As far as I know Ireland only has the President (a ceremonial role) individually elected but the US has a bunch of individually elected positions so going directly to the Irish system would be a bigger change.
https://abc7news.com/amp/ranked-choice-voting-oakland-school...
2) You're saying that a series of graphs is only harder to understand than a single graph due to lack of "familiarity?" This seems disingenuous. With single-graph results, you can show geographical heat maps of voting behavior which is paints a vivid picture of the vote. Heat maps for RCV are misleading and/or require additional context (this shows 1st choices).
3) Hand-counted ballots are a must in my opinion (for audit-ability). And hand counts of RCV are time-consuming so are typically only done once. I guess runaway elections can be called early with RCV, but my point is that it will happen far less often and most election results will be significantly delayed (waiting for all mail-in ballots to start a hand count)
4) I admit I didn't read this paper nor understand it at a cursory glance, but I know this was a drum that approval voting experts beat a while back. Maybe these strategies are new, or have downsides I'm unaware of.
Why do you see proportional representation as the most important thing to aim for? This is the only argument for RCV over approval that holds water, but my mental model for the need for proportional representation is of politics being a 0-sum game where everyone needs to vie for themselves (which I disagree with).
2) Anyone who cares to look at a heat map will need to learn how the new system works then will appreciate the additional information (the ballot could usefully also include approval information as a distinct aspect that doesn't affect results so that it is possible to determine how many voters like their representative, but I would say that approval voting does not communicate that).
3) Why do you think hand counting improves auditability? Being able to hand count does of course but actually doing the main count by hand doesn't seem to me like it would add anything. Not that I am opposed to hand counting, in that case you just wait for the ballots. As issues go it is way down the list from the other properties of the voting system in my opinion.
4) That one was 2018 or 2019 I think and an older one I saw was published in 2013 so yeah it sounds like this research is fairly recent and still being improved.
I don't see politics as a 0-sum game but people absolutely have fundamental differences where politics is the non-violent way to come to a resolution. These differences can be non-obvious if it isn't important to you and proportional representation gives a better chance that an elected representative will be able to understand and care about your issue (which increases the chance it can be solved easily if it isn't a contentious issue even if your favored representative doesn't otherwise have power). To put it another way, if the point of an election is to elect a represetative then proportional representation aims to give everyone representation within the practical limits of the number of representatives. Ideally, this would also make it easier for the representative to explain actual points of contention and tradeoffs (and basic stuff like what they are actually able to affect) to constituents and build general political competence, although I can't say that what I know of countries that use proportional representation is as promising as I would like on that. Ultimately a voting system alone can't do everything, representation isn't the only possible reason to ever have an election, and my personal ideal of how political resolution of differences can or should work involves a number of things quite different from currently common methods. Overall I see FPTP elections as more of a show to distract from behind the scenes power than a system designed to resolve differences peacefully and approval voting seems similar to me (in my opinion one of the most important things a voting method should try to do is limit the effect of strategic voting).
I'll comment on the last point: I know that multi member districts with proportional representation would be better. Hell, I am closer to convinced that a parliamentary system would be better for us, but I think the people of the US like having a directly elected head of state.
Democracies have evolved in 250 years. We're running old software.
Dems employed some similar strategies with Sanders in 2016, despite his decision to run as a Democrat.
It is interesting to look at the intersection of positions held by the likes of Ralph Nader and Ron Paul, especially where they differ from their respective “most aligned” mainstream party platforms, where they are marginalized. The most prevalent of these are the Military and Prison Industrial Complexes, and in my anecdotal experience 98% of the people agree regardless of their socio-economic status
To be clear voting third party in anything close to a swing state rather than whoever you feel is the lesser of two evils is not something I would do. I don't think third party voting makes sense in a US (or UK) system beyond being a protest vote, I was just trying to show what happens when a remotely supportable third party candidate emerges.
I don't think trying to shame those who did is going to do much to win them back for more than one election cycle without providing a candidate they can believe in though (somehow a lesson the democrats continue to drag their heels on every single time). Especially when in the case of Florida there were other factors on hand that were far clearer miscarriages of justice which they decided to accept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr. >He said that the financial industry and the military–industrial complex are funded at the expense of the American middle class; that the U.S. government is dominated by corporate power; the Environmental Protection Agency is run by the "oil industry, the coal industry, and the pesticide industry";
>In an interview with Andrew Serwer, Kennedy said that the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. had become too great and that "the very wealthy people should pay more taxes and corporations". He also expressed his support for Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax plan, which would impose an annual tax of 2% on every dollar of a household's net worth over $50 million and 6% on every dollar of net worth over $1 billion.[147]
>Kennedy attacked the operations of former CIA director Allen Dulles, condemning U.S.-backed coups and interventions such as the 1953 Iranian coup d'état as "bloodthirsty", and blamed U.S. interventions in countries such as Syria and Iran for the rise of terrorist organizations such as ISIS and creating anti-American sentiment in the region.
>In an article titled "Why the Arabs Don't Want Us in Syria" published in Politico in February 2016, Kennedy referred to the "bloody history that modern interventionists like George W. Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio miss when they recite their narcissistic trope that Mideast nationalists 'hate us for our freedoms.' For the most part they don't; instead they hate us for the way we betrayed those freedoms—our own ideals—within their borders".
>Kennedy has advocated for a global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy,[169][170] but has opposed hydropower from dams.[129][130][131][132][133][134] He has argued that switching to solar and wind energy reduces costs and greenhouse gases while improving air and water quality, citizens' health, and the number and quality of jobs.[171] Kennedy's fight to stop Appalachian mountaintop removal mining was the subject of the film The Last Mountain.
>As a "well-respected climate lawyer" in the 2000s,[204] Kennedy was "often linked to top environmental jobs in Democratic administrations", including in the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections.[209] He was considered as a potential White House Council on Environmental Quality chair for Al Gore in 2000 and considered for the role of EPA administrator under John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008.[209]
for example the UK's most recent election had the following
- one party has 410/650 of the seats in government with a third of the popular vote
- they gained 211 seats from the previous election off the back of a 1.5% swing in the popular vote
- another party has 65/650 of seats with 12% of the vote, another has 5/650 seats with 14.5% of the vote
Is the French system a good example of a multi-party system? It currently seems to be struggling with handling three parties and it doesn't guarantee proportional representation. The presidential election is a winner-takes-all system and in the election for the Assemblée Nationale each constituency is a winner-takes-all.
I would say yes in the sense a new party can (and did) emerge and rise to power when there is demand. Even before that you had some healthy rise and fall of political parties and political alternance beyond just two main contenders.
> It currently seems to be struggling with handling three parties
There are like 6 parties with more than 10% of seats, the current government is a coalition of five parties (from two main "families") and no shutdowns or hung parliament.
> Doesn't guarantee proportional representation
That however is true, and by design. This is a property the french voting system share with eg: ranked choice and other systems that aim at resolving the compromise as part of the election rather than afterwards.
I don't mean to say that the french voting system is perfect (I quite like ranked choice), simply that it is a functioning one with interesting properties.
The left-wing coalition was about 9~10 parties, Macron's coalition was around 6~7 right leaning/centrist parties, and Le Pen's block joined by one or two smaller far right/conservative parties.
They are just spoilers; you don't see the Libertarians or Greens saying "you know what, forget the presidency, obviously we aren't going to win--let's field candidates for like mayor, city council, DA, state legislature, etc. in really swingy/purple districts and show people what we can do"
If I were to guess why third parties don't make much of a dint it'll be because successful movements gradually get incorporated into one party or the other via the primary system. Once a party has drained away the core appeal the third party or outside movement will flounder.
WTF? I didn't know UK had such a weird voting system
Here's an election in the SDP split largely from Labour; the result was ultimately the Conservatives gaining 10% more seats when their vote share went down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_United_Kingdom_general_el...
Both of the last two elections were heavily impacted by Nigel Farage's parties in different ways; gaining very few seats but acting massively to the detriment of Labour in 2019 and even more to the Conservatives in 2024
I feel like a broken record, but God, Americans need only look beyond their own borders for just a SECOND to see real-world examples of almost every other ‘hypothetical’ posed by all the armchair political scientists in this thread.
There is no silent majority. Turnout was >60% in 2020, so by that measure there's a silent minority at best.
Hate to break it to you, but that's the GOP at this point.
It feels like there are lots of people in the GOP who want to go a lot farther than "Ordinary people" do.
(I haven't seen which of those passed or failed yet.)
So maybe we should be learning from them?
Today, the Conservative Party is a centre-left party. They support big government, taxation, immigration, interventionism, and other policies that are inherently not compatible with "right wing" ideologies.
Comparing the Conservative Party's platform to that of the centrist People's Party makes the Conservative's centre-left positioning more obvious.
Recently, the Conservative Party's platform has more closely resembled the farther-left Liberal Party's platform than it has the centrist People's Party platform.
I understand that your political views might see the Tories as Centre-Left, but your pegging of the PPC as centrist strikes me as mischaracterizing the present federal landscape.
Even the conservatives, while courting some hard right views, is arguably not that far right.. evne though I would put them firmly in the right wing.
Right now the governing party is a Liberal/NDP alliance, and it's possible that the next election will result in a Conservative government with a Bloc opposition.
I live in Colorado and couldn't be more pissed off. We had a shot at viable 3rd parties and blew it.
The entire system needs an overhaul.
But by casting an actual vote for “green party”, you are not only electing green party, but you are also sending strong signal to other parties, that there is an active voter who cares for “green” ideas. (Other parties may opt to include some “green” green ideas into their campaign, or even schedule)
The problem is that there's not much money in third party politics...
The Electoral College + the Twelfth Amendment.
The problem: The EC requires a majority, not just a plurality, of 270 EVs. If you bring in a competitive third party, the EVs get split three ways. If no one hits 270 EVs, the presidential election goes to the House. The House also requires a majority, not just a plurality, of state delegations. If you bring in a competitive third party into the house, the state delegations get split three ways. If no one hits 26 state delegations, the House just has to keep voting, and the Speaker of the House serves as President in the meantime. Structurally, as it is, the Republicans have a major advantage in state delegations, such that if no one reaches 270 EVs, the Republicans will pick the president. This is either a bug or a feature depending on perspective, but either way it's not friendly to a third party.
The lack of solution: Ranked choice voting does not solve this. That just makes it more likely that third parties will screw up presidential elections. The NPVIC does not solve this, because our current Supreme Court would never let it take effect. A constitutional amendment will not overturn it because one of the two major parties has a structural reason to leave it in place. The Electoral College + the Twelfth Amendment are here to stay. There is no way around it.
MAGA is the third party. Nobody ceded power to Trump. Both R and D tried really damn hard to get rid of him. His biggest detractors are GOP royalty.
He got enough people behind him to get established. In his remarks following this election, he even referred to it as the MAGA Party.
The origin of local power to stymie development is from the post WW2 years when freeways were mandated, but local communities they bisected were inevitably the politically weak ones.
Now, the NIMBYs include those same VCs [1] that publicly posted that America should build at scale again… just not in their town.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andre...
- development zoning (restrict development to low density residential),
- slowing development with required surveys (eg. CEQA)
- permit friction
- rejection of mass transport in growing population regions
- mobs at city planning meetings,
- Open Space preserves (private contracts to maintain nature in area where high demandIf you don't believe me just look at Mississippi. A state where demographics alone should've made it between blue and purple. Instead, 15% of all Black adults in that state are not allowed to vote. Similarly, in Florida, 10% of all adults cannot vote. Voters passed an initiative by direct democracy to allow felons to vote, but DeSantis just blocked it anyways and the courts, which he controls, backed him.
Democrats, despite winning the popular vote in all but 2 elections since 1988, are pretty much completely out of power
After some research it seems like this is due to felony convictions. I agree voting privileges should be restored upon completion of sentence, but dang I'm more concerned that 10% of all adults in Florida are convicted felons, what's up with that?
The effects of the Fentanyl crisis is truly going to haunt the US for decades to come. absolutely unbelievable.
Mississippi is a very obvious case. The white power structure there simply does not want to allow black people to vote so they use all available means to prevent that.
It's almost as if they need a different platform that can get them a win instead of complaining that the majority of their voters live in a handful of states.
The election system is what it is.
If you want to win, you need to do something to win - not complain about the system.
Sure, there have been changes since then, but it’s probably always been optimal to go for many states as opposed to the handful of biggest ones.
This shit pisses me off so much. Why can't they play by the same rules? The supreme irony is, if Dems were willing to occasionally fight dirty/play to win as well, at least when they still had some power, it would have likely forced Republicans to try to govern well occasionally rather than simply always playing to win.
This is an example of something that happens across the country. Most deep red states are heavily gerrymandered. In contrast, almost every single state that uses an independent redistricting commission is blue. This means Dems are unable to play by the same gerrymandering tactics as Republicans
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/puerto-rico-governors-ra...
Is this really the case? My understanding, based on voting data, is that Gen Z was overwhelming for Trump and Trumpism. If anything, Baby Boomers have gone way more left than they have been in previous elections.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
Young people (18-29) are the age demographic where Trump made his biggest gain from 2020 to 2024. The only demographic where Harris had gains as the oldest demographic.
So while democrats still won the young vote, the trend is in the opposite direction.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
No they aren't. Gen Z young men are all voting for Trump.
>America is getting more diverse and more educated
Diverse maybe, educated no. They're getting more college degrees than 50+ years ago I suppose, but they're not worth much compared to college degrees in the past. These days, college just makes up for utterly lousy secondary school education. Educational standards in the US have been in decline for a very long time.
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/28/gen-z-men-conservative-poll
Just look at the headline. But the numbers just saying "18-24 are slighyly more conservative than 24-30". While the lion's share simply say they are moderate.
So it can really swing any which way.
As another statitic:
https://i.redd.it/6sekbauh9uec1.jpeg
Only up to 2020, but for the US you see that liberalism for men only stagnated in 2020, not shift conservative.
South Korea... I have no clue what has happened.
> These days, college just makes up for utterly lousy secondary school education.
A bit questionable (I reckon lousy grade school just means less college, and college participation rates are decreasing), but I do agree that secondary education has utterly tarnished its standards. NCLB can't even explain this horrible drop.
From the exit poll data, I see a 2 point lead for Trump among men age 18-29. That's interesting, but probably also within the margin of error. (For women in that range it's an overwhelming 24 point lead for Harris, making the overall support for Harris in that group pretty strong, albeit not as strong as I thought and much weaker than in 2020 and 2016.)
> ...more college degrees...
Yes, and regardless of your opinion of them, this has been inversely correlated with support for Trump. This has not changed from 2016, to 2020, to 2024.
And yes, there's a huge gap between the sexes in political leaning, and according to articles I've read, has a lot to do with young men being sexless and angry (not that this is the women's fault). Basically, GenZ men are turning into a bunch of angry incels.
And yes, college degree attainment is inversely correlated with Trump support, in general. I never said otherwise; I was just making a side point about the country being "more educated". Sure, more people these days have college degrees than 50+ years ago, but on the other hand, 50+ years ago the US didn't elect anyone as vulgar as Trump into its highest office so it doesn't seem to have helped that much.
This insulting and dehumanizing attitude is why they left and will continue to do so. Good work!
"you are an incel for disagreeing politically" > they are not and get pushed to vote trump > Trump wins
Only one "party" is really loosing here
"you are an incel because of your actions" > they are and get offended and vote trump > Trump wins > things for them go from bad to much worse
So when things get even worse for them under Trump, they have no one to blame but themselves, and certainly not random people on the internet that they feel offended by.
Wait! The term incel was already around when GenZ were still busy wetting dipers.
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/31/democrats-republicans-ad-sp...
Perhaps this will help provide perspective. Compare.
https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race/kamala-ha...
https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race/donald-tr...
The main difference that I see , is relative lack of female Trump supporters.
Nothing else stands out much.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/09/13/media/right-wing-media-in...
I hope DNC learn from this and let people choose a candidate next time.
But tbh I’m not sure how much it mattered. With the high inflation levels it was always an uphill battle for the incumbent.
Yeah, this was a big part of a general trend of the Democrats treating voters like children to be coddled and lied to. Voters don't like being treated as less-than just because they're less educated, and uneducated doesn't mean stupid. They can see through it.
My county went >75% for Trump, and the reason is because Trump is the only presidential candidate in most of our lifetimes who treats working-class voters as his equal. He doesn't talk down to them, he talks like them, and they eat it up.
However, if you "talk to" them, you are in a much better position to actually hear and respond to their concerns - with the added bonus of seeming actually human.
The way you frame it seems to imply that people are voting for him because he talks 'like them' while ignoring the 'to' them. I believe the hot leftist term for this is 'code-switching' which just means talking to your audience with language they understand and relate to -- and it's usually portrayed as a virtue, not a defect.
In reality, these people voted for Trump because as a result of him talking to them like equals rather than down to like subjugated servants left many feeling that he was in fact advocating for policies that support their best interests and would be impactful in their day to day lives.
Obviously personality matters more than it should - but in Trumps case the entire media apparatus was single-mindedly determined to make sure they dictate what his personality is, rather than his words or actions. So if anything this win shows that policy matters more than personality at this point anyway.
Now of course, if you see his policies as wrong and evil and dictatorial and the embodiment of fascism, none of that will matter and no lessons will be learned from this absolute rejection of the democrats platform.
If you want to catch a fish, you bait the hook with something the fish wants to eat instead of something you want the fish to eat.
Maybe that's the message he was sending but is that really true?
Democrats would be welcome to continue believing voters are children as long as they don't project it so blithely.
I hear you and found it irritating as well. Republicans don't even treat their voters as children, it's far worse in my opinion, and yet they reap all the benefits. I think that if Democrats want to continue treating their voters as children they should go all the way and use the same dirty lies in the republican handbook, at least we could finally say they're all the same.
As long as they aren't blacks, or muslims, or Asians, or Mexicans, or Puertoricans...
For example, in the recent Puerto Rican "garbage" kerfuffle, the comedian never said that Puerto Ricans as such were garbage - that was a fabrication of the media. What he said was that the island of Puerto Rico is an island of garbage, which is figuratively true as it has an acknowledged a problem with garbage disposal.
Similarly, Trump never said that Mexicans are rapists, etc.; that's another media fabrication. What he said was that those in America illegally are disproportionately criminals. That may or may not be true, but it's not a statement about Mexicans as a race, but about a particular subgroup set apart by their own behavior of illegal immigration, and notably NOT directed at their cousins in America legally, or still back in Mexico.
Trump says a lot of crap. But if you find it particularly egregious, chances are that it was fabricated by the media. Another very recent example is when the media told us that Trump said that Liz Cheney should be put in front of a firing squad. In reality, the topic of conversation was her attitude toward war, and his statement was that if there were guns pointed at her, she'd feel different about soldiering.
Behavior of Trump in the Black lives matter movement speaks for itself.
Muslim ban: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_travel_ban
Trump tried hard (but failed) to deport dreamers out of USA: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-dreamers-...
"Puerto Rico is a garbage island" and Trump trowing paper toilet rolls to victims of natural disasters with a clear purpose of humiliating them.
The problem in this thread is that everybody is trying to find what Democrats did wrong, or say that Kamala was not well known. Well, every voter knew who was Trump, and they still voted him, so changing the candidate by "better" does not matter if people wants "worse". If a country can't use the best people that they had ("elite thinks that are better than us") the outcome is predictable.
And we aren't even daring to discuss the elephant in the room that is "Can't be really, (really) sure that they didn't just cheated?
After all wouldn't be the first time, so is legit to speculate about it. Lets imagine [hypothetically] that in an alternate timeline they just learned from past fails and cheated better this time. How that could be disclosed or done? Was mail vote altered?. How could we spot it in this case?. This is the real meat in this discussion.
How strong or weak is a candidate does not matter if a party just can jump over the game rules.
Of course he did. It's called innuendo, and everyone knew exactly what he was getting at. If you say an entire neighborhood, city or country is garbage, then you're saying that the people living there are garbage, too. There's no point pretending otherwise.
If you disagree, try walking to the other side of town, telling a few residents that "You know, nothing personal, but your whole neighborhood is big mountain of garbage", and feel free to share the results of your research with us.
Trump never said that Mexicans are rapists, etc.
What he did say was that women traveling through Central America en route to the United States were "raped at levels that nobody's ever seen before" (despite there being no evidence of this happening). Which again, amounts to exactly the same thing. Pretending otherwise is extremely naive.
1)Got the platinum plan which provided half a trillion dollars to black communities
2) He also was very involved in the 'first step' act, helping address 'over-incarceration'.
3) He secured funding for HBCU via the FUTURE act, some of which were at risk of closure.
4) Prior to covid, black unemployment was at record lows (5.4%)
I keep hearing it repeated over and over again that black people hate him and he is racist, but I have yet to see a non-hyperbolic example. Whereas Biden is on video making incredibly racist remarks throughout his career like "I don't want my kids to grow up in a racial jungle" and speaking at a 'Grand Cyclops" KKK members funeral... not to mention he was largely RESPONSIBLE for the 1994 Crime Bill, which led to the over-incarceration of black people to begin with.
Surely you have something at least that damning, if you are going to casually label him as anti-black - right? I mean I know that supposedly the fact that the KKK guy later said 'oh no this was bad for my image' absolves him of THAT infringement for some reason, but it doesn't square the other stuff.
I'll keep the rest short, but the point I am trying to drive home to anyone reading this far: Just because you were told 'trump is super duper racist and hates minorities' by the TV every day, doesn't mean it was reflected in his actions.
Muslims:
Less of substance here admittedly, but he did sign an executive order in 2019 to promote religious freedom WORLDWIDE, which included efforts to protect Muslims from persecution.
Asians:
As a large contingent of 'small business owners' the tax cuts for small businesses were a major boon.
Mexicans:
Honestly the fact that you listed this one is kind of weird - like what is he supposed to do for citizens of another country? Or did you mean Latin Americans but just reducing them to 'mexicans' would elicit the mental imagery you were hoping for?
All the Mexican Americans I know voted Trump, and if you look at the voting history in 2020 he got 32% of 'latino voters' and in 2024 that is looking like a jump to 45%. So roughly half seem to support him.
Puertoricans:
If you are going to exploit a minority group to make a mis-guided political point, at least type out the proper 'Puerto Ricans'... but I see clearly you just want to appeal to the 'coloring box of oppression' and throw some minorities out there and see what sticks.
Again, this group went from 30% supporting trump in 2020 to 40% in 2024 -- something tells me droning on and on about how the 'insult comic' harmed Puerto Rico (who does have a garbage crisis) didn't really have the effect you or the media or whoever formed your opinion were shooting for
Anyway, now that the facts are out I think it would be pretty hard to seriously claim Trump is a racist bigot without also conceding that 'your guy' is demonstrably more so -- but at the end of the day these identify politics games are getting tiresome, and no one is listening anymore.
Unless of course, you never cared about facts.
In an interesting twist "American Indians" showed 65% support for Trump! That kind of damages the 'muh racist' narrative too.
Oh and 'Latino's are exceeding the 45% projection at least a bit, so even closer to a 'tie' sitting at 46% currently.
This is per NBC, who tend to lean left: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
In fact, Latino turnout is pushing half and half, an unprecedented showing for a Republican candidate in that community. That single fact should have you carefully questioning the truth of what you've said.
But If Trump loves Latinos we will probably see a lot of them promoted to important positions. I spot two hispanic surnames in his first cabinet, Acosta and Carranza, both for a short period of time.
No, he demonstrably doesn't treat them as his equals - however, you're absolutely right, he does talk to them like they are, and in this sense, it is one of his strengths.
Meanwhile the rest of this comment section is talking about how democrats lost because they tried to talk about complex policy issues instead of just giving vague promises. Which is it?
>He doesn't talk down to them, he talks like them, and they eat it up.
"He says it like it is" right next to "But he didn't mean that", and he also literally talked about how devastated he was that the Jan 6 supporters were so shitty looking. He spends all sorts of time shit talking veterans who sacrificed for our country, even when the wars they fought were caused by dumb Republican policy.
It's fucking schrodinger's reality when it comes to Trump.
People who don't know what RNA, lymphocytes or spike proteins are, are nonetheless trying to make decisions about taking a vaccine.
People who don't understand statistics, can't comprehend graphs and don't understand fundamental physics are nonetheless trying to make decisions about climate change.
See also corporate tax law, Middle East ethnic divisions, AI, pollution, etc.
Our innate intuition is often entirely wrong and disinformation can often make compelling arguments that sound correct to non-experts. I'm not sure what the solution is. We all have to put our trust in others about the many things where we're non-experts, but obviously many people are choosing the wrong people to believe.
I worked in an advanced Alzheimer's ward for about 4 years when I was younger. There is a look that happens in the eyes which is a sure-sign they are effectively gone - it's like a light has been turned off. (even if they have moments of lucidity, there is a clear switch that is talked about in exactly these terms if you work in these places and are close to them every day.)
Biden clearly had 'the look' back in 2021, and was making enough gaffes for people who maybe aren't as familiar with the signs of mental decline could clearly see it.
Just because you didn't, doesn't mean everyone else was wrong and saw what they wanted to see.
If you are going to argue 'well, that's just like your perspective man' you have to at least see how that same argument can be turned towards you.
You are absolutely right that it is not black and white - I fully believe that back in 2021 he had enough moments of lucidity (which generally are somewhat reliable, which appear to be tied to the circadian rhythm hence 'sundowners') -- so if all you watched were his scheduled speeches I could see how you may have been left with that impression.
There were plenty of other opportunities to watch his decline in real time however.
I kept hearing clips of voters saying they want prices to go back down, but my understanding of the economics is that this would be terrible. Instead, IMO, what we need is for wages to increase while minimizing the inflationary effect of wage increases. That's not a catchy slogan, however.
Parallel to this, I don't think the post COVID inflation is really due to politicians.
Deflation is only "terrible" because we have collectively decided to build an economy on debt instead of savings (Keynesian instead of Friedmanian).
In a different economic order, prices declining would be a good thing for everyone.
But we're stuck with it, so inflation it is.
The majority of the expenses for the disadvantaged young are housing, gas, and food. With housing being 4x more expensive than 4 or 5 years it basically puts all the disadvantaged from even buying a house and then puts them at the mercy of the renters market
More importantly, everybody can see that debt for investment allows more growth. Just think about how many more people can afford to own their own home thanks to taking on debt. This allows them to pay a mortgage instead of rent, which allows them to build up wealth.
Equivalent effects exist in industry.
Debt is an extremely useful tool. We made the right choice here as a society.
There is no such thing as a durable deflationary market if it’s not justified by productivity gains and volume - and there is definitely no such thing as a durable deflationary economy.
Not sure what you're refering to, the 1873 panic wasn't exactly the finest hour for US economy. I guess that's not what you want to get back to.
As for the rest of the 19th century, the data we have is mostly consumer price indexes, but I can't recollect another durable deflationary period in the century.
Debt = Savings
The exact fraction is determined by the central bank's reserve requirements. And since 2020 it has been set to... zero percent.
So essentially US banks can infinitely create money.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022416/why-b....
>> Debt = Savings
That’s only true for public debt, excess spending (that which is not deleted through taxation) by the government shows up in savings
https://www.raleys.com/product/10400953/raley_s-shredded-fou...
I was looking at the price of Lays chips and it's sitting at $6 a bag ON SALE!
https://www.raleys.com/product/30031044/lay_s-potato-chips-s...
Yes prices need to specifically go down. CA decided to DOUBLE DOWN on raising gas prices during the pandemic, and apparently they're slated to vote on another change that could raise prices by $0.45 a gallon. The world has had CHOICES to go in a specific direction, and this administration and all LEFT administrations are pushing for prices to rise, and replace all the failing families with people from China, Venezuela and whoever wants to cross the border.
Also, from my experience, prices never go down.
Here we have someone sharing a real world example of out of control inflation, which is true across all groceries no one grounded in reality would deny that.
Rather than acknowledge these concerns in anyway, you took time out of your day to imply because they used 1 unhealthy example this runaway inflation is actually a good thing because they will be forced to eat 'healthier'. Completely ignoring how expensive those 'healthy' items are as well (and that they continue to rise).
Then you use your anecdotal experience to further your dismission with 'well, ackkkstually ime prices don't go down so your concerns are invalid.'
This exact attitude is why there is nation-wide a mandate to eliminate the left from all pillars of power. And this is coming from someone who campaigned for Bernie.
Prices do go down. I'll update you in a year after Trump is in place about the price of chips.
Edit: I forgot to mention, the reason for the colors. “Ying” has an i, for wh”i”te, “Yang” has an “a” for bl”a”ck. It wasn’t even a light/dark thing, it was because she believes the translated name shares a common letter with the color, so that is the reason for those colors. That is the reason why I’m not surprised by the results.
Typically you would expect this to be an opportunity for competition, but generally speaking companies are suspiciously raising prices together. They've taken advantage of the COVID shortage and inflation narratives to squeeze consumers.
https://fortune.com/2024/01/20/inflation-greedflation-consum...
What competition? Most of them have merged into massive blobs.
Bigger corpos means bigger donations to bigger candidates. The entire system runs on money and nobody's got money to put in like these supercorps. We live in Gerontocracy that is actively building a Corporatocracy to replace it after the Boomers die off entirely and no money will ever go to the working class again.
You are grossly underselling the work of Lina Khan and the FTC.
If your change is no more durable than a single election, you didn't accomplish shit.
That is the way that the country works! The system is working as intended if a single government appointment can't unilaterally destroy monopolies in a single term.
Because the Biden administration was characteristically incompetent (Remember Treasury Secretary doing interviews saying that inflation was just a short-term blip and not persistent?) inflation started to get out of control. Once that happened, 30+ years of low inflation expectations went out the window. Market psychology changed, and because people now expected prices to rise, they weren't as resistant to individual price changes. This gave producers (along with legit covid supply side issues) breathing room to increase prices.
A good politician, can speak to the experience, but fix the problem. A good salesman can sell you a solution, even if it doesn't fix the problem. And the democratic party, seems mostly interested in talking about the problem and ignoring the experience.
This is why it's important for the media to hold politicians' feet to the fire - even if they agree with them. I think there was just a murmur[1] of Biden's problems before the catastrophic debate. Imagine if the media had been hammering the administration on this point 6 months prior.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13102973/New-York-T...
I made that mistake too recently.
Before the debate, anyone talking about Biden’s obvious decline was dismissed as a right wing troll parroting Russian propaganda.
https://www.vox.com/politics/2024/2/8/24066529/biden-special...
Biden absolutely should have dropped out earlier. It made Harris look like a last minute sub (which she really was).
It's telling (on a number of levels) that one of the most popular Google searches yesterday, on election day, was "Did Biden drop out?"
Between price controls, tariffs, and excepting tips from taxes, I had no confidence either candidate could pass Econ 101. The proposals can play well politically, but it leaves people who have a basic understanding of economics at a loss of who'd be better.
1. Kamala isn't a great candidate shown by her poor primary results in 2020.
2. She has all the baggage of running pretty far to the left in 2020. (Like saying she was for performing gender affirming surgery on trans illegal immigrants, agree or disagree with the stance this is a deeply unpopular position)
3. She was tied to the current administration which meant she couldn't distance herself from the inflation issue or attack Trump on age and fitness as much as another candidates not tied to the administration.
These candidates are aligned with the Democrats.
That's what the party is.
It's not a party of the left or liberals or whatever you imagine it to be. They've been extremely clear on this.
Go over the historicals. I have. Many times. This is correct.
The Republican primary process doesn't have as many ways for party members to put their fingers on the scale.
Also they've misappropriated words like "leftist" and "socialist" so much that in my interaction with Trump supporters, at Trump events, I hear plenty of actual left and actual socialist policies presented as new ideas or attributed to Trump.
At a policy level, these people actually don't want neofascism, I've interacted with plenty. They really don't.
The Democrats tried to appeal to the hard right voter who found Trump icky. For that they were called socialist so and I know this is hard, people I spoke with associated the word socialism with the policies of Harris
What the hell are the democrats supposed to do to oppose a party that gets to redefine language however it wants with seemingly great effect?
America spent 100 years demonizing socialism. Not the policies, the word. And now republicans can just deploy it against whoever, because it doesn't have a meaning to US voters.
What possible strategy is there against that? My "democrat for life" (because republicans wanted to fucking murder the french catholics in the area, lookup the KKK in Maine) would vote against "socialism"!
The US is a uni-party state at the federal level. You either play with the republicans, or you will be labeled "socialist", no matter the objective reality, and you will lose.
There was clearly a winning path with say, Bernie in 2016. The state by state Bernie/Trump matchup polling data consistently predicted a clear and decisive victory. Or, maybe Estes Kefauver 1952, or go back to the 40s and Gallup predicted Henry Wallace would have had a 1936 style landslide instead of the squeak they won with Truman.
As a hobby I've poured over archives of primaries, old newspapers, speeches, going back even to Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln's first VP and how he got replaced.
I continue to claim that any actual left project (as opposed to whatever the propaganda industry is deciding to imagine the left is) would be far more successful under a Republican flag because they aren't as committed to the neoimperialist project.
That's why the Democrats had all the warring Republicans on their side this time.
In fact, the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in all four of the most recent elections before this one (from 2008 - 2020, inclusive).
2. Nobody has beaten Trump since he's been a convicted criminal, lied about winning an election he didn't, or stole classified documents from the White House. So it doesn't make sense to discuss "barely beating an incompetent [...]" in the context of my comment that refers only to Democratic candidates who ran before those things happened.
They will occasionally virtue signal elsewhere but their policies only align with the project
Progressive policies on minimum wage, labor and other things won in Red States once again. Nebraska's minimum wage increase, for instance, went 75-25. 60% for Trump, 75% for minimum wage increase.
It's important to realize the Democrats have no interest in those. Absolutely zero.
Their project is bowing down to companies like Wells Fargo, Equifax, Lockheed Martin, and General Motors and that's it.
> The sentiment is Republicans are focused on winning while Democrats are focused on a deeply unpopular corporate-imperialist political project and scolding people into voting for them.
In the U.S. we are, for all practical purposes, stuck with two choices. Some people will vote for one side, while some people with vote against the other side. But, here you're claiming that people are voting for Republicans because they like them and people are voting for Democrats because they are being "scolded" into it. That is just you superimposing your opinion/analysis on to things. The only objective measure is that, until this election, Democrats consistently got more votes than Republicans. Period. You can read whatever tarot cards and tea leaves you want to figure out why.
> They will occasionally virtue signal elsewhere but their policies only align with the project > > Progressive policies on minimum wage, labor and other things won in Red States once again. Nebraska's minimum wage increase, for instance, went 75-25. 60% for Trump, 75% for minimum wage increase. > > It's important to realize the Democrats have no interest in those. Absolutely zero.
Let's get this straight. Voters in states that are being run by Republicans feel the need to take things into their own hands by going around their elected officials to implement progressive policies, like higher minimum wages. Voters in states that are being run by Democrats have NOT felt the need to add minimum wage increases to their constitutions.
And your conclusion from these facts is that it's the Democrats that don't care about increasing the minimum wage? Are you kidding? I think there's a MUCH more obvious interpretation here, and it's NOT that the Republican party is somehow in a more popular position when it comes to progressive policies...
You're just looking at superficial symbols and not substantive policy.
My brother is part of a union, voted for minimum wage increase, posts about evil communist Harris and her DEI woke mob trying to destroy our country. He's cooked.
He thinks Trump is antiwar and will have a federal jobs program.
I've been involved in right wing politics for 20 years because I have been trying to understand these people. How functioning democracies can enthusiastically elect clearly corrupt criminals based on laughable bullshit.
They deal in a world of symbols but at the policy and practice level, the actual ballot measures and positions, it's clear where they actually stand.
They want things like lower housing cost, jobs programs, affordable healthcare, better public infrastructure, increased wages ... That's all socialism. They just think it'll come through some wacky indirect way that doesn't work as opposed to direct and intentional implementation.
I don't know where you live. you got to go interact with the people if you really want to figure them out. Once you look past the scapegoats and boogeymen, it's pretty clear.
The Democrats have abandoned that platform. Arguably the last competent person to do that on a national stage was shot in 1968. You gotta lie to people, have bullshit factories ("think tanks"), media empires.. sitting down and playing classroom doesn't work. The 2024 DSA LA voter guide was 75 pages. I mean holy hell, no wonder they lose.
I'm talking about reliable 90%+ will always vote D people and will show up on election day, the mainstays of the party, which is the biggest bloc of the Democratic Party coalition.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/the-democrat...
The largest bloc of the coalition are these mainstays, who tend to be older moderates. And almost half of these people are black. That's what I mean by "base". They lead the way of who the party chooses as a candidate.
A bunch of people sometimes show up but the base is people who think warhawks like Dick Cheney, William Kristol and Henry Kissinger are heroes and chronically wrong people like Francis Fukuyama are brilliant statesmen.
They're already saber rattling "Russia stole it" conspiracy theories about why they lost. Check Twitter.
They're dumbfucks who are deeply committed to the bankrupt political project that brought you Afghanistan and Iraq
The earliest example of this I found was an op ed by Walter Lippmann in 1932 claiming Roosevelt was unelectable as he pushed alternatives like Al Smith. He was part of the failed "Stop Roosevelt" campaign trying to stage a convention coup to swap the candidates.
It's one of the very few times it failed so we have it as a counterexample of what happens.
Roosevelt was pretty electable after all.
These people don't have any interest in that however. It's a ruse. Lippmann, like Woodrow Wilson and Al Smith fit the political category of Liberalism (not how people flippantly use it).
This is the ideology of the people who have more or less controlled the party since.
In 1944 for instance, FDR's immensely popular hand picked successor and VP, Henry Wallace, was swapped out for the more "electable" Harry Truman, who almost lost.
Truman ended up firing Wallace after he wrote a letter predicting a nuclear arms detente between the USSR and the US (what we call the Cold war). The Liberals thought the cold war prediction was so absurd and impossible they let Wallace go - their Francis Fukuyama of the 40s moment (remember, they're ideologues and everything comes from that)
Then the immensely popular Estes Kefauver got swapped out during the 1952 DNC and dark horsed with Truman's pick of Adlai Stevenson and they got 1928 Al Smith like results.
Truman actually wanted to run in 1952 but he got his ass handed to him at the first primary by Kefauver and he dropped out. Then he made the now familiar electability argument at the convention.
When the strategy works it's almost always an unusual setup such as 1992 with Perot pulling away the populist (the neoliberals love showing national polls and ignoring state by state polls which show Clinton would have been defeated in the electoral college) or times like 2020, with Covid.
In more normal times like 1988, 2000, 2004, 2016, 2024 it's a failed strategy. But they don't care. They're committed to the ideology more than winning.
They were trying to push Hilary in 2008 and she sure of hell would have lost to McCain.
The advocacy from all of this is to form coalitions based on popular positions and offer the electorate what they want instead of claiming it's impossible like some scolding nanny and presenting an unpopular political project as the only sensible and logical conclusion.
It's always been a dumb move and when somebody actually does it they win. Even if they're a felon who stole things from the Whitehouse and who clearly is going to trash things, they still win.
The neolibs don't want to win, they want neoliberalism. Almost nobody else does, that's the problem.
The paleoconservatives, as a counterexample, learned how to successfully lie to the electorate. I could write an equally long response mapping their rise from groups like America First and the Black Legion to taking the Whitehouse in 1980. But really, go read Rick Perlstein's 2500 or so pages over 3 books on the topic. He explains it just fine.
You mean like a democracy ? Surely you must be joking.
Twenty. Years.
In fairness, they actually did change the rules around them after 2016 but stopped short of removing them.
The democratic coalition depends on black voters, and they decisively chose Joe Biden in South Carolina, sending a clear signal about who would have the strength to beat Trump (and in the end they were right).
It was not a party conspiracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presiden...
America was saved and a better chapter begins. Do you disagree? A plurality of Americans agree with that sentiment as evidenced by the popular vote and the winning of all 7 swing states.
Loved? I still love the guy, afaik nobody else in the senate has such an authentic passion for civil rights and activism. He's real. It was a massive disservice that HC ran.
Meanwhile, Trump runs on fear, one of the best emotions to exploit for turnout.
[0] https://heavy.com/news/2019/06/bernie-sanders-house-home-pho...
Kamala then fumbled that lead.
Conformity, if you'll pardon me, is not a trait all those Americans who voted for Trump have, nor want. They are individuals and would like to be treated as one.
That, plus the infuriating, incessant spam texts.
I'm sure that's what all 72 million of them think. Including the ones (the majority?) who don't like Trump, but who thought a vote for Harris was anathema.
Anyway, I wrote in Bernie. Yes, yesterday.
What data would settle this?
They've studied this. And the cause is is the following. Yes you get your base to turn out more. But extremism motivates their base even more than your own, and switched vote from an independent is twice as impactful as an extra vote. A simple example is you get one more of your base to turn out. You lose an independent, and you get 2 of their base to turn out. And end up down 3 votes.
Here's the study on turnout. And basically comes to the conclusion extremists motivate the opposing party base more than their own.
Here are a couple of journal articles.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-s...
https://academic.oup.com/poq/advance-article-abstract/doi/10...
Note: There is small minority that show that this is effect shrinking with time. My personal belief for why this is happening is basically voters are judging individual politicians more by the moderation/extremeness of the party's positions and less by the politicians personal beliefs.
I'm confused. No one moved further from the center than Trump and it worked fantastically for hm.
Trump is one of the most moderate Republicans on most social issues (abortion, lgb, criminal justice etc.)
He is the most moderate on entitlements (constantly promises to not cut medicare, medicaid and social security) contrary to every Republican campaign in the past (remember Paul Ryan?)
He is a "moderate" on foreign policy (not a Cheney/Bush war hawk, not a 60's style pacifist)
I could go on but I think the important point is; every point he wants to make, he makes in the loudest most wild way possible and people who aren't disposed to vote for him anyway see that as "radical". The correct word IMO is "crazy" or "wild".
Voters who are in the center or can swing either way see him as promising fairly conventional things but in a crazy tone. Maybe tone doesn't matter as much to them
Which is hogwash, because at the time Trump went along with the Iraq war just like everybody else, of course:
In the interview, which took place on Sept. 11, 2002, Stern asked Trump directly if he was for invading Iraq.
"Yeah, I guess so," Trump responded. "I wish the first time it was done correctly."
So actually, um yeah, he was a "Cheney/Bush war hawk" just like the rest of them.
I have no idea if they edited this in later or you removed it but just pointing this out: > not a 60's style pacifist
The left is filled with richer, coastal elites (top 25%); and impoverished minorities in blue cities that vote overwhelmingly left traditionally. On what planet does that recipe work out over time?
The left became a gross contradiction. It should be for the masses, it should be primarily focused on the working class. All those elitist Hollywood endorsements are just a big obnoxious joke, they repel the average person and amplify the point that the left is out of touch.
These things aren’t actually either/or, but when you pontificate on gender-affirming care in a country where half the population can’t afford just regular healthcare because of high deductibles… the feeling people get is exactly what you expressed.
1. Tax breaks for first time home buyers 2. Tax breaks for families with a new born 3. Pondering an unrealized capital gains tax
> pontificate on gender-affirming care This is such a hackneyed point and it surprises me that this is something anyone considers. We should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Trans issues should not be difficult to 'pontificate' on. There is gender affirming health care for trans individuals, Democrats broadly support those individuals having access to that care. Democrats are also the party that is aggressive on healthcare and supporting government programs for reducing healthcare costs.
In all seriousness, do trans issues actually impact your day to day in any way? Trans people seem to live rent free in people's minds and I only ever hear about it in a political scenario. It seems like the most manufactured issue aside from immigration in recent memory.
In the current political climate, with the current border policy, that sounds an awful lot like a two-tier entitlements system where the more significant help will go to 'illegal immigrants', 'asylum seekers' etc.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-propose-25k-payment-s...
Also $25,000 really doesn't mean much when the entire housing market is set to double or even triple when you look at the last 5 years and project into the future. If your mortgage is still going to be $2,500 for a run-down house that would have cost $40,000 25-30 years ago but it's more like $400,000 and rising now... it's not exactly the 'lift' I think most people want.
Honestly as someone who has been scrimping and saving to try to buy a home for the last 6 years, I would be somewhat annoyed if suddenly every broke first generation person is thrust to first in line for the limited housing supply we have, driving prices up further. The fact that it is specifically structured to exclude people with roots here is kind of a slap in the face -- there is no reason it shouldn't just be tied to income, so suddenly it is needlessly political.
My point isn't really to argue the merits of either approach though - just wanted to give you some insight into why as a 'first time' but not 'first generation' potential home buyer I find her plan to be a short-sighted attempt at grabbing votes. Not that it matters now - clearly there is a mandate to swing the opposite direction we have been going.
I'll also add this though: Under the last Trump presidency, I made literally 50% less than I do now (thankfully got a solid 50% bump right before covid happened) and I had MUCH more disposable income. It's crazy that I am longing for the days and economy where I made $60k and could go out AND save money regularly. Now I have to plan any extra expenses, I have moved back in with family to be able to save, and even without the $1,800 rent payment I am still behind where I was in the last Trump economy.
I can't be the only one.
I'll put it this way: When I was making $60k 5 years ago, a night out for two in my preferred 'fun time out' would be: $35 concert ticket x 2, $20 ride x 2(to and from show to avoid dangerous driving), $6 drink x 6/2 -- so a complete fun time out was roughly $140
Now the same concert venue and ticket is $85 x 2, the ride is $40 x2, the drinks (if you don't abstain due to the previous costs) are $14 x 6 and suddenly $140 turned into $354 (more than double). And honestly depending on the day or event that could be more.
This is just one example of how 'going out and enjoying life outside your cubicle' has easily doubled in cost.
You can zoom in on any portion of the economy and find similar. Laundry detergent isn't only up 20%. Gas isn't only up 20%. Insurance isn't up 20%. Groceries have easily doubled, regardless of which basket item you decide to focus in on to obscure that.
Great question though - How have they managed to crash the 'living wage' economy so badly that I either have to live like a broke college student with six figures, when I used to be able to go out weekly.
Averaging out the inflation across the economy doesn't really work for those of us 'making it' -- but if you already made it and the increase in price for laundry detergent, gas, food, or whatever else doesn't actually impact you I'm sure it's difficult to see how bad things have got.
I think you'd have to ask Biden or Yellen or someone in the outgoing administration exactly how they pulled it off though.
EDIT: This graph actually does a decent job of demonstrating that exactly what I experience was happening nationally: https://media.gettr.com/group28/getter/2021/12/14/02/c8e93c4...
The inversion happened in April of 2021 per the graph, and per my memory.
I don't know. I've seen prices go up, but I honestly think people are exaggerating. I buy groceries and food too. I don't spend anywhere close to double what I did even 10 years ago.
I'm not going to be posting more details regarding my location on a public forum however.
"I don't spend anywhere close to double what I did even 10 years ago."
I bet you also have had to tighten your belt buckle to achieve that - if not, you are an anomaly.
Really though my anecdote about my personal inflation woes is not the point, and I just included it as an after thought to provide some context. The core message I am trying to convey is before that, and I don't see much value in comparing individual items in different geographic regions.
If you are genuinely as unaffected as you say, good for you - the only people I know who are in that position are retired already and insulated from changes more than most.
Anyway, I'm relatively cheap so I always pay attention to prices. Eggs, milk, bread, chicken, etc have all gotten slightly more expensive. Nothing even close to double. I don't understand what people are buying.
This is exactly why I tried to redirect you to the core point of my message, instead of the 'addendum'. It was obvious you were looking for some 'leverage' to declare your perceived experience as the 'correct' one.
Now you have pivoted to 'inflation isn't really real, that venue is screwing you' because of zeroing in on one item. I can assure you, prices are similar throughout the city I am referencing. It wouldn't matter one bit which venue I chose.
Perhaps you are OK with staying home and watching every penny and never doing anything enjoyable in life that costs a few bucks. For the rest of the country, they are feeling it in their everyday lives - whether that is food costs, hobby costs, or whatever matters to them -personally-.
Under Trump we were doing demonstrably better. It took an immediate nose dive under Biden, and his entire administrations policies have made things worse - and most importantly, there is no sign they had a real plan to fix that, and it showed at the polls.
It's fine if you want to get hyper-fixated on the one statement you feel compelled to 'debunk' my lived experiences and observations, but that wont change the fact that entire metro areas are becoming either unlivable or pointless to live in unless you are making $200,000+ (in that you can afford the rent but not to enjoy the local attractions).
I'm glad you aren't feeling the squeeze, genuinely.
According to PBS / NPR roughly 60% of the country believe we are in a recession.
You can count me amongst them, because of my lived experiences. I'm not going to continue to quibble about what -I- am doing wrong budget wise accourding to your tiny little insight into my life which this comment provided.. and I think you'll find if you approach most anyone who has legitimate concerns in this manner you will have changed exactly 0 minds.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/23/views-of-the... - 60% number from here
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/2024-exit-polls-fear... - exit polling showing the current economic outlook is WORSE than after the 2008 crash.
By all means though, if you are comfortable then I'm sure 60+% of the country who feels like they are living through something worse than '08 must bet making up things to complain about and hoarding their money secretly to plan an epic prank on... someone
I am also perplexed by this. As someone who obsessively tracks and categorizes all my spending, I have not observed a significant upward trend in my grocery spending. And I have data in a spreadsheet which confirms this. I'm honestly not sure what I'm doing so differently than the general population which perceives prices as skyrocketing.
While most goods are slightly more expensive, egg prices have been a notable outlier, which I believe was more an effect of culling due to bird flu rather than inflationary. If anything, the most notable cost increases I've observed are in restaurants and takeout places, not grocery stores.
It's entirely possible these costs are highly region-specific, so it's interesting to hear different takes on it.
But yeah, he 100% can take a different direction than the administration that printed more USD than had previously existed in the entirety of the countries history.
'Trump can't wave a magic wand and un-do what the current admin did, so it doesn't make sense to change directions best to stick with the current administration that doesn't think there is anything they could or should have done different' is not the rationale for my position.
Just look at how the stock market responded today - clearly I'm not the only person who thinks 'this will position our economy much better than it is today'.
Yeah, this was my reaction to it as well. The only real way to bring down housing prices is to drastically increase the housing supply and find a way to prevent companies like Blackrock from snapping them up and leaving them empty to keep rental prices high. The "enemy within" is actually PE firms...
This is exactly the change that needs to happen - the fact that entire subdivisions of housing are being built specifically so these multi-national conglomerates can use them as an investment vehicle, AND all the existing homes are being snatched up by them is criminal in my eyes.
The most impactful thing anyone could do to improve the housing situation in this country is to prevent these operations from using single family homes as investment vehicles. I don't know the 'exact right' way to achieve this - but I'm certain the exact legislative language could be hammered out to make things better for EVERYBODY except the bottom feeders.
This is simple economics.
The reality with housing is: someone has to take the loss, but we keep choosing to double it and give it to the next generation.
The Democratic part has completely lost touch with the working class. Harris struggled to articulate any sort of economic policy other than "we're going to ban price gouging, give money to people to start businesses, and help people make down payments on houses" with no details. Meanwhile, they latched onto some of the most fringe culture war issues like making sure that trans men can compete in women's sports.
I voted for her because another Trump presidency is literally an existential threat to the country, but I saw this coming from a mile away.
The Democrats are ignorant that their open arms (accepting everyone, working for everyone) policies and rhetoric will sway minorities when culturally there are strong christian and catholic populations amongst demographic minorities that have firm beliefs that are conservative.
Dems have not pontificated on gender-affirming care. It is an insignificant issue that affects a minuscule amount of the electorate. There would be minimal discussion on it if it wasn't for the incessant harping from the right to rile up their base.
It is so simple and effective to weaponize social issues. This is easy to see when you read right-wing discussion: they believe that the left is absolutely obsessed with gender-affirming care, because that is the reality they are fed.
I have a conservative relative who talks about 'wokeness' and gender-affirming care almost non-stop, because he believes that it's being 'shoved down his throat', when in reality, it is right-wing media that is doing the shoving.
But I’ve also encountered teachers who confided that they teach gender fluidity to their 1st grade class without parental consent. Teaching trans ideology to children has become a humanitarian cause for many on the left and there’s a strong desire among parents for public school systems to take an aggressive stance against the handful of bad actors doing this.
The left should simply recognize that distribution of wealth and means of production is the number one factor affecting equality. It's their job to lobby for things like progressive taxation and social safety nets.
They should focus first and foremost on improving the economic condition of the average American. The low income, as well as the middle class slipping into poverty. Worker's rights is a major part of that, but only one part of it. Watching the prices of basic necessities like housing, food, and healthcare while billionaires and corporations are making record profits is bound to piss off the people.
That said, Trump certainly isn't going to make any of that better. In fact, it'll all get much worse, but on the slim chance democrats actually try to win voters back vs just counting on America to come crawling back to save the US from the four year shit show we've just started and if our new dictator allows us to have fair elections in the future, I think you've got the right idea for where they can start.
People in general are feeling less secure. The rise of the 'precariat' class is a good example of this.
This gives rise to legitimate concerns about immigration. But the left and centrist parties fail to address these concerns - instead blaming people for having them.
I don't subscribe to the idea that everyone voting for right wing parties is a racist xenophobic. Unfortunately the only parties that address the concerns people have are often led by racist xenophobics.
I am definitely left wing, but I blame the left for the rise of the right. They abrogated their responsible to represent people by failing to address their most pressing concerns.
Well what do you want them to do? You suddenly go anti-immigration in a country known as a melting pot, a country where many were once immigrants, and you lose even more votes.
Also, I'll even say we're being tricked by an issue that is actually bipartisan: in a bad economy outsourcing grows to get around strong labor laws. The big companies want immigrants, so this supposed dream of mass deportation is one of a fools'. If you don't want people taking your jobs, make stronger job protections, not blame the people worse off than you.
But sadly, deflecting blame to feel powerful seems to be a universal concept. Crabs in a bucket.
That seems to go against the point why they voted left. And no one's going to fix this inevitable recession (which I argue was here for a long while) overnight.
Regardless of policy, which I won't get into here, we have to acknowledge that treating adults like children isn't a rock-solid battle strategy.
This isn't some conspiracy by "a foreign power" it's well documented history
But reality: Bernie was really popular with the 18-36 demographic. But they don't turnout to vote in the general election, let alone a primary. So here we are. Old people get their way because they show up.
And I'm not saying Bernie didn't energize voters: just that it's a really high bar to energize that to a point of participation.
What I can say is that in that election the country was looking for something different from the government. They knew that the status quo wasn't working for them and that was the only thing Clinton was offering. I know that in the end that feeling was enough to drive at least some people who normally voted democrat to vote for trump (or third party). The fact that the DNC ignored the will of registered democrats and decided for themselves that Clinton was their Chosen One before the primary election was held also caused some democrats to vote for trump or to stay home entirely. I can't claim that the DNC was the cause of trump getting elected the first time, but they sure didn't help.
That was the one I paid close attention to. If 2016 was anything like it (and I'm sure it was, considering this year's convention tactics were used all the way back in the 1940s to force Truman on us), I have no doubt that this is the DNC's modus operandi. The true steal of the last 3 elections were establishment Democrats' theft of the liberal and leftist vote. And in 2 out of 3 of those cases, they paid in the general.
They never listen and are just encased in their chrysalis where everyone’s a joke to them if you arent automatically about the party lines
"The DNC's #1 goal is to stop democracy in the primaries."
FTFY.
Americans don't want to pay European style taxes even for European services. And our public sector is far less efficient than Europe's so we wouldn't even get European level of services for that taxation rate.
“During this period, there were 109 different Democrats who served in the Senate and cast a sufficient number of roll call votes for a reliable analysis of their ideological position. Of these 109 Democrats, Harris has the second-most liberal voting record. This makes her slightly less liberal than Warren, but more liberal than all of the remaining 107 Democrats, and significantly more liberal than all but a handful.”
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4816859-kamala-harris-i...
The DNC's bread and butter are Liberals. Not Socialists. Not anyone even approaching Socialist. Bernie, AOC, etc are SocDems at best. There are no Socialists in office in the United States.
Harris is a party-line voter (pretty obviously, as an insider she's defining the party line in the first place). The Democratic Party isn't leftist and nor is Harris. It's routine in most democracies for elected representatives to be party-line voters.
They absolutely will not. History shows us this.
In 2016, the Democratic establishment forced Hilary down the voters' throats because, hey, it was her turn, despite her being a terrible candidate with huge negatives.
America, thanks to the Red Scare has no viable leftist momentum. But even in the USA, the Democrats almost chose an open socialist (ie Bernie Sanders) as the Democratic nominee in 2016 rather than Hilary Clinton. I remember saying at the time that the DNC are missing how upset ordinary people are at the status quo. The DNC establishment couldn't care less.
What did the DNC learn from 2016? Absolutely nothing. They blamed Bernie voters (even though Bernie voters overwhelmingly came out and voted for Hilary in spite of their reservations).
Trump only really lost in 2020 because of Covid. Yet Biden's campaign did have a sprnkling of progresive policies that people got behind, so much so that it looks like he got 10-15 million more votes than Kamala got. There's a lesson in that but it won't be learned.
I saw someone describe this election as a Republican primary between a moderate Republican (Kamala) and a far right Republican (Trump). It's accurate.
Kamala's immigration policy was the Trump 2020 policy. She is to the right of Ronald Reagan on immigration.
And that's before we even get to the Middle East policy, which is not only bad policy but it's bad politics. Why? Because it gains her zero votes but loses a bunch. Anyone who hard line suports Israel is voting for Trump (and did). This was foreseeable. People were screaming about it for a year. Ignored.
So what lesson will the Democrats take from 2024? That they need to run even further right.
Overall the past couple elections have been about kicking people out more than putting people in, and Americans are unhappy with the state of their society.
Trump has at least shown an ability to just ignore the law to get whatever he wants done, and no candidate on the current Democratic party is going to have that
They need a good white/Hispanic Christian heterosexual male and they just don't seem to have one at this point. Gavin Newsom is the face of everything that is ( allegedly ) wrong with California. Mark Kelly is not a great speaker. They tried with Walz, but even I had a trouble imagining him going face-to-face with Putin.
If there was a democratic Mark Rubio he would have mopped the floor with Trump. I wouldn't necessarily say that the country is not ready for a black female president, but I think a lot of people think that Democrats only care about minorities and I think Harris just enforced that belief.
I think one of the problems with the Democrats and modern left is they have moved away from
>I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.
And towards a DEI set up where Kamala is hired because she ticks the colored and woman boxes rather than because of competence.
Biden said as much ~4 years ago and this election was probably doomed from that point on. I don't know how they are so tone-deaf.
I want to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but what in the hell man.
Not:
> Even though he's Jewish, meaning you would expect him to be despised and incompetent, he seems to be popular and competent
Instead:
> He may be jewish by birth, violating the condition for a Christian, but since he seems popular and competent that shouldn't matter so much.
1."Women have the right to abortion." and
2."Everyone has the right to alter their own gender!"
and, while I support the above [well, not exactly: I prefer that one should, when possible, pay for their own voluntary medical procedures].
But, in any case, the above rights have no particular appeal at all to people who are neither pregnant nor gender-uncertain, which is by far the majority of the voting population.
In contrast, Republicans focused on the economy and the border, two things affecting everyone.
I also really wish they could just stop talking about trans rights. I support them too but its a tiny part of the population and anyone who supports them is voting blue anyway. A lot of people don't get it, don't like it, and are going to vote against them given the chance.
I'll also reluctantly agree with the right and say I don't see the need for trans women to compete in sports against cis women. Playing sports is not a constitutional right and I think sometimes its ok to say "I'm sorry but no."
The problem is that the left has really painted themselves into a corner with the whole “trans women are women” thing. To say that they ARE women but CAN’T compete in women’s sports would be to admit that trans women are not, in fact, the same as biological women.
This doesn't sound right to me. You don't have to be pregnant to be interested in keeping abortion legally accessible. You don't even have to be a woman. Keeping a fetus in your body for 9 months when you don't want it is a horror movie scenario for me, and I'm guessing most other women feel the same way. And there are surely many men who want that option available for their partners, as well.
FWIW I also support (2) for those who want it.
When Biden ran, he pointed to his working class roots at every opportunity. I believe what cost the election was that KH simply was not believed by the people working minimum wage and couldn’t afford rent.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47
All of these videos are from 2023, so, before Trump began working with Elon, RFK Jr, Tulsi, Vivek.
I was introduced to these videos only recently on X- the videos about censorship, homelessness, and the deep state in particular are .. interesting.
It's also interesting to see the refrain "Trump has no firm policy ideas" when these videos have been up since 2023
This year, it wasn't about the candidate. It seems clear there wasn't any Democratic candidate who could have won.
I think Tim Walz would have done better than Harris.
Here's the thing. He sells. Always.
He does that if he doesn't know about the issue. He does that if he doesn't care about the issue.
Harris couldn't sell. Watch her talk about abortion. On some level that's one of the few things she manages to convey a sense of genuineness about. For everything else it's like she's saying "What do you want me to be for? I'm for that" it's fine if you're thinking that but when people figure out that's who you are it's more toxic then them thinking you're a liar or a clown.
I'm not at all attacking you here by the way. But I'm legit speechless at that interpretation of his senile rambling.
Harris on the other hand. There wouldn't be a joke. She'd take some time to explain why flushing the toilet was something everyone should do. Then she'd finish up by letting you know that she too always flushes.
This is a bad opinion. Kamala was a terrible candidate by all metrics. Definitely, the worst Democratic candidate I have seen in my living memory.
It should've been a dead giveaway that now a single Indian or Black person has a good thing to say about her. Her only victory was in California (single party & famously misaligned with national voting trends) and her only televised primary performance was a disaster. Democrats didn't run open primaries because they knew she'd lose.
She didn't have concrete policy proposals, talks like an under-performing consultant and had zero charisma.
"The public wants a straight white man, and they want something more conservative... I know, let's run Gavin Newsom on a pro-business platform!"
It's like the very categories they use to interpret the world have blinded them.
Jimmy McMillan ("The rent is too damn high!"), for example, was the opposite of several of those things, but, if he were still around, he'd mop the floor with Gavin Newsom in an election.
Kamala, for better or for worse, was their only choice.
A failure in representative polls like this should be avoided with statistical methods.
It feels like there has to be a better way to present the data to make it more obvious what's actually happening.
The point is no poll caught any of the swings at all. To win with this margin Trump the polls can hardly be tied and be called accurate.
The result is not a close at all, and it is not about swing states and electoral college swings. Trump is winning the popular vote by a large margin something he has never be able to do so before.
It is not like no trump supporter participated in the polls and he got 10% in them, they all showed 45-47% of their samples consistently supporting him. Those 45% apparently didn't think they were marginalized by media enough no to respond and express their support, which is most of them, so I don't see this is the widely held sentiment
What you are basically saying is exact same percentage of people who favor trump over Harris is the same % percentage of people who don't care to respond to polls and cancel each other out, that is extremely unlikely.
Also know that bias modelled in any poll already, not just response rate bias for trump voters ,all kinds of selection biases(likely to respond) for different demographics get factored in typically with past data
This is outside of the margin of error.
All of the polls had Trump ahead there. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general... (No intended endorsement of 538, they're just a convenient list of polls)
So, not really even within the margin of error. There weren’t any predicting +15.
And the high quality polls that didn’t attempt to synthesize results to match past results were even more wrong.
even nate silver called then the most accurate pollster during the 2020 race.
The margin in Pennsylvania will continue to shrink, as the only place with lots of votes left to count is Philadelphia. Michigan might still flip blue, because the only place with votes to count is Detroit. Arizona is still a total coin toss, with 51k vote difference and >1200k votes left to count. Wisconsin is going to be close too, although it will likely stay red.
None of that matters when there are less ballots left to count than the margin in PA, but still, the message from the polls before election was "this will be a nailbiter", and it kind of was.
But I don't know how big a factor this is in reality versus the economy.
In 2016, the majority of outlets gave Clinton a 90% chance or more. This time almost everyone said it was 50:50. The result is somewhat similar, the predictions could hardly be more different.
For one, they said Clinton had a 70% chance of winning.
But perhaps more importantly, people's poor understanding of stats meant that many people interpreted that as "She's going to get 70% of the vote" (i.e., a landslide, "and so I don't need to vote").
No, they didn't.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential...
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/clinton-has-90-percent...
Democrats were absolutely demonized by Trump, but their trust in the media is double that of Independents and quadruple that of Republicans. So to the extent that pollsters are treated as part of the media, they'll get more accurate answers out of Democrats.
[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-re...
You can try an experiment where you say out loud that you vote for Trump in your work place, and you can see how it goes.
People support Democrats visibly at their workplaces, and that is totally fine. But if you support Republicans visibly, you will have a lot of issues at work.
So, if a poller asks you who you would vote for, you would not risk it. You would just say Dems or just avoid the poll altogether.
It's a weird spot, because most Trump supporters don't really support him. They consider him a liar at worse, and a jokester at best. Telling Trump supporters what Trump has said is almost always met with "well he didn't mean that!"
Why do people vote for someone they don't even believe? Not sure, maybe they hate the other side just that much, or maybe they do believe him but don't want to admit it. Maybe they're hoping deep down Trump really is just joking.
Thank you for adding to the point that you can't let your colleagues know that you voted for Trump. Your work life would be completely fucked.
You are an ideal example. You think Trump supporters are evil. And how do you handle evil people? You make sure they don't succeed in life.
Not mine, but actually every single company in the US, yours included. I don't know of any companies that tolerate racism or bigotry in general.
I don't think Trump supporters or conservatives are evil at all. I think they're largely radicalized at this point. Most conservatives I meet seem completely unable to voice conservative opinions without resorting to bigotry - this includes our president elect.
There's nothing wrong with conservative opinions and actually everyone is on the same page about that. But can you be pro-life without calling women sluts and whores? Can you be anti-gay without telling people they deserve AIDS? Can you be anti-trans without calling them tra*ies?
For a lot of conservatives, the answer to those questions is no. Okay, then the next question is - is that type of behavior allowed at work? Of course not.
So put the pieces together yourself - where does that leave those people? This isn't a rhetorical question.
I don't know whether a poll is anonymous. The poll has no impact on my life. I'll either lie to be safe or just don't take the poll at all.
Also note that a "90% / 10% change to win" is not necessarily "wrong" if the 10% candidate wins. Anyone who has played an RPG will tell you that 90% chance to hit is far from certain. Maybe if there had been 100 elections, Clinton would have won 90 of them.
Nate Silver nailed this in the 2016 election. He said Trump's victory there was consistent with historically normal polling errors.
What may have been less widely appreciated is these errors are not related to causes like limited sample size that are straightforwardly amenable to statistical analysis. They come from the deeper problems with polling and the way those problems shift under our feet a little bit with each election.
It is like when your doctor is asking you if you eat fast food — some people will downplay it because they know it is wrong, but do it anyways in a "weak" moment when nobody is looking.
So suddenly in my village where I know everybody 56% voted for the right wing candidate, yet everybody¹ claimed not to do that when asked before or after.
¹: except one or two open Nazis
After he was finally disgraced fully enough to resign with some remaining dignity, you couldn't find anybody who admitted to voting for him.
And he had been re-elected to a second term !
- Who does or does not have a phone.
- Who will or won't answer a phone.
- Specific target demographics, under the rubric of "stratified random sampling".
Just a few off the top of my head.
As I'd mentioned upstream, political polling has regular calibration events called "elections", and following those events biases and adjustment factors, most falling out of statistical analysis and correlations, rather than "gut feels", are updated.
The problem for the US seems to be that the biases are accelerating well in advance of those adjustments, as my own poll-vs-vote analysis shows:
Thread: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42060547>
Most robust analysis / results here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42064420>
What they said was that they could not predict the outcome, and were giving basically 50/50 odds of either candidate winning, which is essentially just another way of saying "I have no idea".
Just because their odds were 50/50 though, does not mean the outcome would be close. The pollsters were all warning that the swing states would likely be strongly correlated, so if a candidate performed strongly in one swing state, they'd probably perform strongly in all of them.
Nate Silver has recently written about the clear problems in polling, and in particular the herd-like way they were reporting implausible numbers:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/theres-more-herding-in-swing-st...
the most likely result predicted by 538 was 312 for trump [0]
the issue with the model was the 2nd most likely result was 319 for harris.
they thought the odds of a recount being decisive was around 10%.
That hardly seems evidence of "predicting a split election". which prediction are you thinking of?
[0] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/
I don't know what Nate Silver was predicting. Was he predicting a near-split election or the situation where "someone is decently likely to win decisively, but we don't know who"?
Who was? A 50% chance to win does not imply that the vote count will be close.
Also: statistical uncertainty is a feature not a bug. A lot of the idea behind statistics is the ability to quantify the certainty of the point estimate. As another commenter put it: a statistically sound "idk" is a better result than a confidently incorrect estimate, from a statistical standpoint.
The data he has to back up his "too close results to be true random polls" is fantastic.
Although I don’t actually think it was equally likely like that, we are missing something to make all this analysis actually informative rather than a “all I know is that I don’t know anything”. We had mountains of evidence indicating that it was totally unclear, so frustrating. Perhaps that’s how the probabilities actually were, but somehow guts pointed to Trump much more regardless of personal bias, and in hindsight it feels rather obvious. Confirmation bias I guess, I still want trust all the expert analysis.
It's just incredibly hard to build a representative sample of the population.
It used to be "Libertarian" which for a subset was "I'm a Republican who likes to smoke weed".
Source?
The polls were better but still consistently underestimated Trumps support by a lot. Basically, the weighting they do for the polls now basically just guarantees that they converge on the results of the last election.
(and this was while Biden was still in the race)
If I predict a coin toss to be 50/50 that doesn’t mean I expect it to land on its side.
That pool was apparently more the former than the later.
Trump won many of those states by 2-3%.
Otherwise the real result would be distributed around the mean within the margin of error.
There is some bias and the polls did not correctly factor that into their statistical model.
In reality, a lot more people have traditional values when it comes to race, LGBT whatever, sexism, spiritual values, opinions on Russia, Israel etc. However in public they may be scared to voice their true opinions.
Pollsters such as Nate Silver were giving gut-takes of Red over Blue, e.g.:
"Nate Silver: Here’s What My Gut Says About the Election, but Don’t Trust Anyone’s Gut, Even Mine" (Oct. 23, 2024)
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/opinion/election-polls-re...>
I've done a somewhat half-assed take tonight of comparing actual returns to latest pre-election polling by state
Why that is, isn't clear. Political pollsters have been struggling for years with accuracy issues, particularly as landline usage falls (it's <20% in most states now), and unknown-caller blocking is more widely used (both on landlines and mobile devices).
Polling does have periodic calibration events (we call those "elections"), but whatever biases the polls seem to experience in the US, it's apparently systemically exceeding adjustment factors.
Polls / votes and deltas:
QC State EV BP RP BV RV Bd Rd
4: AL 9 36 64 32 65 -4 1
4: AK 3 45 55 0 0
4: AZ 11 49 51 49 50 0 -1
4: AR 6 36 64 34 64 -2 0
4: CA 54 63 37 60 37 -3 0
4: CO 10 56 44 55 43 -1 -1
4: CT 7 59 41 54 44 -5 3
4: DC 3 92 7 90 7 -2 0
4: DE 3 58 42 56 42 -2 0
4: FL 30 47 53 43 56 -4 3
4: GA 16 49 51 48 51 -1 0
4: HI 4 64 36 0 0
4: ID 4 33 67 33 64 0 -3
4: IL 19 57 43 52 47 -5 4
4: IN 11 41 57 39 59 -2 2
4: IA 6 46 54 42 56 -4 2
4: KS 6 42 51 41 57 -1 6
4: KY 8 36 64 34 64 -2 0
4: LA 8 40 60 38 60 -2 0
4: ME 2 54 46 0 0
4: ME-1 1 61 39 0 0
4: ME-2 1 47 53 0 0
4: MD 10 64 36 60 37 -4 1
4: MA 11 64 36 62 35 -2 -1
4: MI 15 50 49 0 0
4: MN 10 53 47 0 0
4: MS 6 40 60 37 62 -3 2
4: MO 10 43 57 42 56 -1 -1
4: MT 4 41 59 33 64 -8 5
4: NE 4 41 59 42 56 1 -3
4: NE-2 1 54 46 0 0
4: NM 5 54 46 51 47 -3 1
4: NV 6 50 50 0 0
4: NH 4 53 47 52 47 -1 0
4: NJ 14 57 43 51 46 -6 3
4: NY 28 59 41 55 44 -4 3
4: NC 16 49 51 48 51 -1 0
4: ND 3 33 67 31 67 -2 0
4: OH 17 46 54 44 55 -2 1
4: OK 7 33 67 32 66 -1 -1
4: OR 8 56 44 55 43 -1 -1
4: PA 19 50 50 0 0
4: RI 4 58 42 55 42 -3 0
4: SC 9 44 56 40 58 -4 2
4: SD 3 36 64 29 69 -7 5
4: TN 11 38 62 34 64 -4 2
4: TX 40 46 54 42 57 -4 3
4: UT 6 39 61 43 54 4 -7
4: VT 3 67 34 64 32 -3 -2
4: VA 13 53 47 51 47 -2 0
4: WA 12 59 41 58 39 -1 -2
4: WV 4 30 70 28 70 -2 0
4: WI 10 50 49 0 0
4: WY 3 73 27 70 28 -3 1
Blue votes: 43
Red votes: 43
Blue delta: -2.49
Red delta: 0.63
- QC: A parsing QC value (number of raw fields)
- State: 2-char state code, dash-number indicates individual EVs for NE and ME.
- EV: Electoral votes
- BP: Blue polling
- RP: Red polling
- BV: Blue vote return
- RV: Red vote return
- Bd: Blue delta (vote - poll)
- Rd: Red delta (vote - poll)
The last two results are the cumulative average deltas. Blue consistently performed ~2.5 points below polls, red performed ~0.6 points above polls.
Data are rounded to nearest whole percent (I'd like to re-enter data to 0.1% precision and re-run, though overall effect should be similar). Deltas are computed only where voting returns are >0.
Data are hand-entered from 538 and ABC returns pages.
Blue consistently polled slightly higher than performance. Polls don't seem to include third parties (mostly Green, some state returns include RFK or others).
There are all but certainly coding/data entry errors here, though for illustration the point should hold.
With updated (and 0.1% decimal precision) election returns, Harris's polling delta falls to -2.25% (Orange is unchanged). The overall advantage of her opponent over polling data is 2.89%. Which is a lot.
Still want to get more precise polling numbers in there, but again, it's not shifting a lot. Law of Large Numbers dictates that, as multiple rounded numbers tend to even out the precision distinction.
I've just re-run my analysis with higher precision on the deltas. Harris performed worse in every single race save DC than projected. Orange performed better in a majority of races, by as much as 5+ percent.
(I still need more accurate data for polling, I'll add a comment when I've updated that.)
State EV Poll (D/R) Vote (D/R) Delta (D/R) Win
AL 9 36.1 63.9 34.2 64.8 -1.9 0.9 R
AK 3 45.1 54.9 40.4 55.6 -4.7 0.7 R
AZ 11 49.0 51.0 47.2 51.9 -1.8 0.9 R
AR 6 35.7 64.3 33.6 64.2 -2.1 -0.1 R
CA 54 62.7 37.3 57.4 40.0 -5.3 2.7 D
CO 10 56.2 43.8 54.6 43.1 -1.6 -0.7 D
CT 7 58.7 41.3 54.5 43.8 -4.2 2.5 D
DC 3 92.4 7.6 92.4 6.7 0.0 -0.9 D
DE 3 58.1 41.9 56.5 42.0 -1.6 0.1 D
FL 30 47.0 53.1 43.0 56.1 -4.0 3.0 R
GA 16 49.4 50.6 48.5 50.8 -0.9 0.2 R
HI 4 63.7 36.3 62.2 36.1 -1.5 -0.2 D
ID 4 33.2 66.8 30.7 66.5 -2.5 -0.3 R
IL 19 57.4 42.6 53.3 45.3 -4.1 2.7 D
IN 11 41.4 58.6 39.2 59.1 -2.2 0.5 R
IA 6 46.4 53.7 42.3 56.3 -4.1 2.6 R
KS 6 41.9 58.1 40.8 57.4 -1.1 -0.7 R
KY 8 36.0 64.0 33.9 64.6 -2.1 0.6 R
LA 8 39.6 60.4 38.2 60.2 -1.4 -0.2 R
ME 2 54.3 45.7 53.1 44.3 -1.2 -1.4 D
ME-1 1 61.2 38.8 60.4 33.6 -0.8 -5.2 D
ME-2 1 46.9 53.1 45.0 52.9 -1.9 -0.2 R
MD 10 64.2 35.8 60.2 37.3 -4.0 1.5 D
MA 11 64.0 36.0 61.9 35.9 -2.1 -0.1 D
MI 15 50.6 49.4 48.2 49.8 -2.4 0.4 R
MN 10 52.9 47.1 51.1 46.8 -1.8 -0.3 D
MS 6 40.5 59.5 37.7 61.1 -2.8 1.6 R
MO 10 42.9 57.2 40.1 58.5 -2.8 1.3 R
MT 4 41.0 59.0 38.4 58.5 -2.6 -0.5 R
NE 4 41.3 58.7 38.5 60.2 -2.8 1.5 R
NE-1 1 41.6 58.4 42.4 56.3 0.8 -2.1 R
NE-2 1 53.5 46.5 51.2 47.5 -2.3 1.0 D
NE-3 1 22.6 77.4 22.5 76.3 -0.1 -1.1 R
NM 5 53.7 46.3 51.6 46.1 -2.1 -0.2 D
NV 6 50.0 50.0 46.8 51.5 -3.2 1.5 R
NH 4 53.0 47.0 51.0 48.0 -2.0 1.0 D
NJ 14 56.9 43.2 51.5 46.6 -5.4 3.4 D
NY 28 58.9 41.5 55.4 44.6 -3.5 3.1 D
NC 16 49.4 50.6 47.7 51.1 -1.7 0.5 R
ND 3 33.3 66.7 30.8 67.5 -2.5 0.8 R
OH 17 45.8 54.2 43.9 55.2 -1.9 1.0 R
OK 7 33.2 66.8 31.9 66.2 -1.3 -0.6 R
OR 8 56.5 43.6 54.9 42.5 -1.6 -1.1 D
PA 19 50.0 50.0 48.4 50.7 -1.6 0.7 R
RI 4 58.4 41.7 55.5 42.4 -2.9 0.7 D
SC 9 43.7 56.3 40.5 58.1 -3.2 1.8 R
SD 3 36.0 64.0 33.0 64.7 -3.0 0.7 R
TN 11 38.1 61.9 34.4 64.3 -3.7 2.4 R
TX 40 46.3 53.7 42.4 56.3 -3.9 2.6 R
UT 6 38.9 61.1 38.9 58.9 0.0 -2.2 R
VT 3 66.5 33.5 64.3 32.6 -2.2 -0.9 D
VA 13 53.4 46.6 51.8 46.6 -1.6 0.0 D
WA 12 58.9 41.1 58.6 39.1 -0.3 -2.0 D
WV 4 29.8 70.2 27.9 70.2 -1.9 0.0 R
WI 10 50.6 49.5 48.8 49.7 -1.8 0.2 R
WY 3 27.4 72.6 26.1 72.3 -1.3 -0.3 R
Blue votes: 56
Red votes: 56
Blue delta: -2.26
Red delta: 0.42
- Harris did more poorly than forecast in all but three races: DC, UT, and NE-1.
- Her opponent did better than forecast in 32 races.
- Many of Harris's bigger under-performances were in races she won, notably CA. FL and TX are losses with far worse-than-polled returns.
Net average polling bias is 2.68 points favouring the GOP across 56 contests.
Voting returns: <https://apnews.com/projects/election-results-2024/>
Polling data: <https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/>
So basically consistent with 2016 and 2020: Most polls have a 2-5 point bias in favor of Democrats. Maybe a bit improved from previous elections.
For example, from Nate Silver's blog:
> The Silver Bulletin polling averages are a little fancy. They adjust for whether polls are conducted among registered or likely voters and house effects. They weight more reliable polls more heavily. And they use national polls to make inferences about state polls and vice versa. It requires a few extra CPU cycles — but the reward is a more stable average that doesn’t get psyched out by outliers.
All this weighting and massaging and inferencing results in results that are basically wrong.
Come Election Night he basically threw the whole thing in the trash too!
There was no 50/50 chance of the voter base waking up and instead voting for Kamala yesterday.
From a frequentist perspective, it makes no sense to talk about probabilities of the outcomes of processes that can't be repeated, such as elections. So the question is then, "Why couldn't the polls predict a result?" And we know the answer: because the polls weren't precise enough. We already knew that.
From a Bayesian perspective, lack of knowledge is the same thing as nondeterminism in the underlying processes. So, to a Bayesian, you're just wrong; there was a 52/48 chance of the voter base waking up and instead voting for Kamala yesterday.
If from some other formulation, which?
This is so confused. The probability models are designed to describe situations where cause and effect is not known.causes still exist whether you can repeat them in an experiment,
You are confusing logical models with real world decisions and actions.
There is no sense in which Harris had a 50% chance and had an unlucky day. The only “chance” going on is how likely the poll sample represents the population. The math behind that assumes you have a genuine sample and ignores realities like preference falsification.
Please think and read charitably before making personal attacks. I generally take that as a sign you are acting in bad faith and I do not want to interact with you. Goodbye.
That’s not true when it comes to things like bigotry.
Messaging is build on focus groups, and tweaked to get the best results by both sides. That group is the same group that does polls.
Its a Goodhart's law in action: Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.
Polling companies are in the business of media deals and government contracts. They will develop methodology and reporting to that end and the money is in "a close and contested race", even if it won't be.
Of course, if we want to assess which methodology is more accurate, we'll need more than two cherry-picked examples.
Methodologically, prediction markets are nonrandom sampling from a pool of self-selected rich people (those with sufficient discretionary income to place bets), tempered by several influences, among which profit motive is only one. See the case of assassination markets for potential confounding factors:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market>
And from what I'm familiar with in other forms of gaming, gamblers often lose, and often bigly.
There is some research on the question:
David M. Rothschild, "Forecasting Elections: Comparing Prediction Markets, Polls, and Their Biases", January 2009, Public Opinion Quarterly 73(5). DOI:10.1093/poq/nfp082
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228306045_Forecasti...>
Joyce E. Berg, Forrest D. Nelson, Thomas A. Rietz, "Prediction market accuracy in the long run" International Journal of Forecasting, Volume 24, Issue 2, April–June 2008, Pages 285-300 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2008.03.007>
"A model incorporating markets that allow betting on elections suggests a role in prognostications" (31 October 2024) <https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/prediction-markets-polls-ec...>
Referencing Mikhail Chernov, Vadim Elenev, and Dongho Song, "The Comovement of Voter Preferences: Insights from U.S. Presidential Election Prediction Markets Beyond Polls" (28 October 2024) <https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/...> (PDF).
A pick of VP is not easy to model as some sort of stochastic variable from sample data.
Not the two betting examples.
Again: a systemic review is required, and I've linked some of the extant literature.
The people in a swing state choosing to spend time responding to polls are insufficiently representative. They're drowning in advertisements, calls, texts, unexpected people at their door and randos on the street. Why would they give time to a pollster?
Use Polymarket instead, where money is on the line.
I don't disagree that the one french dude betting 30M on Trump on polymarket showed that there isn't enough liquidity in such markets for such distortions to be corrected, but whalebait on Manifold is not really related.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/202...
It was no surprise he won, IMO.
My explanation for this is that most polls were fabricated, showing enthusiasm for (D) which wasn't there. Basically, a form of propaganda. The most striking example here is Selzer, with that Harris+3 Iowa poll the day before the election.
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1853818243003125934
He put Trump's true probability of winning at 90% and a win of the popular vote at 75%.
Worth pointing out though that most pollsters _have_ been weighting by 2020 vote, so in general this isn't a fair critique of the entire polling industry. There are other fair critiques though, for example, that there are entire populations of people that are almost impossible to reach now (e.g. those who don't answer unknown numbers, young people, etc.).
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/06/upshot/polling-methods-el...
Even if the true probability isn't 50% I doubt it's that far off.
People are looking at the popular vote and freaking out but lets not forget that there's still 7 million left to count in California and it's expected to net Harris almost 3 million votes
This is a retweet of Nate Silver's analysis showing that the most probable outcome, with nearly a 25% chance, was Trump sweeping the swing states. Yes, added up with all the other possible outcomes, the race was very close, but this was still the most likely outcome, and by a large margin: https://x.com/LPDonovan/status/1854265746601488727
You can get into the more nuanced weeds and there is plenty more nuance there, but the overarching dynamic is people made a tradeoff, and they chose a king.
And now America is doing essentially the same thing.
I don't think the policy positions even matter that much, if you can make a strong case and gain the confidence of the electorate.
I try to tell people that. "You're a 10 person team. You've had some 50 successful projects before this failure. That means this justifies at most a 2% change. A 2% change in the team is about half a day change, once per month, NOT more than that".
Invariably, the whole team is changed entirely, randomly, or going with the political winds, usually with much worse quality as a result. And afterwards they do see it didn't work.
And then they respond differently: they'll no longer admit failure, because they do see that the changes were a disaster, but you apparently fix that by refusing to admit anything ever goes wrong ...
I'm different. I think every project is a failure, it's just a matter of degree. You don't succeed in projects, you minimize how bad they are. Drives people up the wall though.
i can focus on 5% improvement per year, but if the head of states ruin things at 20% during the same time i'll be dead in a few
In the end a lot of the money and power is mostly in blue states.
This is a man who has talked about shooting political opponents on the campaign trail, I’d be astonished if he doesn’t follow through if there will be no consequences.
This is a bald faced lie. Stop talking rubbish.
> Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 246 (1944) (Jackson, J., dissenting). The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
Then the claim that the President can in their official capacity assassinate others with impunity and protection from prosecution is no lie.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
You're living in a pre-Trump world. The Supreme Court changed the rules while you were asleep.
The side effects of this will both hurt his base, and offer opportunities for smart people. For example, careless tariffs can raise the cost of everything at Walmart by 60% with Amazon not far behind. You know this and I know this.
Tariffs also demonstrate to domestic companies that they don’t need to innovate. The material and labor to innovate will be cheaper overseas. You know this and I know this.
Concrete actions tell the real story.
I got mass downvoted earlier and a "talking to" from Dang in regards to me pointing out that a certain Ron Wyden having one bad vote about BDS/isreal isn't a good enough reason to throw the baby out with the bath water and turn against one of the only reliable techno-libertarians. This site is done with its purported liberalism.
What, exactly, is a "fedora-core atheist?"
How might such an atheist differ from an atheist who runs Debian or OpenBSD?
Trumps tends to be economically liberal internally and a conservative for international economics.
In my opinion Biden was clearly slipping 18-24 months ago. But even if that's wrong, the best way to show the country Biden was fit for another term and energize the party would have been putting him on stage to debate with other democratic leaders.
By the time we got to the news that at least two Supreme Court justices and very likely more are being bought, and collectively shrugged rather than making that the issue until they were out, well, that wasn’t so much a landmark on the way down as another ordinary day.
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have....
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."
— Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45
It's the same looming issue with climate change.
And they all have the same undercurrent: doing something might cost us money, so we don't do it. Thus the economy being the greatest predictor of elections.
Whatever you think about Trump, 2016-2020 was in no way, shape or form comparable to the 30s under NSDAP Germany and to *insist* on making such comparisons ad nauseum is one of the reasons you were rebuked at the polls by the electorate.
It's also electrifyingly funny that Trump took the largest Jewish counties (e.g., Rockland, NY) -- those self-hating Jews must want to go back to the concentration camps. This is your brain on progressive logic.
That's one of the ones I took, certainly the one I remember most.
No Supreme Court justices are bought.
I share your concern about the lack of seriousness with which many seem to regard the Capitol riot, which is a black stain on our history.
You should read fuller accounts, it’s a fair bit more complicated than that.
The part that made it so harmful, at any rate, was the court deciding without prompting from the plaintiffs to buck their normal “as narrow as possible and don’t make things major constitutional questions unless you have to” policy and widen the case to be about something it initially was not, with the result that campaign finance control at all and keeping foreign money at least kinda out of US politics became impossible.
> No Supreme Court justices are bought.
Uh. I dunno what to say. Yikes.
Pretend George Soros had been giving Sotomayor gifts amounting to huge sums of money over many, many years in ways that plainly violate rules for lower court judges, and that she’s “accidentally” not disclosed a lot of it.
What do you call the controversy around Thomas and his billionaire benefactor?
It's happening to this day, too. Yesterday, "Oh, possibly Russian-originated bomb threats closing election stations? Sure, we'll talk about it briefly and move on." Elon Musk-funded PAC sending fake text messages from Kamala Harris saying that kids will be able to coordinate gender-affirming surgery while at school "outside of parental interference" and that she will be legalizing abortion upon delivery? "Oh, that might be illegal, maybe? Next story." are demoralizing in the amount of indifference they come with.
I am NOT saying Trump is literally Hitler, but the idea that democratic vote can't have un-democratic outcome in the long run is simply false. It can, and history showed us that more then once
How is that not anti-democratic?
If he actually believes the election was not stolen, whether or not it was, but act as if it was stolen, it would be un-democratic position, because he would, is his perceived reality, try to subvert a democratic process.
> He literally tried to overthrow the election 4 years ago
Not openly, the people who went to the white house weren't under Trumps command. He argued against the election result using the proper tools of the democracy, you are allowed to do that.
I'm not sure why worry now when we already know he handed over the power once. Maybe it wasn't willingly but he will be forced to step down in 4 years as well.
Fascist wouldn't fail?
Again, You know Hitler literally tried a coup, failed and then switched to 'democratic' means?
Hitler never left the seat of power once he got it. Trump did. They are not the same. Hitler did a coup to try to get power, he failed at that, Trump already succeeded grabbing power (he got elected) and then left it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/03/us/politics/trump-pa-rall...
He did so because he had no other choice. Mike Pence, of all people, rescued democracy. If it hadn't been for him, Donald Trump would not accepted the transfer of power.
And this is what the difference boils down to. You and I both know that Trump would have declared himself the winner no matter what the vote count had been. And we also both know that Harris is going to concede to Trump because the vote count says so.
If he had rigged the whole election I'd say it is fascism, but rigging a whole election is on such a different scale and planning and conspiracy level that it isn't the same thing, he didn't even try to rig the election. If he tried to rig it then it wouldn't be one such call, it would be hundreds with many accomplices.
This is some pretty hardcore rationalization even by modern standards. Trying to "cheat a few (10s of thousands of votes so you win a swing state)" is called trying to steal an election.
but rigging a whole election is on such a different scale and planning and conspiracy level that it isn't the same thing, he didn't even try to rig the election.
He literally did from many different angles. Asking for changed vote counts, fake electors, 60 court cases with no evidence, planning violence to stop the certification of the election.
How do you square what you are saying with these facts?
That's the one thing in the list I'm OK with. Determining whether a claim has legal merit and factual basis is what courts are for.
The full quote was that he was going to be a dictator but only on the first day. It's probably one of the dumbest things he's ever said, but the fact that he put a limit on his own supposed dictatorship contradicts him being a dictator. At any rate, while I'm not a fan of what he said, he definitely did not preclude the continuation of American democracy even if interpreted in the most literal possible way.
> this is the last vote you will need
He said that you [the people at his rally] aren't going to need to vote anymore because hes going to accomplish all his goals this time. Not that there won't be a vote or that his supporters won't be allowed to vote. They definitely won't be allowed to vote for him since he'll be at up against the term limit.
> we should stop so and so from voting and so on
This one I've never even heard before outside of him claiming that his opponents want to let non citizens vote
> They definitely won't be allowed to vote for him since he'll be at up against the term limit.
I'm sure if Trump were younger and up against term limits, he (and his party) would simply ignore them or change the rules. That's the kind of democracy-ending actions that could easily happen. Lucky for us, I think he's too old for this particular problem.
Didn't he literally say in his victory speech that he's now elected the 47th president, as he also was the 46th?
In the story Trump tells, he literally already is a third-term president.
I think normal people think that is OK but academics thinks it sounds stupid.
In the beginning I believe he got a boost from journalists feeling smart by nitpicking that to manufacture some "gotcha". He is way to easy to misquote to resist the temptation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempts_to_overturn_the_2020_...
This stuff was not merely spicy words, it was dangerous. Democracy runs on norms and good people, and is precious and hard won. Trump being in power is a risk.
He was not. This is a popular misconception.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power
Certainly there is a lot of voter intimidation, control of the press, etc. behind it, but I think that's precisely what is being debated here.
Nazi's were not the majority party when Hitler ran for president, they were the largest party, but not majority. They weren't even a majority even when Hitler was appointed (not voted) chancellor by Paul von Hindenburg, the man who won the presidential election. There were a few more steps before he acquired absolute power, but none of them involved voting. It's interesting, read the article.
Like I said, it's a common misconception.
(You could not "vote" a chancellor. In a lot of perfectly valid democracies, the PM position is always appointed, never directly voted, usually from the larger party or the at least the candidate most likely to pass a (constructive) motion of no confidence. So he was elected legally per the correct democratic process. Cleanly/Fairly -- that's another question. But would you really be surprised Hitler could win elections? He had pretty ridiculously good reputation in some circles. He would have likely polled pretty well even in the US.).
The Nazi party won elections, Hitler did not.
>>You know that Hitler was literally voted into power, right?
He was not. He lost the presidential election in 1932. He forcefully took the presidency after the Reichstag fire. He was appointed chancellor because the Nazi party won elections. He lost his. I can see where you think it is splitting hairs, but you specifically named Hitler and not the Nazi party. That might not have been what you meant to say, but it's what you said that I was refuting.
Also, Hindenburg didn't have to appoint Hitler, he could have chosen another from the Nazi party. He certainly didn't want to appoint Hitler, but some backroom negotiations that he wasn't a part of ultimately led to Hitler's appointment.
>So he was elected legally per the correct democratic process.
This is like saying the SCOTUS is elected because the President that appointed them was elected. They are not, they are appointed. Hitler himself never won an election.
FWIW, here are the 1932 election results:
Hindeberg 53.05%
Hitler 36.77%
Other Guy 10.16%
Thank you for sharing the truth. It’s worth understanding why Hindenburg chose Hitler as Chancellor, too. Hitler was popular, and seen as a useful force that might be controlled by the conservative elements of the German political system. It didn’t work out that way.
There’s no contemporary analogue to Hitler today in American politics. There’s no significant paramilitary force, for one. No true populist — in spite of trump’s rhetoric his policies don’t qualify.
Ironically, the closest to fitting the mold might be Vance? Somebody unelected, young, brokered his own access to power in exchange for political support (via Elon, Thiel).
Kamala Harris fits just as well: She was so unpopular in 2020 she dropped out before the primaries, then got picked for Vice-President. Then because Biden was in office, she again didn't get votes in the primary this year but instead was selected by the DNC when Biden dropped out.
Yes, I do consider this is splitting hairs. First, yeah, I do not think explicitly making the separation between Hitler and the Nazi party makes any practical difference to the argument. Let me know if you can think of one.
Second, Hitler did get into power through democratic means -- definitely not the presidency, but he was made chancellor, which is, to the best of my knowledge, equivalent to a PM and therefore head of the executive. Don't move the goalpost and claim that "Hitler didn't get into power until he illegally made himself president", because he was into power before that; as much as you could within the limits of the constitution. They voted him into office and he was made chancellor through legal means. For the last 2/3 elections that can still be considered "somewhat" free, his party got the largest number of votes.
He won the elections, and legally speaking had every right to be put into power and made chancellor. Or at least to try until he was voted out by a no confidence or failing to pass laws. He had no right to become president, much less to become dictator.
> This is like saying the SCOTUS is elected because the President that appointed them was elected. They are not, they are appointed. Hitler himself never won an election.
In a lot of democratic countries, the PM-equivalent figure is NEVER directly elected. Would you call Italy, Spain, etc. non-democratic countries just because the PM is appointed by parliament instead of elected directly? The PM is the actual head of the government; the head of state (monarch/president) is a figurehead.
> FWIW, here are the 1932 election results:
_Presidential_ election. President is much less important than you think if you see this from a US-centric view, because the actual head of government is the chancellor! The secretaries/ministers are appointed from the majority parties in parliament, not arbitrarily by the president as in the US. This is still pretty common in many European democracies...
And in all parliament elections, Hitler's party won with a comfortable margin:
1932 July elections : Nazis 230 seats (out of 608) ; next party 133. Almost 2x distance. Hitler's coalition : 267 seats and 43% of vote. Won by simple majority.
1932 November elections (arguably last fair elections in Germany) Nazis 196 seats ; next party 120. In coalition: 247, 42% of vote. Simple majority.
1933 March (definitely last free elections in Germany): Nazis 288 seats; next party 120. Coalition: 340, ~52%, absolute majority .
There's no other way to put this, even if you ignore 1933 results: the Nazis _and Hitler_ were put into power by the (simple) majority of the population. If they had lost even in % of votes to a second party, or something to the effect, then I would also argue that voters didn't put Hitler into power. But as it is...
And you can't really argue that someone could be voting for the Nazis (or coalition parties) without knowing you'd be voting for Hitler, considering how personalistic they were by 1932.
> Please don't feel like I'm scolding you, I really enjoy historical conversations, so thanks for this one.
This has been discussed ad-nauseum, even on wikipedia...
Disclaimer: I already mentioned that results of an election when there is literal vote coercion going on (intimidation, control of the press, etc.) cannot be considered fair. This doesn't negate the fact that he did win elections, and therefore this is still a valid lesson for generations to come.
That is the message continuously published here by generalist German newspapers, but I cannot find any substance behind it.
Here's a list, though: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/29/trump-dem...
- the Constitution needs suspending
- he needs extrajudicial purges
- vote counting shall be stopped at a particular time. Officials in charge of the mechanics of democracy need to be pressured explicitly about this.
- the peaceful transition of power needs to be interrupted
- expectations held together by norms hold no value. The very tradition of democracy is optional.
It might be irrational to spend effort voting —engaging in democracy— to elevate someone so skeptical of it. And your newspaper and even in this thread people are extremely polite about those doing so.
- The Federal Reserve should do what he says rather than be independent.
- Military generals should be as obedient to him as German generals were to Hitler.
I was not sure, because I had a hypothesis that Trump is just stupid and do not understand what he is doing. But before the current elections he talked a lot how he is going to abuse power to persecute political opponents, or just any opponents, if we believe his words, he is going to persecute everyone he doesn't like.
The purpose of the criminal justice system is not be a cudgel with which to eliminate political opponents. The infamous "34 felonies" were from a state trial in New York; the state of New York does not get to arbitrarily deny the rest of the country their choice in president. Evidently the rest of the country does not consider these to be serious enough to disqualify him from holding office.
Do you not find it _insane_ that he was awaiting a federal trial to determine whether he was guilty of interference in the previous election, was allowed to run, won, and will now make that trial just disappear?
I agree that it could be abused by an authoritarian to silence political rivals. But there are plenty of laws that can and already are abused, including to prevent justice from being served. For example, the several people close to Trump that were pardoned by him right before he left his 1st term.
"You can be president from a jail cell" is likely to be a "well that wouldn't happen" oversight on the Founding Fathers' plate, not an intentional design.
Because they objected to a powerful, unaccountable ruler with absolute immunity to the law.
> They were well aware that criminal prosecutions can be politicized and applied selectively.
And that's why they set up checks and balances, three branches of government, the Bill of Rights, etc. instead of a monarch. Asserting this means they wanted a monarch is... odd.
> If somebody can commit a felony and still get voted in by more than half the country that reflects poorly on the criminal justice system not the election.
I mean, yeah - the criminal justice system is clearly flawed here, as he's fundamentally getting away with the crimes. Garland fucked up by waiting too long; a judge Trump appointed successfully delayed the most serious criminal proceedings until they became meaningless, etc.
The election reflects poorly on the people. Which wouldn't have come as a big surprise to the Founding Fathers, who didn't really trust the people all that much - that's why we have the electoral college, after all.
I'm no Trump fan, but I'd much sooner trust an election over a judge and jury to decide who should be in charge
So voting is the end of democracy? Interesting take
extreme ignorance of authoritarian regime is particularly visible among people who think that things happen like in movies with singular figures like Darth Vader showing up and suddenly grabbing power out of some kind of ether.
Further, he needed the second term then, so he couldn't go all crazy as he needed the people to vote for him once more. Now he doesn't have that limitation any more.
If Trump wanted to be dictator, why didn't he just do all that stuff in his first term and not worry about reelection in 2020?
Again, I'm not arguing he's gonna go full dictator, but i think it's a lot more likely this time around than last time.
And in general this sort of thing doesn't happen overnight; there's a process to things. It's like the old quip on how someone becomes bankrupt: "very gradually, and then suddenly all at once".
I don't know what will happen, but it's a dangerous path to walk. Maybe the next four years will be sort-of okay-ish, but what about the state of things in 10 or 20 years?
In large part, democracies work because we all believe it should work, and once that belief goes out the window for a critical mass of people then you're playing with fire.
The GOP in general has been engaged in scorched earth politics since Obama: all that matters is a win today and doesn't matter what conventions or institutions get damaged in the process. A healthy democracy would have disqualified Trump from running again in 2020. It would not play highly nihilistic power games with the supreme court. etc. etc.
It's absolutely not a healthy state of affairs.
This time around: 1. He allowed an insurrection and was voted in anyway, so his extremist followers are emboldened. 2. He surrounded himself with yes-men.
The difference between this term and his previous is going to be a much stronger focus on making any position he can appoint be one that doesn't tell him no. And it looks like many of the positions he can't (the senate and likely the house) are going that way too. That, to me, makes him represent a meaningfully larger threat to the balance of power in the US than his previous term.
In theory there are things Biden could still do right now to help preserve these institutions but I doesn't look like he will, or even like he has the mental capacity and empathy to be motivated to do so.
That said, I very much dislike Trump and would rather have an empty oval office (arguably we have that already), but I think his threat to democracy has been wildly overblown. Unless a rogue president throws out the book entirely, Congress would have to be the ones to actually get rid of most of our democratic processes and systems.
That said, if somehow that did happen one day I fully expect to die by their gun. At that point that army becomes an invading force and I'd feel like I have no choice but to fight.
I tend to believe him when he says that's what he wants to do. But you are right, one would hope the military would refuse such an unconstitutional order.
(not that MSNBC is a monolith, but) This article claims exactly the opposite: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-steal-elec...
> Trump didn’t need to file frivolous lawsuits before federal courts. The Supreme Court wasn’t given a chance to throw the election his way in a redux of 2000’s Bush v. Gore. The false bomb threats to polling places that have been ascribed to Russian actors don’t appear to have had any measurable effect. There’s been no reporting that indicates that the promised hordes of MAGA-trained poll watchers blocked any Democratic voters from casting their ballots.
> He just won.
Reagan was re-elected in the November 6 election in an electoral and popular
vote landslide, winning 49 states by the time the ballots were finished
counting on election night at 11:34 PM in Iowa. He won a record 525 electoral
votes total (of 538 possible), and received 58.8% of the popular vote
Regardless if the dems still exist in name or not, both them and democracy are done.
The greatest trick the rich ever pulled was convincing the middle class that poor people are the cause of all the problems in their life.
Of all those, I really like the insulin one.
I guess people in America have different priorities than the accomplishments on that list.
They're only bad for big companies that prey on and abuse their workers.
They’re particularly bad when politicians can take money from taxpayers, give it to union members, who are then forced to give it to their unions, which then turn around and donate it to the politicians’ campaigns.
If the US political class had a history of success then being an accomplished politician might be a tick on the report card, but in practice it seems to mean that they have sympathies to the military-industrial complex and a number of extractive lobby groups.
So was Hillary, so the vision of lifelong Republicans has been completely out-of-reach for almost a decade now. They had no choice but to settle for less.
I think it's been well demonstrated currently with Trump's live appearances where he really thinks he's doing the right thing all the time whether he makes very much sense or not.
Just last week alone Trump made Ronald Reagan with Alzheimer's look like an absolute genius by comparison.
Anything of the shit Trump has done would be an immediate disqualification for anyone else, yet everything constantly gets a shrug.
Otherwise, it's as if you had a string of bad CTOs and then decide to hire a gardener with no tech skills as your new CTO.
Now, I'll admit that the US system of mostly only very rich people getting access to top universities is not exactly fair - but you can in principle become a politician no matter your background.
I don't think it's crazy to assume that qualifications matter. And most of the US's best presidents (such as Lincoln, both Roosevelts etc.) were highly educated and had had political careers before.
See e.g.: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/aristocr...
Trump's success in only partly due to his inheritance though. I'd liked it more to a charismatic religious and authoritarian leader.
One of the worst travesties in any organization is when there are non-leaders occupying leadership positions for any reason. And that is already too common in areas where people don't have a choice.
It just seems unreasonable to assume that knowing how to govern isn't an important qualification for the job of actually... governing.
So accomplished she could not even win a primary against an old man and was the first one out.
It's been confusing since the first trump term how many dems held this position. How can you call trump obviously reprehensible and irredemable... and then lose?
I made the mistake of debating politics with a then-friend who called all 75 million trump voters "drooling fucktards". Word?
We don't talk anymore
Ok well..that's not really an argument?
And yes we can bring up all the terrible Trump examples but if the point is separating yourself from that, how is what they've done any different?
It just feels each side just despises the other and it all ends up like children arguing on the playground.
Where are the adults?
There's going to be all kinds of hyperbole thrown around today on both sides but personally see this as a failure by the Democrats to sway Independents.
How many evangelical Christians just voted for an adulterer and convicted criminal because he’s not pro choice?
Heck, I know quite a few people who are very strongly religious and somehow view Trump as a good Christian candidate. That one really blows my mind, unless they've changed the ten commandments entirely since I was growing up.
it is an important issue.
> Heck, I know quite a few people who are very strongly religious and somehow view Trump as a good Christian candidate. That one really blows my mind, unless they've changed the ten commandments entirely since I was growing up.
What makes it bizarre is not things like adultery (a fundamental tenet of Christianity is that we are all sinners) but that Trump is clearly not a Christian. He does not even know the basics of Christianity - remember when he wished people "Happy Good Friday"?
For sure. I don't take issue with anyone voting based on whatever they care about in general. I don't feel strongly enough about one topic to be a single issue voter, but I get it for anyone that does feel that strongly.
> What makes it bizarre is not things like adultery (a fundamental tenet of Christianity is that we are all sinners) but that Trump is clearly not a Christian.
100% agree. No one is perfect and I wouldn't expect anyone who is religious to always fit the bill, but Trump is an example of someone very far from any religious ideals. I was raised Catholic, if Trump were catholic I don't think he would have had time outside of confession to even run for office.
That literally made me lough out loud. Raised Catholic too (been an agnostic since, and some sort of Christian and technically if not theologically a Catholic now).
Trump was very favorable to Israel and has a Jewish daughter. Not typical fascist behavior.
Debbie Dingell said Trump will build internment camps and put her in one. Were were the internment camps in Trump's first term?
We don’t have to worry about him stealing any more elections, he’s far too old for that to be an issue
So because Israel is involved in something means that something can't be fascist? What about the fascist things Netanyahu is doing with Israel?
Mussolini was in power in Italy 10 years before Hitler was in Germany and he wasn't very anti-Semitic at all. He was influenced by Hitler towards the end of his reign but even then his anti-Semitic policies were mild when compared to Germany.
Part of the problem with calling someone a fascist is that people associate the word with Hitler. But Hitler wasn't the only fascist or even the first fascist.
So perhaps this:
> Part of the problem with calling someone a fascist is that people associate the word with Hitler.
Is not making the point you think it's making.
Just a thought
This behaviour culminates in what you're seeing.
And as you agreed, Trump does the same, more than anyone. So unless you are openly stating "the left should behave more decent than the right if they want votes", there is a problem in your logic as well.
There is no right wing equivalent to the institutions I mentioned: CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Hollywood, not to mention schools, universities, tech giants like Google, Apple, Meta etc, all of whom lean left and have shown biases in their actions.
Please try to entertain the hypothesis that maybe I'm not the one in an incredibly well insulated bubble
Edit: maybe not, I think they're still in procedural limbo because no other party wants to be in the coalition.
Victor Orban - President of Hungary.
The AfD in Germany got a higher percentage of the vote in Thuringen in Germany than any other party. Currently polling higher than any member of the governing coalition nationally.
Geert Wilders - successful in the Netherlands.
Marine Le Pen - possible next president of France.
The Freedom Party of Austria - has been in government.
These parties all sometimes win in Europe.
Freedom of protest was, in fact, restricted in italy in a way that it affects climate manifestations more than lobbies manifestation - we have taxis striking and blocking cities if someone wants to touch their ungodly privileges -
Journalist striked on the public news because news has become unreliable, propaganda spewing news at a level before unheard of
It didn't happen, but Giorgia meloni wanted to abolish the crime of torture to better allow police to do its work (lmao even)
At the season opening of the teather la scala di Milano, one man shouted "viva l'Italia antifascista" (long live antifacist italy). Police was sent to check his documents and similar intimidatory shit
Some Americans may well vote for the rightwing candidate because they want to stick it to the left (or whoever the "anti" would be).
Personally, I don't think that alone makes a majority in that binary choice; in Europe, it would mostly end up in the vote for a minor "ultra" party. And less-"anti" conservative voters have other options.
In the US though, as someone with conservative values and views, one always has to choose ... do I want to vote with everyone else who votes for "my" camp including the stick-it-tos (because there's only one option "on my side"), do I not vote, or do I even vote against what feels closer to me because the stick-it-tos vote for them as well, and/or their head on the ticket is clearly one of the stick-it-tos ?
Am I glad I needn't make that choice. And am I sad what kind of asocial extremes are encouraged by the binary, winner-takes-all US political system.
I have and/or have seen good evidence for all that I mentioned, but such evidence is NOT wanted by or common in the media which means that I have no well written, comprehensive, single reference to give.
Uh, YOU try: Write a document with good evidence, details, quotes, video clips, etc., and see how much interest the US MSM (mainstream media) has in publishing it!!! I predict you will regard your effort, no matter how carefully done, as a waste of time.
E.g., so far I've never seen even one credible graph over, say, the last 16 years, of, say, the US CPI (consumer price index). Same for budget deficits, spending bills, balance of foreign exchange, Fed loans, spending on the war in Ukraine (was there actually ANY spending or did we, instead, actually just ship war supplies produced in the US?) -- the actual details are absurdly messy, sloppy, missing, etc.
Clearly, bluntly the details do not SELL -- won't get a big audience.
To give good evidence here would exceed by several times the 10,000 bytes or so limit that Hacker News seems to have on a single post.
US media credibility? Here is evidence of biased, cooked up, gang up, pile on, organized mob attack from 2017:
https://youtu.be/f1ab6uxg908
I wish, profoundly wish, have posted many times on social media, that the US news media should provide JUST such evidence, at least up to common standards of high school term papers. All that is no more than a spit into the wind -- the media does NOT want to expend bytes for such writing, documentation, evidence, etc.
So, here I did all I can do to respond to the question I quoted, apparently, from a European. Agree or not with what I wrote, but it is the best I can do under the circumstances. The question from Europe are not very deep; so I gave answers of similar depth. The speeches in the election were not very deep. The Trump statements at the economic clubs in Chicago and Detroit were deeper.
That's my explanation, best I can do, take it or leave it.
But, really for an accusation of "Nazi", etc. the "burden of proof is on the accuser". The rape? He said, she said. There in the dressing room of the department store, did she scream and get some witnesses? Nazi? Just what is the evidence that Trump has done anything like the Nazi stuff Hitler did? Felon? He has never gotten a sentence -- if he does, then he can appeal, win the appeal, and show that he is NOT a "convicted felon". So, no sentence. The papers case, the J6 case, the Georgia case, the "hush money" case -- all are falling apart due to appeals, etc. They are NOT legal cases but just efforts to misuse the legal system to have others, as here, believe he is a felon. But with the appeals, e.g., even to the SCOTUS, ALL of the cases are falling apart. My view is that the wrong here is from low level parts of the US legal system and not from Trump.
And where are the arguments about 10+ million illegal immigrants, the inflation, the attacks on US fossil fuel energy, the Ukraine war, the Gaza war, the Lebanon war, the hundreds of missiles from Iran, the promotion of biological men in women's sports, the lies about abortion (Trump sent the issue back to the states to decide), the bans on gas powered cars and trucks, etc.?
You have failed to provide one.
Just what was I supposed to do but "failed" at?
In the south, at least this is flat wrong
A niece got PBK at Indiana University, went to Harvard Law, got first job at Cravath, Swaine, & Moore. Left for an MD, and has been practicing since then. Suspect she spent very little on tuition.
As a first grad student in math at Indiana University, I got paid for teaching, had a nice single dorm room, actually lived well, and saved some money.
There are a lot of buttons to push, strings to pull, to get low cost or free college, then free through Ph.D. Being a good student, good SAT scores, already know calculus well, all can help.
Point: Self study can work well. Obviously: Once a prof reading research papers, nearly always have to use self study, and the papers are generally much less polished than good textbooks.
So, I recommended to students short on money just to do some self teaching and show up, demonstrate what learned, and ask for a scholarship.
As a European you don't have presidential elections that matter. Executive and legislative power is in the hands of your parliament and the president is a figurehead (if you have one).
If you want to compare your European experience to the USA, you should look at congress and not the presidential elections. You'd probably find the same dynamics there as in your own country, with the exception that the blocs that you have in parliament have been distilled into two parties.
US two-party system really is the weird one.
> or they face a more moderate party taking their seats
That's not right. You cannot lose your parliament seat in any European parliament until the next election. If an MP or an entire party in Europe is too divisive, they might not be able to be part of a majority and they will be in opposition.
In the USA, the executive government is not elected by parliament - so you're comparing apples to oranges. The president builds the executive government after being elected by the people in the states. That's something different.
We had an R state rep candidate come by our house. Highlighted two issues in her message to us. Both were simply not actual things. The existence of the problems were lies. WTF do you do with voters who consume media that’s made them believe those? It’s like a huge moat around even being able to talk to them about anything real, even if only to disagree about some real thing.
This has been a constant refrain from Democrats: "The thing that you are upset about is not happening. Well, it is happening, but it is the exception. Ok, it's happening everywhere, but it's a good thing." No, of course Harris isn't for government sex changes for imprisoned illegal immigrants, except for the fact that she said she was. The truth is that we all know that she would say anything to win, and holding her to any position she ever publicly held feels unfair.
The people who have been kept low-information are the Democrats, because they have been surrounded by media largely controlled by their political party. Republicans often have bad information, but they're constantly out there consuming information and hate-reading what Democrats are saying. Independents, in my experience, are the highest-information of all, because they don't think of political parties as something they can offload their morality to. Independents only see politics in terms of actual issues, and track those issues rather than having parasocial relationships with political celebrities.
In that vein, I'm pretty sure that if I had an experience where a political candidate came to my house and talked about issues that weren't real, I'd talk about those issues specifically, and speculate about their origin. I think you don't mention them because they were real, but a lot of liberals have taken this position of officially denying reality if reality could help Trump. Is widespread voter fraud real? No. Should people be unconcerned about making it easier? Also, no.
If upper-middle class liberals could have won the "stop sounding like Scientologists" challenge, they could have won. If The Democratic party could have wanted to win more than they wanted to avoid alienating any donors, they could have won by taking any popular position on anything. Trump spent most of his campaign actively campaigning for Harris by calling her a radical-left socialist; if she were actually a radical-left socialist instead of an empty vessel to be filled with cash, she would have won. If the Democratic party hadn't chosen again not to run a fair, open, lively primary, they would have won.
With Trump campaigning against radical-left socialist Harris, and Harris campaigning against rapist Hitler, homophobic Stalin, and racist Mussolini, the majority of people looked at which candidate was lying the most, and voted for the other one. Everybody knows who Trump is, and he's already been president, and nobody went to camps. It was a rather sleepy standard Republican presidency, whose few deviations from the norm pleased people. The only reason we heard about Harris is because she (and Buttigieg) pretended to be for single-payer healthcare in order to destroy a popular candidate who was running on an honest program.
2) “boys in girls sports”. So incredibly niche that who gives a fuck, and does not appear to be an actual problem that sports conferences and associations aren’t handling just fine on their own. Why does anybody care about this? Right wing news, entire reason. Not an actual issue.
2) Boys are in girls sports, and Biden destroyed Title IX with an executive order. And you've gone from "fictional" to "Why does anybody care about this?" You don't see this as a dishonest progression?
edit: and now edited to "who gives a fuck." Women who dedicate their lives to sports. Men who think that half the population deserves half the medals and half the opportunity. Me.
Oh she mentioned defending title IX and I had zero clue wtf she meant (I mean, I know what title IX is, but figured it was some kind of allusion to something I’d only know if I listened to Mark Levin even more than I already do). A glance at The Googles and this appears to be exactly the kind of thing I mean.
Feel free to label anyone who doesn't vote the way you do a "Low information voter"
[edit] shit, we can’t even get to substance on issues where we agree the broad category of thing needs to be addressed. Immigration! Yes! Let’s do some stuff on that! “Biden’s open border” ok well congrats we already solved that because that’s not a thing, rhetorically or in fact, zero democrats with any power want an open border and the border is not open, so… “illegals smuggling fentanyl!” wait how much money do you want to devote to that specifically, because that’s a negligible source of fentanyl in the US (citizens smuggling fentanyl, however…) and yeah we’re just bogged down disagreeing on facts again.
And then you're surprised why people vote differently to you...
So why can't Democrats just come out against this insanity and take the easy W? The whole, "well it isn't a really an issue" argument doesn't fly when you still demand your way on it.
While Trump wouldn't do any of that, right? He would say things because they're true :D
> It was a rather sleepy standard Republican presidency, whose few deviations from the norm pleased people
Just a small insurrection at the end, no biggie. Oh, and some international agreements were shattered, but who cares about those anyway. I mean, there was also Corona which jolted some people from sleep, but thanks to Trump's recommendation to get some chlorine you could get right back to sleeping :)
I wish that democrats had spent less time telling republicans that the boogeyman doesn't exist and more time showing them how we're going to keep them safe from the boogeyman. In WI, there was a referendum question that asked if people wanted to add language to the state constitution which would explicitly specify that only US citizens could vote. The democrats fought against that saying that election fraud was basically non-existent and that it would be a waste of time to change anything since it's already illegal for non-citizens to vote.
They fucked up though, because no matter how right the democrats were about the safety of elections the fear republican voters have is very real and it's never a waste of time to ease those fears.
As it turns out, if the referendum passes (and I'm guessing that it has) the result will be replacing language which says that every US citizen gets to vote with language which says only US citizens get to vote. It never said anything about replacing language in the referendum question voters saw though. The fear of illegal immigrants voting has likely been used to remove language protecting the right of US citizens to vote in WI and could open the door for laws that prevent certain US citizens from voting.
Since Democrats and Republicans are in full agreement that only US citizens should be able to vote the smart thing democrats should have done was push to add language explicitly stating that only citizens can vote but without replacing anything else. That would have satisfied the fearful republicans and protected the voting rights of all citizens. Instead they just wanted to lecture republicans about voter fraud statistics.
Every parent who has checked under their child's bed or looked in their closet for "monsters" understands this. When you have people acting like frightened children about something that isn't real, sometimes you just have to comfort them.
This is the same problem democrats have when republicans say they are afraid of small children going to school and getting sex change operations. Trump tells them it happens which is scary. Democrats just want to tell them that they are misinformed and that little kids aren't getting surgery, but they'd be smarter to say "You're right, little children getting sex changes at school is a horrible thing and we are putting forward a law that would ban that practice so that no child gets sex change surgery!". Why do democrats keep letting these issues both sides agree on become arguments that divide us?
The point is that the irrational fear has to be addressed. Making fun of it, ignoring it, or lecturing on why the threat is imaginary won't help.
They’ve been beating this drum for what, fifteen years at this point? More? They should at least have found smoke, if not fire, instead they just keep saying they smell a raging forest fire and coming back with single burnt matches when given the reigns of government to go look for it and tell us what they find.
Every democrat I know wants elections to be more secure than they are. They just also want them to be fair. There's been a lot of room for proactive measures here that democrats could have been pushing for, but there have been efforts too (https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1007715994/manchin-offers-a-v...)
https://www.elections.on.ca/en/voting-in-ontario/id-to-vote-...
Some US states have voting ID requirements, and they tend to be (though not always!) significantly stricter than that, sometimes requiring a specifically a government-issued photo id, for instance.
I’m pretty sure laws that have much looser definitions of “ID” and/or provision resources to ensure timely, free, and easy access to such an ID, see less resistance from democrats. If the entire pro-ID movement just wanted to do what Ontario does it’d be less of a contentious issue, I think.
[edit] for the record, though, I agree this is a place Democrats could safely give ground—the data do not well-support their disenfranchisement concerns, and 30+ states already have some kind of voter id law.
It is, separately, also true that there is no evidence there’s any actual reason to enact more of these laws. The data also don’t support that, at all. But whatever, it’s probably not significantly harmful, just a minor waste of resources.
That’s the risk when the measure is more-or-less harmless but also the problem it addresses isn’t real. They can just keep claiming the problem still exists and running on it.
Being able to cast a vote illegally is trivially easy because there are exceptions baked into the system like provisional ballots. Lucky there is an thorough audit process so having that vote actually counted while avoiding election fraud charges is a lot harder.
It actually is, though.
Sure, it didn’t work—probably because enough people weren’t convinced that it was true enough (and also because they didn’t care)—but it's not unreasonable to think that such an argument should have been enough.
Our understanding of the world is profoundly mediated by fiction, which is to say, lies.
That's why it all ends up like children arguing on the playground. The kind of playground‡ where my 14-year-old classmate Evangalyn Martinez got stabbed to death for, I think it was, stealing Joella Mares's boyfriend, and nobody leaves the playground alive.
Under those circumstances, what does it mean to live a good life rather than a bad one? Good answers exist, but they're not easy.
______
† This is a metaphor. I don't mean that each adult has literally swallowed a child and is digesting them alive like a python.
‡ Technically that was actually the parking lot. Also, I was already no longer her classmate at the time, and because we were in different grades, I don't remember if I ever met her. She wouldn't be my last classmate to be stabbed; in my high school biology class each student was paired with the same lab partner for the whole semester, and the next year, someone else at the high school nonfatally stabbed my lab partner, Shannon Sugg, now Shannon L. Schneider (ginga.snapz1718). If memory serves, she dropped out from the psychological trauma. You can read the decision in her lawsuit against the school at https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/nm-court-of-appeals/141549..., which says it was Alicia Andres who stabbed her. ”Plaintiff asserts that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment imposed a clearly established duty upon school officials to protect her from this stabbing.” I'm glad violent crime has dropped a lot since then in the US.
> Ok well..that's not really an argument?
Choosing to not put a fascist(-leaning) individual into power is "not really an argument"? So it's okay to re-elect individuals who have tried at least once to stop the peaceful transfer of power?
I mean take everything from the climate crisis, to my favorite - creationism being taught in school at the same level as evolution.
The playbook is literally right there, you get experts to come on stage, ridicule them to your audience, show that they are cartoons and have no real value.
Then you provide you viewers with good sounding news bites and manage the optics, and you can get a convicted felon elected to President.
Yes - it really is just the information ecosystem. There really is no free speech when one side is a regular joe and the other side is a marketing and political speech behemoth.
It is that simple, and we can’t do anything about it, because that would be harming our ability to speak freely.
I mean, if one of Trump's own closest advisors carefully states that he fits the definition of a fascist, is it not fair to call him one? If Trump outwardly celebrates many of the traditional concepts of fascism like attacking the media, attacking minorities, attacking "enemies from within" is it not fair to call him that?
And what do you say about a person who supports fascism? That they're very fine people?
I don’t and you shouldn’t. Mocking others intelligence only shows that you lack enough to understand them. As I understand it, this is precisely the point of GP
I read a statistic that 50% of grown up Americans have only 6th grade education. Which means that what? 60%-65% may have 9th grade?
The vast majority of people is uneducated and only responds to simple thoughts: as someone said: they see their wallet shrinking, and they decide to voté for the alternative. Other more complex issues don't matter, they don't care about them.
The same thing happened in my country (Mexico) where we have also tons of uneducated people. The people voté for the sound snippet, for the demagogue who told them what they wanted to hear.
And similarly, the other parties in their smugness didn't understand why people didn't vote for more complex issues.
It's sad, but most of us (highly educated people) live in a bubble.
It does, both sides got about the same amount of votes as you can see.
> It feels much more like the Democrats ignored (or were perceived to have ignored) a lot of substantive issues for a large section of the population.
I don't think so, it doesn't matter how much you try to do for people if you also namecall them at the same time, they will assume you aren't on their side even if your policies are better for them. Vitriol ensures the vote becomes tribal instead of rationally inspecting both sides and picking the better option.
This can be seen as the democrats also not understanding the average person and this is where Bernie was actually hitting good points, his message was consistent and he was never demonising Trump on his name but explaining what they could do better by explaining policies in a way that people understood what they would get from them or lose if they didn't get implemented...
Of course the issue is a bit more complex, but they exacerbated the people that were unseen instead of helping the healing and some actors of course were way too happy to fan the flames.
This is a very bad day that is marking the beginning of a very bad period for everyone...
This is the Red Wave that was promised in 2020 and 2022 but failed to materialize.
Why didn't Harris and the Democrats pull it off? Well, they could start by not playing identity politics or calling Americans deplorables, Nazis, and garbage. Godwin's Law was in full swing for them.
I'm Japanese-American, demographically I should be a bleeding heart Democrat, but truthfully I can't stand their constant victimizing and divisive rhetoric and is why I voted for Trump and the Republicans in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
Practical and on point because Trump talks about things that the common American actually gives a shit about in a way that the common American can understand and relate to. This also has a side effect of uniting people under a common cause despite outward appearances.
Gruff because that style of speech appeals to most Americans who don't like being sophisticated, or worse: Being politically correct. Remember that being politically incorrect was one of the reasons Trump won in 2016, and it's still one of the reasons he won again today.
Charismatic because, well, I think everyone has to at least admit that the man draws people in despite any and all odds.
His practical message was incoherent; it was more of an erring of grievances, conspiracy theories, and wild policy ideas that he seemed to have come up with while speaking.
I can't argue with the fact that it appealed to people, but you can't say it wasn't divisive because it was practical and gruff. Those two things don't rule out divisiveness.
BTW, I voted Republican in every election until Trump, and the reason why I didn't vote for him was due to how divisive he was.
I think you just happen to agree with his side of the divide.
I don't know whether this was deliberate or a typo, but it's funny and apt.
If the common cause is being against other people, that's still divisive.
Is that gruff or on point?
In low-information voters' defense, it's been amazing to me as a non-American how Trump's literal dementia was not in the front pages of the media every single day. The complicity of the news media in normalizing a senile candidate should't go unnoticed.
Nope.
I watched that now infamous three hour marathon podcast he did with Joe Rogan. That kind of performance is not something a demented man can do, full stop. To say nothing of his utterly crazy rally schedule, I legitimately don't know where he gets his energy.
Hate him if you want, that's your right and I will respect that. But Trump is terrifyingly sharp, especially for a man his age.
>The complicity of the news media in normalizing a senile candidate should't go unnoticed.
The media dumped Biden right quick after his old age couldn't be hidden anymore. That debate he had was straight up elder abuse by the media.
Drugs. Incoherent hour-long rants are the product of stimulants, the kind that give you the sort of terrible judgement that no one would ever want out of a presidential candidate.
Nope.
That three hour long podcast was a very coherent conversation, and it was quite enlightening in what Trump actually means when he says he has "good relationships" with people like Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Specifically in regards to the impact of that on the election, neither Biden nor Harris can talk their way out of a 1st grade reading class due to his age and her inability to orate respectively.
Communicating clearly and with conviction is among the most basic of required skills as a leader of a country, and neither could do even that much.
Why not, though? Clearly, it is a winning strategy for the Republicans. So why not adopt it as well?
I'd be curious what your gut reaction was to the comedian that Trump's team hired to open at his rally at Madison Square Garden, just this past week, who referred to Puerto Rico as "a floating island of garbage" (starts at about 0:16):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNBdYplmKcI
Would your reaction be the same if he had referred to, say, Japan in the same way?
Also interestingly, Puerto Rican and Latino votes for Trump actually increased[2] fueled primarily by economic and governance concerns. That joke ultimately didn't seem to have a negative impact, if any. Contrast Biden calling Americans garbage, which simply added more fuel to the furor behind Trump and Republicans.
As for the hypothetical question: If someone joked Japan is a floating island of garbage and there is actual basis for that criticism, I would take that as a cue to man up and make myself and my homeland great again so I can look at the joker in the eye with results.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Percent_population_below_...
But hey, that's just me.
If someone makes a baseless joke then they aren't worth the time of day, I agree with that.
To expand on the hypothetical question: Japan has a literal garbage island (it's an artificial island used as a landfill). We call it Dream Island (Yume no Shima) because of the irony.
Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumenoshima
And I don't know about other people, but I consider any rhetoric against a political party to be directed against their politicians, not against their voters - unless explicitly stated.
You're right it's unfair but if you're not American and thus stuck in the political media stew then you can see it clearly.
Covid was a great example, anyone who disagreed with the main narrative or even just wanted bodily choice was blasted by many liberals, including the president, with all kinds of hateful speech.
Since 2016 many liberals also have used hateful speech to describe anyone willing to vote for Trump. I personally didn't like either candidate the political machine offered us, but in many of my discussions with anyone liberal Trump voters were often held as something like a second class citizen, that's pretty damn hateful in my book to consider anyone "lesser than."
How is that in any way contradictory ?
Another option is that voters are just very stupid and fail to see that which is "obvious", repeatedly, despite billions spent on trying to make them "see". Or perhaps their claims are not actually "obvious", and they ought to be... kinder to the other side.
There's a lot of people around me who are actively against education, or attack facts because they don't believe them, or vomit opinions as "facts".
It's practically impossible to persuade people like that.
I think this is the correct options.
I mean, look at the people who worked for him in the last administration:
> So how do we explain this near-universal rejection of Trump by the people who worked with him most closely? I guess one explanation is that they’ve all been infected with the dreaded Woke Mind Virus. But it’s unclear why working for Donald Trump would cause almost everyone to be exposed to the Woke Mind Virus, when working for, say, JD Vance, or Ron DeSantis, or any other prominent right-wing figure does not seem to produce such an infection.
> Of course, not everyone who worked for Trump has abandoned and denounced him. Rudy Giuliani, who is now under indictment in several different states, is still among the faithful. Michael Flynn, who was fired by Obama for insubordination and then removed by Trump for improper personal dealings with the Russian government, is still on board, and is now threatening to unleash the “gates of Hell” on Trump’s political enemies. Peter Navarro, the economist1 who served four months in prison for defying a Congressional subpoena, is still a Trump fan. And so on.
> You may perhaps notice a pattern among the relatively few people who are still on board the Trump Train from his first term. They are all very shady people. I don’t think this is a coincidence; I think it’s something systematic about Donald Trump’s personality and his method of rule.
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trumpism-is-kakistocracy
The GOP party has changed:
> As many people have noted, Trump’s movement is a cult of personality. Since Trump took over the Republican party in 2016, essentially every tenet of modern conservatism has been replaced with belief in a single leader. Trump appointed the judges that killed Roe v. Wade, but he constantly goes back and forth on the topic of abortion rights. Trump didn’t cut entitlement spending, but whether he wants to do that in his second term or not depends on which day you ask him. Trump has flip-flopped on the TikTok bill, on marijuana legalization, on the filibuster, on SALT caps, and so on.
> But these flip-flops do not matter to his support at all. His supporters are sure that whichever decision Trump makes, it will be the right one, and if he changes it the following week, that will be the right decision as well. If tomorrow Trump declared that tariffs are terrible and illegal immigration is great, this would immediately become the essence of Trumpism. Trump’s followers put their trust not in principled ideas, but in a man — or, to be more accurate, in the idea of a man. That is what Trumpism requires of its adherents.
* Idid.
I'm sorry, but I have to be blunt. That is an extremely narrow view, and a single second of critical thinking should present a million other possibilities. The former is obviously untrue, considering Trump's long list of vices. The latter is a complete non sequitur. Power is power; the electorate's morals only matter insofar as they're willing to check the box next to my name.
Trump can be reprehensible and irredemable, and still win if he's more believable on the issues Americans care the most about. He could be a fraud, a cheat, even a traitor, so long as he's persuasive. That's how democracy works, how it should work.
Are you suggesting that the USA should have a single political party? Anyone that cares for democracy would be against that, regardless of their other political views.
And not quit as in leave only a single party, but quit as in leave a vacuum for another party/candidate/etc to step in.
Note these aren't necessarily my personal views, just trying to help clarify what I believe the commentator meant.
Correct, yes.
Short list: Trump has been adjudicated in court as having sexually assaulted a woman, and has admitted to doing more. Nearly every person who has worked with him has described him in the worst possible terms. Stories of him celebrating Nazis [1], sexually fixating on his own daughter[2], horrifying things like that.
The man is a convicted felon, and has only escaped punishment for various other crime by virtue of his own appointees in the court system.
If a reader accepts these well-supported items as facts, what should they think about somebody who votes for that?
Should they lie and say "a reasonable person would support this"?
Or should they tell the truth even when it is "divisive"?
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-said-hitler-did-...
[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trumps-lewd-talk-a...
We can't call a failed businessman what he is? Or correctly point out that he idolizes dictators and Hitler specifically? Or that he is so fucking stupid he said he wanted Hitler's generals even though they were 1) Not very good 2) several tried to assassinate him and 3) fought like middle school girls?
Why do we have to abandon reality? Why do we have to treat conservatives with kid gloves?
I seem to remember something along the lines of "Facts don't care about your feelings" and "Fragile Snowflakes"
> rapist
Source?
https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/07/donald-trump...
> Kaplan had already outlined why it was not defamation for Carroll to say Trump raped her.
> “As the court explained in its recent decision denying Mr Trump’s motion for a new trial on damages and other relief [in the New York case] … based on all of the evidence at trial and the jury’s verdict as a whole, the jury’s finding that Mr Trump ‘sexually abused’ Ms Carroll implicitly determined that he forcibly penetrated her digitally – in other words, that Mr Trump in fact did ‘rape’ Ms Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York penal law.”
So not a criminal case than? Trump didn’t even attend.
The article says the jury did not find enough evidence of the rape claim even at the lower requirement of the civil court.
> Carroll “cannot produce any objective evidence to back up her claim because it didn’t happen,” he told jurors.
I'm pretty sure OJ's lawyer also said he didn't do it.
But I’m not here to be trumps lawyer. I’m here to tell you that you that this scapegoating and conspiring is giving you nothing but anger and not helping you understand the events this week.
Trump supporters blaming liberals' rhetoric for their decisions is a troll tactic: It's a way of trying to bait liberals into paying more positive lip service to Trump. And it works, all up and down the media organizations are terrified to say things that offend trump supporters. All for some vague belief that if they coddle his supporters enough they get some "centrist credibility" or something.
Fox News. The folks who voted trump watch only Fox News, which has crafted an alternative and immersive world view that appears coherent if you only watch Fox News and reject conflicting information as lies.
However the issue is about the kind of information ecosystems that drive polarization and misinformation.
Disinfo and misinformation campaigns target right wing / conservative viewers more than they do left wing / liberals.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07942-8
But I can point to research and articles till the cows come home. The fact is that people reject everything negative about Trump and fill in the blanks with whatever they want to believe.
We’re basically playing whose line is it anyway
If you haven’t looked at the article - this is directly in the summary:
> sers who were pro-Trump/conservative also shared far more links to various sets of low-quality news sites—even when news quality was determined by politically balanced groups of laypeople, or groups of only Republican laypeople—and had higher estimated likelihoods of being bots
If you want more - The original fake news, the Romanian ad farm sites, had greater success and traction when they targeted conservative viewers.
To save us both trouble - this is not some cockamamie argument about crud like “he who defines it can be correct.”,or conflation of bad reporting and hyperbole.
This is straight up conservatives being the victims and consistent targets of mis and disinformation.
I also know that this will have 0 impact on changing minds. I know it wont.
That said, I do hope we can agree that people deserve respect for their efforts to understand a topic, subject or field of work. Do read the article, and when I say that conservative / republican information diets are more vulnerable and exposed to low quality information and conspiracy theories, I’d appreciate the honor of at least having your opinion on the abstract and matter of the paper.
My point wasn’t necessarily that conservatives aren’t exposed to more misinformation, but rather that misinformation is very difficult to define, since the general public lacks so much information. Very few people actually know the truth. Many people fill in the gaps with their biases and then believe they’ve consumed “the truth.” Without an objective view of all facts, it’s difficult to ascertain the truth, therefore it’s also difficult to ascertain what is misinformation.
My initial reaction is that this study seems to delegate the classification of misinformation to a set of fact checkers and journalists. It then uses this to classify links as being either misinformation or disinformation, based on a trustworthiness score. Unfortunately, I can’t open the table of exact fact checkers and journalists because none of the links work on my mobile browser, so I’ll have to just guess at the contents for now.
Delegating classification of truth to these third parties allows for significant bias in the results. Most conservatives consider main stream media and fact checkers to have a significant progressive bias. If correct, this would explain at least some of the results of this study. I haven’t done a thorough analysis myself, so I can’t say either way, but it would be worth investigating.
The study also mentions that many users could have been bots. I suspect this could also have skewed the results. This is mentioned in the abstract, so I suspect it’s addressed later in the paper.
Either way, continuing to read… very interesting study.
As for your objection and concern - the study deals with that issue by letting participants decide themselves, what counts as high quality and low quality.
This holds if you look at outright conspiracy theories. Globally, conservative users are the most susceptible to such campaigns.
I will add "at this moment in time". I expect that sufficiently virulent disinfo which targets the left will evolve eventually.
For additional reading, not directly related to lib / con disinfo efficacy - The spreading of misinformation online. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517441113
This is one of the first papers on this topic I ever read, and will help in the consideration of misinfo / disinfo traffic patterns in a network.
uhh - not that you asked for additional reading.
Trump tends to talk in word-salad. It makes it very possible for two reasonable individuals to reach different conclusions about what was communicated.
Even Snopes, fucking Snopes, confirmed the "fine people" thing is false.
Obama, Kamala, and Joe Biden all pushed "Trump said Nazis were fine people" with complete confidence, this is the literal definition of a hoax.
The original video credited with "drinking bleach", was Trump openly speculating on disinfection approaches. And, the approach he verbalized out loud, disinfecting lungs with UV light, was at the time a relatively new and completely valid medical treatment. Trump was ahead of the curve on that one.
Anyone who interprets his open questions about the UV light treatment as "drink bleach" is either a victim of a hoax (and an irresponsible moron) or has no qualms pushing hoaxes.
""" Editors' Note: Some readers have raised the objection that this fact check appears to assume Trump was correct in stating that there were "very fine people on both sides" of the Charlottesville incident. That is not the case. This fact check aimed to confirm what Trump actually said, not whether what he said was true or false. For the record, virtually every source that covered the Unite the Right debacle concluded that it was conceived of, led by and attended by white supremacists, and that therefore Trump's characterization was wrong. """
Given that the Unite the Right rally was organized by overt white supremacists, white-supremacist-adjacent organizations, and people comfortable with rallying with those groups, it is an understandable inference a person could draw that when Trump claims a set of people is "fine people" and the set is as above described, there is no daylight between what he said and a claim that white supremacists are "fine people" (because excluding the people he overtly says he isn't talking about leaves the empty set... i.e. he either meant to say Nazis were fine people or he made a statement that is a logical contradiction, so if one's benefit of the doubt comes down on the side of "he isn't a befuddled man who contradicts himself with three sentences," one assumes the non-illogical statement supporting Nazis as fine people).
This train of thought is predicated upon how much one buys into the old saw that "everyone sitting comfortably at a table with one Nazi is called Nazis." But if you wish to understand the train of thought that leads to an alternate interpretation of his words, that is the train of thought.
(Similar logic applies to the "drink bleach" comment. He didn't literally suggest people drink bleach. In addition to his comments on UV therapy, he also opined on how effective bleach is as a cleansing agent and whether it would be possible to somehow apply it inside the human body... Which anyone who knows basic chemistry knows is mad. He just says things, which are open to being interpreted in the worst possible light.)
With respect, you seem to be trying to tell people that words aren't open to interpretation when they do not share your interpretation of the literal words they heard, and that's probably a non-starter argument. It is probably not an optimal way to "converse curiously."
Well, to make this non political.
Look at how many sports players have a history of domestic abuse; the character of a player is secondary to their ability to play the sport.
You dont need to go that far. You just need to create an information environment that is beyond the ability of the average person to navigate.
At that point, the other side is just evil, and your team, even if they are convicted for crimes, have ties to Epstein or anything - doesn’t matter.
——
I mean, you can have privatized thought policing, there aren’t any laws or regulations to prevent. Everyone reads about Big Brother and worries about government control.
So you can create enough of FUD shared till it’s believed.
Don’t forget - we had to deal with Creationism, and that was wildly successful for a completely unscientific argument.
If they can't convince voters to vote for them given how bad the other side looks then they must be really incompetent.
What's the point of having all the feel good rallies in cities with famous people if you can't reach people in rural areas.
The democratic party is too elitist, too far from regular people.
Maybe you could leave the Poop Cafe and have something that's food instead lmao
Or in meme form:
Making an objective statement about subjectivity is kind of silly in the first place. Then losing shows it to be stupid.
Hopefully, subjective preferences are based on objective facts and reality. But who can really know.
While the economic numbers are good, they are mainly good for people with already high economic status like existing home owners and professionals. For example, student loan forgiveness sounds great but then leaves every blue collar worker who didn't go to college wondering WTF are they doing for me? They are giving more money to people who are already ahead. When Musk says pain is coming, many of Trumps supporters are happy because they are already in pain and want to see those benefitting feel some of that pain.
Then they go and overplay their hands with social issues. I didn't see it at the time, but all of the DEI rollbacks we've been seeing over the past year or so should have been a signal. One of the middle of the road people on TV last night mentioned he had friends who tried to avoid interacting with people at work because they were afraid of saying something offensive. And these were likely center left people. I have had similar discussions with even my most progressive friends. The almost refusal to message young men is also a problem.
Most Americans want legal immigration, but the Democrats took too long to do something and then Trump was able to kill the bill last minute. It looked like the Democrats wanted to simply ignore it until they no longer could.
There are more, but I think these are some of the big Democrat self owns.
You forgot the part where they claimed their hands were tied, then finally did something about it 8 months before the election.
Lindsay Graham did!
"Everybody who comes on this floor and says our border is broken. We should do something about it. You're absolutely right. And unfortunately, we didn't get there. President Trump opposed the Senate bill."
This issue is a mess and has been kicked down the road for literal decades at this point. Maybe finally it will get passed…
E.g. on immigration he prevented courts from deferring certain deportation cases, which meant high-risk immigrants stayed in the country for longer.
That is because the result doesn't matter, not in "starve the beast" [1] cycle politics - it used to be mostly about money but the model can be used also for general politics. The playbook is:
1. side A rise to power claiming "issue X must be solved by doing Y" (all while knowing that doing Y is useless or counterproductive, but the voter base doesn't care - be it immigration or the defunding of healthcare or whatever)
2. The consequences hit delayed, when the term is at its end and the competitor B takes over (usually in US political cycles every 8 years, but these days it seems like the ping-pong is accelerating)
3. That leaves an opportunity for side A to constantly barge in from the side "look at issue X, vote for us next time and we'll fix it (for realsies this time!)"
4. Side A wins the next election.
When it comes to anything budget related, replace the campaigning slogan with "look at issue X, it is clear that the government is incapable of doing anything about that issue, let us privatise it".
I mean he came into power and proudly declared he had never heard of NATO before running (!!) but was brought up to speed in ~2min (!!). That’s who he is.
This is why autocracies and oligarchies are bad. Not because they're just de facto evil, but because they produce undesirable outcomes, often even undesirable by their own standards (see: Russia's ongoing 3 day special military operation in Ukraine)
Every single person around him is playing a loyalty test. Thank god Fauci was expert enough to navigate that dynamic so delicately, but most others don't have the talent or appetite for it.
This is a lot like liberals complaining about things Trump didn't do.
Obamacare was based on Romneycare, and Romney had to disown it. Let’s not have discussions on things that dont happen. There is nothing the dems can do which wont be spun into harm by the republican side of the media sphere.
The most annoying part is that almost every time with an issue that couldn't be done, it should have been clear from the beginning. The idea of the government vacuuming up all (or most) student debt seems completely untenable right out of the gate, just like the idea that we would be able to build a physical wall across out entire southern border and make Mexico pay for it.
Its lazy politics all the way around. And that lazy politics wastes plenty of tax dollars and distracts everyone from issues actually worth talking about.
Again - the Obamacare-Romneycare example. One party tried to reach across the aisle, to bend over backwards to build common ground.
The republicans refused to cross the aisle, even when their points and desires were incorporated.
From the Gingrich era, it’s been a clear goal to stop any bi-partisan behavior. That only winner takes all policies and behavior is acceptable.
That dems started to do this, for DJT, is kinda sad. They should have started a lot earlier.
I request, that when policy is brought into the picture, let’s not forget that policy is fundamentally irrelevant to the Republican Party. It’s nice to discuss policy, yes. But policy is a treatment for real world issues in a working legislature. Not one where good policy must be rejected if it’s brought up by the Dems.
At this point, the game theory solution is for Dems to respond by also rejecting bipartisan efforts, and copying the republican playbook.
https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/biden-harris-adm...
No, look down at the bottom under "A Significant Track Record of Borrower Assistance".
> If they had the power all along, then why wait til the week before the election?
Judges blocked all the other ways they tried to do it.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...
Yeah, a signal of large players in economy preparing themselves for a Trump victory - the begin of which was Meta unbanning Trump and the culmination of which was Bezos banning the WaPo endorsement. Big Business doesn't care about any values, all it cares about is money, and so it prepared for Trump possibly taking over again in time and getting into good terms with him.
The pain ahead is realizing China is the new superpower. Tawain won't make it to 2028.
Of course the super rich are going to get themselves tons of benefits, but that remains in the abstract for most.
Trump may get lucky for the time being on China. They are struggling economically and may not have the desire to pick a fight right now. IMO, countries bordering Russia are under a more immediate threat.
But somehow everyone else needs to be on their best behaviour and as soon as they say "fuck you back" in response to a torrent of "fuck you"s it 's a big deal.
If you want to talk tone and insults then you're definitely starting at the wrong end.
because not being any of notorious lair, repeatedly make comments you normally only would expect from fascist, having systematically undermined various check and balances in their last term, having lost sexual assault cases, shamelessly abusing the reach of a president for deformation etc. seem to no longer matter even through any of this points where believed to be reliable carrier killers
now "reprehensible" that is a much more personal non objective judgement so arguing around that is pointless
Irredeemable seems obvious, but if the things you need redemption from don't matter anymore it really doesn't matter either.
I think the main problem here is that politics in the US are fundamental broken due to way to much polarization in a 2 party system and no good way to fix it.
If Tump wins I personalty think it's hardly avoidable that in the next 20 year there will be a point where you won't be able to call the US democratic anymore at all (based on a objective standard) and the question is if the US will then realize they fuck up and fix it or not (if not autocracy will mass spread even more and likely also take over the EU and given past history of how autocrats tend to cooperate while fighting democracy but then turn onto each other quite reliable the moment their power stabilized we probably should expect WW4).
Naturally I would love to be proven wrong, I really would.
And I think it's best to always stay polite.
But I can understand why someone gets angry with a lot of people voting for someone who comes with such a risk. Especially if a deep dive analyses into their positions show that 1) he lacks concrete (public) plans for most of his positions and 2) they likely will end up making live worse for many potentially the majority of the people voting for him.
But then people voting more based on "feeling" and "popular"/"populist" believe always has been very common. It's also kinda funny how close the words "popular" and "populist" is, sometimes just a change of perspective apart.
Kamala's rhetoric, especially around the military and border security, seemed almost specifically designed to be "1% less fascist." Some of the lines wouldn't have been out of place in Starship Troopers.
If you triangulate yourself into 98% fascism, it's hardly surprising that people who don't like fascism aren't excited to go out and vote for you.
That is a person's right, but it is also failing to recognize that they are two sides of the same coin. So long as people hate one another for who they are voting for there will never be societal cohesion.
I think Biden's decision to run for a second term was what sunk them. That was a selfish decision. He then bowed out too late, and Democrats had to scramble and nominate the only viable alternative. Biden should have refrained from running last year in order to give the Democrats a full primary to choose a candidate.
You think?
> Democrats had to
Oh? Oh— They had to.
> the only viable alternative
K.
Biden pulling out so close to election didn’t let them actually go through their process to elect their nominee. It’s quite possible democrats would have chosen a candidate who was not associated with Biden and thus more electable.
But then they wouldn't have been able to try and transfer his incumbency bonus as easily.
They didn't have anybody else they could think of who was more electable. They had squandered years when they should have groomed flashier personalities having more substance than Trump.
The only reason Trump got in to begin with is the Republicans had squandered their own years, and by the time 2024 came around neither party had anyone to offer who wasn't a bit more elderly than average.
I would have liked to see Biden pick Haley as his running mate, and if that didn't work, then resign and make Harris president right there at the primary.
lack of good messaging around the economic policies was also a big factor during Harris campaign. They could have attacked Trump on tariffs but mostly gave him a pass. Also mostly gave him a pass on not debating. Was puzzling.
I do think if we're pointing fingers, most of the problems came from before the Harris campaign kicked off.
My best attempt at a definition would be a platform that denies known truths in favour of superficially popular positions. For example, claiming that tariffs don't increase prices, or that legal convictions are lies, or even that solid, established scientific evidence (like vaccines are safe and hugely effective or climate change is real) are untrue.
Populism is a political approach that seeks to represent the interests and voice of "ordinary people" against what is perceived as an elite or establishment. Populist movements often emphasize a direct connection between the leader and the people, bypassing traditional political institutions or parties, and claim to speak for the "common people" against corrupt or out-of-touch elites. Populism can appear across the political spectrum, taking different forms depending on the issues and ideologies within a given society.
This is likely to cause winners and losers to come out of the situation... and probably after time, the leaders end up becoming elites who become out of touch with the "common people" and the process is likely to repeat.
I think it is closer to Democracy than whatever the democrats seem to say - which they seem to define as: "whatever gives them the power to do what they want"
“political ideas and activities that are intended to get the support of ordinary people by giving them what they want”.
Giving someone all they want is not seen as a good thing… unless you are the recipient, in that case internal bias comes to play.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone...
If Trump actually wins, the world might be in for a lot of trouble very soon. Quite worrying. Aside from totalitarian regimes, wherever you look around the world people were hoping the crazy dude would not win, wondering how anyone could be so blind not to see what kind of person he is, how uneducated, silly, and what a loser in the general sense.
Can you list some of the places where you've looked "around the world"? The locals I know out here in Asia (and a few in Southern Africa) aren't Trump haters.
Then Ukraine itself of course.
I think no one wants to have to deal with a deranged dude, who calls NK dictator a "great guy". Surely people in South America don't like his hate speeches and outlandish ideas about them paying for any kind of wall either.
In general people in many countries take statements like wanting to be a dictator "only on the first day" as very serious indications of some guy's mental health and for what they will have to deal with in the near future. Generally people are not a big fan of having to deal with authoritarian figures, who could impact their country's economy tomorrow, by doubling down on some idiotic tariffs policy or some other crap that comes his mind.
Ohhhhhh, the other half of the Global North? I don't consider that representative of "around the world". Europe's population is a minority (reference the Valeriepieris Circle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriepieris_circle) , and it doesn't hold a monopoly on functioning democracies either.
>Surely people in South America don't like his hate speeches and outlandish ideas about them paying for any kind of wall either.
But....have you been there, and asked them? Or have you just been to Europe? I've never been to South America, and only know a handful of Mexicans, Brazilians, Argentinians, and Colombians....not enough to say that I can speak for their politics.
> Generally people are not a big fan of having to deal with authoritarian figures, who could impact their country's economy tomorrow, by doubling down on some idiotic tariffs policy or some other crap that comes his mind.
I think authoritarians are more popular, globally, than you realize. I know Filipinos who spoke highly of Duterte because his crackdown really cleaned up crime in Manila, as one anecdote. Trump's tariff policy will probably not work out well for the overall quality of life in America, agreed on that point though.
Brazilian here. Our politics can be summed up as "socialist president backed by totalitarian supreme court". Trump's victory gave me hope. The socialists are already complaining about the upcoming "hard times". Anything he does that pisses off brazilian authorities is a win in my book.
I once watched Trump give a speech about how the USA was losing Brazil. Time proved him right. Brazil is now very close to China and Russia, they're even trying to replace the USD with their own currency. Maybe he'll care enough to change that.
Lots of people here who do.
> Generally people are not a big fan of having to deal with authoritarian figures, who could impact their country's economy tomorrow, by doubling down on some idiotic tariffs policy or some other crap that comes his mind.
Welcome to South America.
Every single day, I wake up and I see news of some government official making a comically stupid decision that negatively impacts the entire economy, my future ability to make money and also the worth of the money I've already made. Elected socialists who want to crush us with taxes. Unelected judges with god complexes. You name it, we've got it.
At some point you start hoping a dude like Trump shows up and makes up a reason to sanction your own country. No reason in particular, you just to watch it burn. Because it deserves it.
And now we know why Confucius said the first step is the rectification of names.
Yeah, I said as much on a reddit comment prior to knowing the results: This is a good thing for the future of the Dems! They can now take this valuable feedback and put together a better platform to run on in future races.
Running on social activism isn't a winning strategy, no matter how loud that vocal minority is shouting.
Even Trump has done so on occasion, like with the project 2025 conspiracy theory.
Or, his voters didn’t care in the first place so the blow was never really gonna land (I suspect this is more like it)
[edit] I also truly wondered if that’d been a significant part of their message, and I missed it—in the age of granular ad-targeting, who knows?
Didn't the Reps distance themselves from that? Vocally and repeatedly?
You may think that that playbook is their playbook, but apparently their distancing themselves from it worked well enough.
I saw so many ads by Harris complaining about it, and that's part of how I knew she would lose: when you fight against something that isn't real, you're going to lose.
There's a lot of people in the comments parroting whatever narrative they cooked up for 2016, but the reality is that both candidates' approaches were wildly different this time around.
Which is ridiculous. Trans folks are less than one percent of the population.
Why shouldn't they be allowed to be who they are? Given the tiny number of these folks, it really shouldn't make any difference to anyone who's not trans anyway.
But, apparently, some folks, who appear to believe that their trained-in prejudices are the laws of nature, feel the need to tell other people how they should live and, even more egregiously, try to force them to do so.
That's not liberty. That's not individual rights. That's not religious freedom. Rather, it's busybodies trying to tell other people what to do.
e.g. https://4w.pub/male-inmate-charged-with-raping-woman-inside-...
The only reason this could happen is because of policy that prioritizes self-declared "gender identity" over sex, and over women's dignity and safety. That's the actual problem, not people just quietly living their lives.
But they're also "education polarized", so they definitely care if you respect people who didn't go to college. But "respect" doesn't mean you're nice to them or even that you do things for them as a group. It could just mean you don't come off like you went to grad school.
More local tribal groups who can ask for your papers “please” is not the way either. Unions have aligned with mafioso and pols to propagate violence. Not sure why everyone thinks the past is a good solution. Clearly the average American is a moron; who rewards them with more authority?
Dem pols are 100% useless as any real change screws them too as people. It’s pageantry on both sides. Ones just openly violent and that one won. Great.
European parties are definitely not to the left of the Democrats on immigration or minority rights.
Lina Khan's FTC is left of most of these though. They're trying to break up Google right now!
Pensions, social security, healthcare; once you have a feeling that you'll be taken care of if things go bad you can think about your neighbours a little more.
The democrats shifted to the center instead of creating a campaign chasm on actual progressive issues that Americans would generally support like universal healthcare[0], student debt cancellation, housing subsidies, stronger pro labor policies (support for unions has grown across the aisle substantially) and generally fairer more equitable economic participation.
That would have reached across the aisle and put Republicans on the defensive especially around messaging
Instead, they went strong with wedge issues and tried to play culture wars. Which honestly I don’t disagree with the conclusions and policy positions democrats made here but it didn’t speak to economic fears or relief for the masses
We did this to ourselves to a certain degree. All progressives have left now is molotovs in the streets
[0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/468401/majority-say-gov-ensure-...
The far-left strategy seems to be clientele politics, and attempting to rule over the fractured result.
I live in (around) a major city. Sure it's overcrowded but that has nothing to do with foreign immigration and everything to do about it being a economic powerhouse. Quality of life has been increasing since the city has invested/is investing in more transportation/bikeable lanes/better air pollution standards/less noise. Also laws that are forcing better insulation standards are a net quality of life both in terms of comfort and footing the bill. Even the people who really need to take their cars will benefit because there will less traffic jams on account of 1. people for whom it was mostly comfort leaving the road and 2. reduced speed means less unnecessary braking to get out and in the motorway around the city.
Strained services seems to be because of budget tightening. It's a policy choice that has to do with ideology (don't fund a service when it could made profitable by outsourcing it) and trying to save on budgets because of a bad economy. Again you'd have to back up with data that it has something to do with immigration.
I could on and on but basically what you are saying there was too much new people too fast but I don't think this is nowhere true in my western european country.
The only thing that could worry is the minorities enclaves but it's not hard to break up a ghetto by opening it up sociogeographically and economically, you just need to the political will to do so but instead it's left in place and used as convenient fear-mongering tool for politicians.
I agree with what you say, I regret not having voted in my Italian city and now third places have been closed because not profitable
There is no empirical evidence of anyone's wages being lowered by immigration.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-...
For example if immigrants are mostly highly paid programmers, you can expect waitresses etc to get a wage hike, but if immigrants are mostly uneducated young women then waitresses will probably see reduces wages.
If you look you can see the groups who compete with the immigrants tend to be more hostile towards immigration, while the groups who doesn't see immigration in their sector aren't as hostile. Most immigrants tend to be men for example, so we would expect men to be more anti immigration since their jobs see more competition from it, and that is also what we see in opinion polling.
https://giovanniperi.ucdavis.edu/uploads/5/6/8/2/56826033/ma...
> Using a restricted subsample of high school dropouts and the March-CPS4, he finds a large and long lasting negative di↵erence in wages between Miami and its control in the 1982-1985 period.
The article argues that is flawed since it only considered high school dropout men, but those are the main competitors to low skill immigrant jobs. If you include women and other groups who don't compete for the same low skill jobs then yeah you wont find an effect. Some of those might even see increased wages canceling out the reduced wages low skill men see, but that doesn't really help those low skill men.
I can't seem to understand that
More people means there is more competition for housing until more supply is built though, so housing prices tend to go up from immigration. That is good if you wanna sell, bad if you wanna buy or rent.
For example, factory jobs disappearing usually increases the nations GDP “as a whole” but has disastrous effects on the poor communities that provided the labor.
Or another way to put it - if immigration is a net benefit and has little downsides, then a minimum wage for immigrants (legal or otherwise) of $45/hr should be fine.
(Even that might not move the needle much as immigrant labor, both legal and illegal, has “corporate” advantages that can’t be matched by residents. Being able to skirt regulations and laws because you know your employees can’t complain without risking their residency is a powerful tool. See: H1B abuse and OSHA abuse.)
see graph here
https://www.reddit.com/r/ScienceUncensored/comments/1565sti/...
from article
https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/12/18/why-have-danes-t...
The Guardian (a left-leaning newspaper) estimates that leaving the housing crisis unfixed also fuels the far right parties.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/may/06/fix-eur...
Sure is. Change zoning rules to allow building a lot more. Let people and corporations build using their own money. No need for government to use any money, just change the rules. Collect property taxes from the new buildings.
Build more houses?
No! Can’t do that, we need the money for forever wars everywhere! But the Raytheon shareholders can use the profits to add solar panels, so it’s all good.
just as how people are getting triggered online more easily by displeasure, so they are triggered by the bad apples more than the invisible good ones. there’s more of good ones, but the larger their absolute number, the more resources are shared and the more bad apples there are, the more this sharing becomes problematic. the fewer shared properties there are, the less there is to dilute the bad-applehood.
abstracting away from this into a symbolic ideal (equivalence via property of “humanhood” and equivalence via property of “need” determined via capacity of empathy and Christian virtue) does no one any good and is experienced as a result of effacement of shared histories (roots). the idea that real present (ie, ahistorical) causative elements are always only just social or imperialist is ideology.
because as UniverseHacker stated at the outset, that's a time tested method of gaining power. It works.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Trump is the new President isn't he?
Since we're already treating people like cattle ("we need bodies") to be moved around at will here, then we might as well make a comparison with a cattle farmer. If his cattle are not reproducing and thus are dying out, what sensible person would suggest that the solution is to get cattle from other farmers? When is it time to ask why his cattle is dying? Is it because they deserve it? Is it because the farmer needs the milk more than the calves?
I personally want my people to survive and not join the scrolls of history on the long list of exterminated tribes. If we have to survive outside of our current geographical country in a different place, then that is preferable to extermination.
Give me any way of "making people reproduce again" which isn't overtly dystopian-totalitarian and i will accept that promoting "as much immigration as possible, not letting in only known criminals" was a bad idea.
Sure government can just start having babies for itself. That will be real cattle herding.
That and employment for prime aged (i.e. not retirement age) Americans is as high as it's ever been.
Whether those sectors include most of the people worried that their wages will be suppressed, when who we’re talking about are illegal immigrants who mostly do stuff like chicken processing and house framing/roofing, is another matter.
It’s weird that “we had a bipartisan bill to address specifically this thing you’re worried about, likely to pass and be signed into law, and Trump scuttled it so he could keep complaining about it” didn’t resonate. Frankly, if that’s too “technical” a message to be received, we really are fucked.
We have a history of doing the Neoliberal “well this will make line go up and we can just help the few whom it harms” and then not helping those few, so I get why people worried their wages might be some of the ones affected aren’t thrilled. Whether most of the folks so-concerned would actually see such a thing, is another matter (I’m guessing not, in at least 95% of cases of people with those concerns).
In practice this is not an issue, to the point it's hard to find cases where it ever happened. Collection of studies: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-...
One reason for this is that immigrants have differing and complementary skills from natives - eg just speaking a different native language is a skill - and so they're not likely to land in the same sectors. They're more similar to other immigrants from the same place, and so it's more likely they'd lower each other's wages. I think this is totally believable, but the demand factor is still very important here - one immigrant could start a business and employ others etc.
> If this weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be a bunch of us wanting to loosen rules about foreign-trained doctors practicing in the US.
Doctors in the US are a special case because their number is so limited by the AMA and by (US government funded) residency slots. So yes, this could lower their wages if foreign doctors have similar enough skills to compete with them vs complement them. But it's more important for us to just stop limiting how many new doctors we train.
This wouldn't necessarily hurt them though; I mean it probably would, but if it made healthcare more affordable resulting in more people going to see doctors, then they'd all get paid more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
It reports only those actively looking for a job or employed, so it leaves out people who simply aren’t participating in the labor market anymore because they can’t find one.
It also reports all jobs, not the quality of the jobs. Average Americans feel the job market today is terrible and largely does not look at part time and near minimum wage work roles growing as a positive. The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones
Yes it does, and it shows that the fastest growing wages are in the bottom 10%.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
We can make assumptions though and yes I agree it shows that trend.
Even if I’m misinterpreting this my general assertion about people’s feeling about the job reports that I’m telegraphing I think still remains valid
Some people are hurting because there's always some people hurting, and for some reason that means we get the party that wants to reduce social safety nets?!
Here's reports for all these that don't have those issues, as they just come from surveys.
> It reports only those actively looking for a job or employed, so it leaves out people who simply aren’t participating in the labor market anymore because they can’t find one.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
This simply asks "do you have a job", and it's up to the people responding to decide if being an Uber driver is a job.
> Average Americans feel the job market today is terrible and largely does not look at part time and near minimum wage work roles growing as a positive.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12032196 - % of workers part time because they couldn't find anything better
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0203127200A - % of workers at federal minimum wage
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 - % people with multiple jobs
All look healthy right now. (Obviously there's a lot more people at the state minimum wage.)
> The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones
That's in FRED somewhere, but https://realtimeinequality.org is an easier way to view it.
Btw, I think focusing on "jobs" isn't the best thing to look at - the poorest people in a country will always be children and the elderly, and hopefully we don't want them to get jobs.
No matter how you cut it though Americans do not feel they are getting their fair share economically and want to avenge that, which is why I think voters didn’t push back against tariffs - which have become a cornerstone of economic rhetoric by Trump and his allies - at the ballot box.
I think it’s also because a good chunk of the electorate doesn’t quite understand how tariffs work and it’s going to backfire, but the sentiment is very clear
There was some hangover effect from inflation, although of course that's going to get worse now.
and here we have another reason for yesterdays results.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-5210935...
During COVID lockdowns, UK farmers complained that they can't get cheap foreigners to pick their strawberries. Obviously "lack of workforce" is just a propaganda expression for "we don't pay enough". Open borders directly reduces wages.
> Obviously "lack of workforce" is just a propaganda expression for "we don't pay enough"
Looks to me like this needs a specialized skilled workforce, otherwise they won't be able to pick the fruit in time for it to stay ripe.
Paying a smaller population of workers more will not necessarily encourage them to develop enough skills to do this job. It might just be left undone and then no fruit. If you have a larger population of potential workers, then there's more room for people to specialize in this because you have a larger economy.
> James Porter said 200 workers normally travelled to his farm in Scryne, Angus, from eastern Europe.
I'd like to know which part of Eastern Europe that means. If it was Ukraine they were bad then and worse now, but if it's Poland they have incredible economic growth right now and are on track to pass the UK before too long.
Not OP, but I can absolutely vouch for local negative sentiment in Eastern Europe. Granted, some of it is a direct result of war in Ukraine ( and a lot of those refugees getting benefits and priority for government services in host countries ).
It is hard for the population in general to get that they are getting a deal, when they don't. Maybe some individual billionaire does, but if anything, it only exacerbates the issue further by focusing anger on that one person.
As a result the prices of forest fruit has increase multiple times and food companies are reporting a significant increase in costs thus needing to reduce the number of employees. Every industry above in the chain is feeling the economical impact of losing the human slavery. Local government is also concerned since the created void, in combination with increase wages, may encourage new independent illegal workers which then the state must handle.
I highly recommend this DW documentary if others are interested to learn more about this very specific issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW1QWG3xSNg
If human slavery was a net-loss for countries then it wouldn't be historical popular. Be it building roads, railways, bridges, buildings, harvesting or picking fruits, those are not things people in general want to see prices increase. People who talk about illegal immigrants being a net-positive on the economy never talk about that aspect, in the same way that those being against illegal immigrants do not want to talk about increased costs. Even people who talk about human trafficking do not want to talk about human trafficking in construction or food production.
At one point the police even announced (as part of a political move in order to get more budget) that they would stop investigating construction places for human trafficking since just going to a single construction place would fill their work quota for that year, and thus everything else would had to be put at hold. Everyone who work in construction are fully aware of the open secret that a large part of all work is done by illegal workers that do not pay taxes (or minimum wages), do not get safety equipment, and is not limited by regulations that exist to protect workers. Sweden is far from unique in this aspect.
What bothers me much more: When companies and industries that generate middle class jobs (and above) complain about being unable to find workers. After the GFC ended around 2009, this was a constant complaint in business newspapers for many years (I guess at least five years during the post-GFC recovery). It was so obviously bullshit to even the most casual observer: The offered wages were much too low, so jobs stayed unfilled for months on end. In short, they wanted high skill people to work for low wages.
> Open borders directly reduces wages.
Are you sure about that? It seems about equal to me [1]...
In any case, Brexit didn't cause closing the borders; immigration into the UK increased massively [2] (i.e. the politicians didn't deliver what the people wanted). Any negative changes to the UK economy were more likely caused by decrease in trade with the EU... [3] Although COVID makes all these statistics suspect.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/national-gdp-constant-usd...
[2] figure 5 here: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/lo...
[3] https://obr.uk/box/the-latest-evidence-on-the-impact-of-brex...
I mean, no, not all of them do that all of the time.
But it seems to be pretty common, and I'm not at all convinced that it's smarter, more correct, or wiser to live by research than by subjective experience.
What? You’re really claiming that increasing the supply side of a market has no effect on prices? That’s absurd. You shouldn’t need evidence for common sense. If labour supply is essentially unlimited then there is never pressure to increase wages. A literal child can understand this…
Also, I'm going by empirical studies here. Those are better than beliefs, because truth is stranger than fiction.
Since immigration started increasing in the late 90's wages have been stagnant. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but hmm.
So you have much bigger problems. For there to be jobs there has to be industry first. That'd provide the demand.
However for people who work in those sectors the picture tend to look differently with wages and good safety practices being suppressed. Construction companies that follow regulations and pay taxes for all their employees will loose in the competitive market. The effect on the economy may be a net-positive, and it may also be true that most countries could not contain growth if construction actually cost as much as it had to without the illegal practices, but that is all multiple aspects of the same issue.
Housing is also one of the few issues that is so local and immigration is such a tiny story around it to begin with. Prices are high in plenty of areas seeing little immigration activity
You’re also failing to draw a causal link here. Not to mention NYC is one of the biggest cities in the world period (10th). It’s hardly representative of most US cities.
Immigration can heavily increase demand, and so it can play a big part, depending on the immigration numbers. Anyone moving in needs a place to live as well.
Secondly in many countries "the left" hasn't really been in power for a long time; often government are in the centre or centre-right.
People really need to face reality and that our society simply cannot sustain even limited immigration if those people end up as a negative for the state in terms of financials.
https://www.cdss.ca.gov/inforesources/refugees/programs-and-...
People would likely be less annoyed if the “free housing” was more akin to government owned military barracks instead of subsidized rent to private enterprise.
Skilled migrants bring wealth with them, and in fact countries like Australia have avoided recession through immigration (and unemployment is still around 4%).
5.1 million immigrants entered the EU from non-EU countries in 2022, an increase of around 117% (2.7 million) compared with 2021.
The population of Ireland alone increased by 3.5% in 2023 - a 3.5 per cent increase in population in a given year being one of the highest ever for a single country in recorded history.
https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2024/06/10...
Cultures are not monolithic, static entities. How do we go from "different cultures" to "negative outcomes?" That's a complete non-sequiter.
Imagine if all of Germany moved to India. What would happen? What if part of Britain moved to UK? At some point the politicians will have to look at the issue...
> During the 2015–2016 celebrations of New Year's Eve in Germany, approximately 1,200 women were reported to have been sexually assaulted, especially in the city of Cologne. In many of the incidents, while these women were in public spaces, they were surrounded and assaulted by large groups of men who were identified by officials as Arab or North African men.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_New_Year%27s_E...
Just interesting.
a: a member of an Arabic-speaking people
b: a member of the Semitic people of the Arabian Peninsula
> imagine if all of India moved to Germany. What would happen?
Indian & East-Asian immigrants have much lower violence stats than the native populations. To that end, your example doesn't say much about the GP that you're replying to.
To steel man the GP, let's say they mean any 2 demographics, not German vs Indians specifically. But there in lies the core issue with immigrant conversations. You can't pick 'any 2 demographics'.
Different immigrant groups (grouped by nation/age/gender/religion/skill-level) demonstrate different integration characterisitics. All immigrant conversations should be painfully specific. The conversations will be politically insensitive. But this is a comment thread about Trump winning his 2nd term in office. So, clearly, the ship has already sailed on political correctness.
The avg joe isn't affected by this.
But hey let's be real here: will the avg American start working all the not so good immigrants jobs?
It's ironic to pay lip service to supporting the poor while kicking the ladder out from under them with immigration.
[1] https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/massive-lineu...
With this issue it’s all about the particulars
> Constant immigration is not sustainable. Especially when people come from cultures which are very different than the west. They have different value systems, religions, etc.
Also, specifically regarding Germany, are you German, or have you lived there? Unfortunately, I see a lot of negative media about immigration in Germany ("Oh, too much! Cannot mix different types!" -- All that bullshit). But, then you talk to Germans, especially those under 40, and it is a different story. Many of them grew up with many immigrants in their schools. Germany is already much more multi-cultural than outsiders realise. The number of ethnic Turks in Germany would surprise many. In the last 20 years, this community has become much more integrated into wider Germany society. (They finally have some federal minister roles... whoot!) Yes, Germany has ethnic struggles, as any newly multi-cultural nation has, but, overall, they have a good attitude about it.
The root causes of the issues are war, climate change and demographics. No amount of "battening down the hatches" or "sticking your head in the sand", which is right wing answers to this, are going to solve it. The real solutions are strengthening global co-operation and international agencies.
Unfortunately we're going in exactly the wrong direction.
Meanwhile, the services you need, right down to food, are supplied in many cases by immigrants. So it’s working for the average person extremely well.
The reality is that immigration is not all good for the average person. Similarly, it's not all bad for the average person either. When we frame these discussions in the stark extremist terms on either side, we get into trouble.
We have to calibrate immigration, so that we get the good, without getting so much of the bad. There are so many untruths floating out there right now about immigration on both sides that it's hard for the people trying do that calibrating to actually make any progress. When we try to get a handle on the good or the bad, invariably, someone's narrative is going to be shown as false.
There is an impact on wages, that's lamentable and it causes pain in a lot of the middle class. Let's put our heads together and see how can we address that?
Some people are not willing to admit that there are people of foreign origin who are critical additions to our intellectual capital. But a reasoned analysis would concede that H1B's are not even close to the same as NIWs in that regard. We probably can source a lot of H1B work natively. We should still offer the H1B opportunity though, so what does that balance look like?
Crime? Crime is definitely a problem. The data shows that it doesn't get better through the generations as one side would have you believe. At the same time, it isn't as prolific among people of foreign origin as the other side would have you believe. (Heck, in all honesty, the data shows crime isn't even as prolific among native born Americans as one side would have you believe.) Do we have to address it? Absolutely, but we shouldn't look at everyone as a criminal.
We need balance to address these issues wisely, but balance is severely lacking in contemporary civic discourse here in the US. And therefore, balance is lacking in our policy decisions.
Ideas that come to mind are (1) reclassifing crimes as not crimes - instant reduction in crime in stats but no reduction in actual crime and victims (2) less reporting because of less enforcement as in police don't enforce the laws either because they don't want to or because there are less of them so there is less reportihg (3) less reporting because of uselessness. if you don't believe the police will do anything why report it. Car gets broken into, reporting is a chore that produces no results, reporting to car insurance just raises your rates.
Etc... as just one example I recently rented a car at SFO and there were signs saying don't leave anything valuable in your trunk because of theft. that's effectively saying the government isn't working to prevent this crime so the criminals are winning so you can no longer use a car for one if it's intended purposes. In can fully imagine in 20 years we'll be told not to store any valuables in our houses. that not how it should work.
I lived in the mission in Sf. Crime is way worse today than 20 than ago, any stats that claim otherwise are lying
>Jeff Bezos(01:34:00) We were going over a weekly business review and a set of documents, and I have a saying, which is when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. And it doesn't mean you just slavishly go follow the anecdotes then.
> The reality is that immigration is not all good for the average person.
Regarding low skill immigration, it can help to supress labor costs (and indirectly control inflation) in very high labor industries, such as non-commodity crop farming (vegetables, fruits, etc.) and food processing. That said, if uncontrolled, it will have a negative economic impact upon low skill natives.
IMHO, if you get permission to work in a country, it shouldn’t be revocable. The revocation just serves as a way of paying the immigrant, and therefore the native who could also do the job, less.
Pretty sure the ever wealthier owner class is to blame for that, not immigrants.
> minority enclaves with values that are fundamentally incompatible with the West
And this is a massively overblown problem mostly pushed to distract voters from those listed above.
But, the Republicans will just attempt to make the rich richer, and keep the poor and others isolated, then sell the story that the others are the ones keeping the middle class down, not the rich.
Most of those issues are probably better explained by the trend for jobs, especially higher paying ones, to be more and more concentrated in cities. There has been almost no policy push to realistically address that from anyone, outside of lackluster and temporary measures to encourage jobs in smaller cities.
All this boils again to emotions - people see french teacher having head cut off by student due to showing muhammad's picture in the class, and this trumps 1000s other data points and discussions. I am not saying such things should be ignored or swept under the carpet, but analyzed rationally, discussed and good measures taken, even very harsh if they are the best course of action. Simple folks don't want to hear arguments, they want to see blood and whole world to fix their lives so they can live like some tiktokers they follow en masse.
For Europe, yet again Switzerland is doing stuff 1000x better than rest of the continent. They have 3x the immigration of average western EU country, yet 0.1% problems with it. But its population is smarter and less emotionally driven, so populists have it much harder here. Also they as society setup the whole immigration as set of rules as expectations that everybody +-adheres to. But EU has too big egos to actually admit somebody is better and just learn from more successful, so they will keep fucking things up till people are so pissed they will vote for people who will do further long term damage but will tackle scary immigration boogeyman.
Now its really not a good time for democracies that don't have well educated smart self-sufficient population, dictators are coming better off.
Well, being the continent's money vault and avoiding two world wars while the whole continent ravaged itself twice, tends to make a huge difference in your nation's development (time in the market beats timing the market and Switzerland did both).
Also, just like the USA, Switzerland won the geopolitical lottery early on by being in a position that's easy to defend and difficult to attack and capitalized on it over the decades by attracting the highly educated elite and the wealthy entrepreneurs escaping from the European countries as they were torn by wars and revolutions, plus the dirty money of warlords, dictators and criminals from all over the world made them incredibly prosperous. It's not a repeatable formula that any other EU country could have easily replicated.
Adding the fact that Switzerland is incredibly restrictive with who they accept in the country, compared to neighboring EU countries who just let the dross in to virtue signal how tolerant they are, maintains Switzerland a very safe and desirable place to be despite it being relatively diverse (diversity in this context also means diversity of thought and diversity of opinion, not just the US identity politics version of only meaning non straight white males). So another win for them.
But if you look at Swiss elections, plenty of candidates took the xenophobic route in their campaigns demonizing Muslims and burkas as the biggest threat, but unlike EU members they don't really care what other think of them so they're a lot more outspoken about it.[1][2]
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/anti-minaret-campaign-divides-switzerl...
Just one nitpick - people love bashing swiss banking and relation to money laundering and nazis. If you check the numbers, this had absolutely minimal effect on economy, even now banks together form cca 10% of the economy, tourism has bigger impact. Plus its a profit kept within corporations who dont pay massive taxes back to state, so there are some benefits but its overblown, but makes easy blaming mental shortcut. Emotions emotions...
And I stand by the fact most of swiss success could be easily repeated in ie Germany or France, they have the competence, if they were setup differently and folks had slightly different mindset. Its no magic, just few extra rules and responsibilities. But no they have to have overblown easy to abuse social state, high taxes. Of course this doesnt work well. Again swiss have by far the best and most sustainable/resilient model in this, good health and social systems, yet low taxes and state basically doesnt have deficits
So - are population and housing costs going up and infrastructure failing to keep up, while businesses don't invest? Sure - but that's down to a failure to invest the proceeds of change, not down to the change itself.
Could you precisely articulate this experiment ? America has had stable mass immigration for the longest time, arguably its entire history. Do you mean the entire American experiment ?
In what manner has it failed to work for the average person and in what manner has it harmed their bottom line ?
> Overcrowded cities, erosion of quality of life, strained services
American Cities are some of the most underpopulated in the whole world. Its only crowded city (NYC) has high positive sentiment for immigrants and owes the core of its historic identity to mass immigration. Not sure how immigration erodes quality of life or strains services. The US doesn't offer much in the way of services to immigrants anyway.
> competition for housing
This is 100% a building problem. The US has had high levels of immigration for a long time [1]. Immigration isn't going to suddenly shock the housing system. While the absolute population of the US keeps increasing, American cities have stayed woe-fully underbuilt. [2] New housing also isn't being built where people could use it. IE. within commute distance from offices in city centers.
> suppression of wages
Unfortunately these have been a long time coming. The alternative is jobs being shipped out of the US. The issue is even worse in Europe, where education is worse, employees work fewer hours and skill levels in new-tech are limited.
Wage suppression occurs differently in low and high skilled jobs.
In the low skill domain, the US already overpays blue collar workers, unionized factory workers and restaurant wait staff compared to the rest of the world. These jobs aren't threatened by immigrants, they're threatened by automation.
Among high skill workers, it is a statistics problem. 7.5 billion people from developing world want to be inside America's 300 million people bubble. Even with a 10x inefficiency, there will be twice as many talented people outside this bubble than inside it. So, the only way for the bubble to maintain its superiority is to keep skimming off the top. At 140k employment based green cards/year, that's 0.1% of the children born around the world that year. So even with another 10x inefficiency, the US would only allow the top 1 percentile of the whole world in.
The US wants this top talent. Because at their caliber, they are going to outcompete the US, and fundamentally alter unipolar power structures that give US its modern form. We're already seeing this with China. Now that the US has stopped having the same appeal to top Chinese candidates, Chinese geniuses now build within China, eroding America's control in every industry, one at a time. Eg: The world's best AI institutions are all Chinese [3]. The institutions didn't improve that much. It's just that America stopped being able to poach their best away.
Wages WILL be suppressed. The competition free utopia of the Boomers and Gen-Xers was only possible because the US emerged as sole superpower of the 20th century, while Asia rebuilt from scratch. Now that the world is stabilizing again, American wages can't hold up to scrutiny from the rest of world.
> the complete abandonment of on-the-job training, falling tertiary education standards
Not sure what immigration has to do with any of this.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/184487/us-new-privately-...
[3] https://csrankings.org/#/index?ai&vision&mlmining&nlp&infore... _______
> I don't know how bad it is in the US, but in the rest of the West, it's been a disaster.
If you're talking about Canada and Europe, that's a whole another story. Yes, their mass immigration programs have been unmitigated disasters. But, you can't plainly extrapolate that to the US. The specifics matter. On that note, I wish you were more specific about what kind of immigration ?
Skilled vs unskilled
Legal vs Illegal
Vagrant men in their 20s vs Families
Religiously conservative vs liberal
Tolerant vs Fundamentalist ?
It makes a difference.
Most opponents of immigration say we’ve passed that mark and either need to compensate to solve the issues caused by it, or dial the number back.
There's a huge range of dimensions beyond how many people: Who is allowed to immigrate? How long do they get to stay? Do their children become citizens? etc.
- there's immigration
- normal people are getting shafted
However, the two things are entirely unrelated.
However, the ones doing the shafting tell people they're related so often that people believe it.
[this line censored by moderator intervention]
This is factually untrue. U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 was a legislative bill that was proposed by President Joe Biden on his first day in office.[0] It died in committee.
The reality is that illegal immigration is good for ALL business (regardless of whether you are democrat or republican) in the US. This is the hush-hush wink-wink reality that most politicians understand but would never say publicly. They create appearances they are doing something (e.g. creating legislation that might fix the problem) but knowing it won't ever pass in a partisan legislative body.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Citizenship_Act_of_2021
In the UK we saw the Tories try to play the ball in two places at once: Enable lots of immigration while simultaneously pretending the country was under siege to appeal to the anti-immigrant crowd. It blew up in their faces in a spectacular way.
I mean one solution is to promote policies that encourage people to have more children, but we "can't afford it", expecting we'll be able to afford the incoming social care crisis.
"Oh but not like you, you're one of the good ones!" - imagine yourself being described that way, and ask if that's a crowd you care to spend your time living with.
"Hating migrants" != "want only the migrants that pull their own weight"
Why would you personally want to immigrate to a place where you are immediately expected to foot the bill for everyone else?
"Oh but not like you, you're one of the good ones!" - imagine yourself being described that way, and ask if that's a crowd you care to spend your time living with.
> Why would you personally want to immigrate to a place where you are immediately expected to foot the bill for everyone else?
Because the only places that doesn't describe are those without a functioning government capable of collecting taxes.
You want me to migrate to ${your country} to boost the economy? Well, that's only useful to you to the extent it means I'm supporting all the people in your country that can't migrate elsewhere for exactly the same reason.
I want to live with people who pull their weight and aren't an immediate financial burden on everyone else, yes.
If this is "one of the good ones" vs "one of the bad," so be it. If one is immediately looking to burden everyone else, I can see why one wouldn't want to "spend [their] time living with" folks who don't want to give them free shit.
> Because the only places that doesn't describe are those without a functioning government capable of collecting taxes.
We're not talking about tax collection, we're talking about how taxes are spent.
> You want me to migrate to ${your country} to boost the economy?
I don't care why or if you immigrate, but if you do, you will not have a net-negative financial impact on the population. Yes: there are freeloaders amongst the population as-is - this itself isn't a valid reason to import millions more.
We're already taking the cream of the crop - which is why H-1B and O-1s visas are a thing. People hiking across the Darién gap aren't magically going to become engineers and doctors.
Call us back after you've deported your own parents and children.
You're doing both.
In every functioning nation, the rich subsidise the poor.
I as an above average income earner am necessarily always going to subside the poor no matter where I live — unless it's a place that's got no government.
That was true when I lived in the UK, true when I moved to Germany, and would have been true had I moved to the USA instead — all that changed for me was Joe Bloggs became Otto Normalverbraucher instead of Bubba Sixpack.
> I don't care why or if you immigrate, but if you do
Except you previously wrote "How about door 3: only allow immigration for skilled individuals capable of adding outsized value to our economy?"
If you "allow" something but nobody wants to take you up on it, it's not any different than forbidding it.
I'm allowing people to donate infinite money to me, but I'm not taking any steps to encourage this or give anyone a reason to.
> People hiking across the Darién gap aren't magically going to become engineers and doctors
Likewise a degree.
In both cases the capability is already a demonstration of being well above average.
That is how the left describe men, do you argue the left hates men?
But hypothetically, if I met someone saying that, I would indeed say that specific person hated men.
They definitely would not be someone I would wish to constantly be treading egg-shells around for fear of getting deported.
This entire thread is filled to the brim with people describing the voting majority of Republicans as low information idiots.
We can't have unrestricted immigration, period. How do you propose we select?
Indeed, and I think it unhelpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42059010
I wrote both with the intention of inducing empathy, as in putting oneself in the shoes of others.
> We can't have unrestricted immigration, period.
False.
In many threads where the US is compared unfavourable to other nations, e.g. that the public transport isn't as good or as cheap as Germany's, or that internet is slower and more expensive than France, or whatever, the defence is "oh, America is just so big and empty".
You have the most part of a continent. You could, if you wanted to, fit in the whole world — about twice the population density of the Netherlands, which I've been to and isn't that crowded.
And it's not like everyone actually wants to live in any given country anyway — even if you did have the whole world suddenly teleport in and leave the rest of the planet empty like an xkcd what-if, I'd be surprised if less than 80% put in active effort to leave.
As a foreigner, I honestly can't see the difference between "want only the migrants that pull their own weight" and "hate foreigners but refrain from saying it to their face if there's a financial incentive".
If your tolerance is predicated on me giving you money, I'll pass the opportunity.
Spend the money you earn on yourself: it will flow through the rest of the economy. But I am not going to give you any to do so.
Either:
1) You also don't tolerate the below median earner who is native to your country
or
2) Your tolerance is dependent on citizenship not just income
If you're #1, that's a problem for your fellow citizens whom you don't tolerate.
If you're #2, you're telling me to not bring my higher earning skills to your economy.
Doesn't matter if you didn't mean it that way, you still won't get me spending the money I earn on your economy so you won't get rich from me.
Why can't I want to minimize the number of unskilled outsiders (with different values, etc.) because they may cost more while overlooking that fact for those with obvious economic power regardless of where they are from.
I know it hurts to hear: people with wealth are desirable guests and citizens.
A country's citizenry is much like children: some are going to be shitty, but we still support that limited group because of arbitrary moral obligation (perhaps inspired by the fact that we want our "own" to continue.) We're not obligated to extend this tradition to anyone else for any reason.
> you still won't get me spending the money I earn on your economy so you won't get rich from me.
Thankfully there are billions of people in the world and they're literally dying to get into the US. H-1Bs quotas are filled every year - there's no shortage of high-average earners wanting to come here, either.
Because the depenence on citizenship in the second is an additional requirement beyond the minimal state of the first.
> I know it hurts to hear: people with wealth are desirable guests and citizens.
I know it hurts to hear: I don't want to be your guest.
If I was invited by an American company to relocate, I'd turn it down, regardless of pay.
Most of the billions in this world aren't heading to you, wherever you live.
Well, for one: cutting back on illegal immigrants and hating immigrants are not the same thing.
Two: stay where you are? I don't get what your expectations are here. Plenty of skilled immigrants love the US. If it's not your cup of tea, that's fine.
2. I'm responding to a comment that says "How about door 3: only allow immigration for skilled individuals capable of adding outsized value to our economy?"
And in my capacity as such a person: that attitude makes me not interested in anything else on the table. Hypothetically to demonstrate the point: You could offer me your entire GDP, even after accounting for a business plan where I somehow specifically help you double it, as pay… and I'd turn you down.
Remember that the current state of immigration in the USA is exactly what was being proposed to be changed: the previous desirability is specifically not going to remain.
(That is, you'd have to pay them so much they could buy the farm and then hire someone else to work it. But you're not going to do that.)
Promoting a second-tier, legally-disenfranchised workforce isn't the win you seem to think it is.
It doesn't have to be "complete", just a shortfall in demand, and of course eventually it ends. But if the market doesn't clear for a while, that's still people having to eat less for a while.
> Promoting a second-tier, legally-disenfranchised workforce isn't the win you seem to think it is.
Almost everything is better than farm work, which is why everyone ditches it as fast as they can. Even being a sweatshop worker is better. Nevertheless, the migrant farmworkers are doing it because it's better than their alternatives, presumably because they get paid better than doing it in their own country.
Btw, I'm not even thinking of especially poor countries here. Japan is a respectable first-world country but has surprisingly low wages and a bad exchange rate, and there are recent cases of Japanese people leaving for Australia to do work like this and making 2-3x what they can at home.
And of course back in Japan it feels like every convenience store worker these days is an immigrant from China, India or elsewhere.
This is fine, really. Productivity will increase over time, they'll save money over time, and their kids will have better jobs.
The jobs move to distant factories filled with alien staff paying taxes to far away governments and who then spend their wages where they live (which isn't where you live).
Even with tariffs, that's still cheaper for many things. And the work you're incentivising to bring to you with tariffs, that's often automated precisely because it's unskilled. Food has been increasingly automated at least since the 1750s — to the extent that cows milk themselves (into machines not just into calves) these days.
It works until it doesn't — wherever the jobs go gets a rising economic spiral, and a generation later their middle class is corresponding richer and say to each other much what you say now: "why do we need them?", only now you are a "them" in that discussion.
It's a weird thing, migration. The short term incentives absolutely favour it for everyone, but it's bad for the place of origin in the long-term.
But note that I didn't say international migration: the arguments are the same between San Francisco and Sacremento, or between Lampeter and Cardiff, or between Marzahn and Zehlendorf.
So what you want is to import third world immigrants so you can pay your plumber cheaply instead of paying them appriopriately.
If you let in an unskilled laborer, they're going to take a job that nobody wants. They spend those wages, boosting the economy.
In both cases, studies show that the number of jobs stays roughly the same; immigrants create about the same amount of jobs as they take. However skilled immigrants decrease average wages, and unskilled immigrants increase average wages.
It's the outliers that really tip the balance, though. If one of those immigrants turns out to be Jensen Huang or his parents, that's how you make America great.
But at that same time they're contributing massive amounts to the tax base, furthering society.
Maybe they even start a company, employing more programmers.
They also spend their wages.
> If you let in an unskilled laborer, they're going to take a job that nobody wants.
The price for that work is artificially low because these folks don't have any legal protections of any kind.
Guess what else happens commonly to unskilled, under-the-table labor? Injuries! Which I have to pay an outsized amount for in the form of Medicaid and ER fees.
How much of their remaining income is remitted straight to their impoverished relatives back home?
> If one of those immigrants turns out to be Jensen Huang or his parents
Know how to easily filter out Jensen Huang from the crowd of people swimming across the Rio Grande? Marketable skills.
The skilled labourers do far more of that than unskilled ones.
> Guess what else happens commonly to unskilled, under-the-table labor? Injuries! Which I have to pay an outsized amount for in the form of Medicaid and ER fees.
The vast majority of the cost of health care is old people, and it's expensive because it's labor intensive. The way to bring health care costs down is to increase the ratio of young people to old people. Which in 2024 means immigration.
> Know how to easily filter out Jensen Huang from the crowd of people swimming across the Rio Grande? Marketable skills.
Marketable skills like shopkeeper? That's what Jensen Huang's parents were.
Chronic costs, yes, costs borne out of tail risks - no.
> Marketable skills like shopkeeper? That's what Jensen Huang's parents were.
If you have the drive, economic ability, wherewithal in 2024 to keep a shop - operate a business - in the United States in 2024, yes, this is a desirable, marketable skill.
Chronic costs are the vast majority of total costs
> If you have the drive, economic ability, wherewithal in 2024 to keep a shop - operate a business - in the United States in 2024, yes, this is a desirable, marketable skill.
That's a priori data. Jensen's parents weren't shopkeepers in Taiwan, so how would you know this?
But the unskilled citizen labor that gets pushed aside by unskilled immigration - they have a much harder time finding work.
at a much lower salary, sure.
> But the unskilled citizen labor that gets pushed aside by unskilled immigration - they have a much harder time finding work.
No they don't, not according to studies. Studies show that immigration increases the number of total jobs available. There are fewer available jobs for janitors, but more available jobs where just being a local is a marketable skill. A local has language and cultural skills that immigrants don't have.
So they're less likely to find work as a janitor but more likely to find one as a waiter or retail manager, both higher paying positions.
There are an enormous number of unskilled workers in the US. And they get a vote. And they will vote to kill off competition from migrant workers. Like what trump is promising.
IMO the only reason the Tories didn't lose sooner was that the Labour party was also stuck with Corbyn.
Their incredibly incompetent string of PMs didn't help, but without Reform spoiling, they'd at least still have had a shot.
Note how Labour didn't win this as much as the Tories lost it: Starmer got fewer votes than Corbyn. Starmer failed to attract more voters despite running against the most ridiculed government in modern British history. People didn't want Starmer, they wanted not-Tories, and on the right that meant voters fleeing to the anti immigrant Reform.
Pensions: Maybe instead of relying on a pyramid scheme, people would need to manage their investments or have kids and raise them well so they take care of them later. Sounds like a win.
As for pensions, arguing about what should be is not going to help the growing proportion of your population that don't have enough or that will end up having to try to help their parents and grandparents avoid destitution.
Even if people "managed their investments", with fewer and fewer working age people relative to the total population, if everyone reduced their spending to invest for their pensions, yields will drop as demand gets taken away for people to save instead of spend.
Damn, we should have definitely installed an anointed candidate with zero primary votes .. to save democracy.
The wake up call should have been 15-20 years ago.
Dems could try to explain why Trump's economic policy made the US economically brittle, leaving Biden no choice but to pay the piper to avoid a depression. You're not going to woo voters with that kind of narrative, though, even if it's the truth.
My mind was blown when she said "There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact."
Many people got raises after the inflation shock... but rent hikes ate that up, prices for food and staples didn't go down despite fuel/energy prices going low, and many people didn't get raises at all or (especially in the tech sector) got laid off entirely.
The idea that if you don’t like inflation you should vote Trump is pretty much the definition of stupidity.
Kamala proposed several policies targeted at those problems. Many of which I disagree with, but it’s demonstrably untrue they “ignored” it.
The American people were just lied to successfully by the world’s biggest liar.
Revisionist history points toward COVID response being a left-wing thing, but there was almost zero variation in policy state to state. The only point of variation was school reopening schedules.
The one thing that was knowably wrong to do at the time we did it was to deliberately slow down testing to keep Trump’s numbers looking good. Everything else was flying blind and to the extent we made mistakes (visible in retrospect), we made fewer of them than any of our peers.
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears..
Did you visit any midwestern state during COVID? Florida?
You can use the Google on the internet machine as much as you like and cherry-pick some leftist city in any state, but: broad/legally-enforced mask mandates, forced business closures, etc. were absolutely not happening in many areas of the United States.
That’s not true, what on earth are you talking about? Everything was closed for way longer in New York than in Arizona for example.
He stopped talking about it at rallies because his supporters boo-ed him whenever he mentioned it.
We're partly at the mercy of his stupidity but also the stupidity (that we're not supposed to talk about apparently) of his most devoted voters.
No other vaccine is given entirely under the pretense that it will basically only be of benefit to other people.
COVID had a 0.1% IFR across the whole population.
If I am 18-30, why would I take a novel vaccine when it doesn't even prevent the illness or make me meaningfully more likely to survive? "To protect grandma, of course!" isn't why we agree to use TDAP vaccinations or formerly administered Polio or Smallpox vaccines.
The US population is around 340 million people, no matter how "low" a rate appears (besides your number being wrong, it's 1% [1] and the number of reported infections is likely to be way lower than the actual amount), the sheer size of the country will be problematic. At the very least 1.2 million Americans died of Covid over the four years of the pandemic. That is the equivalent of one average size city getting wiped out by a nuclear blast - if this amount of death were caused by an external force, the US would utterly annihilate that external force. Hell they flattened Afghanistan for a few thousand people who died in 9/11.
And additionally, deaths aren't the only metric. I caught it two times, I was out sick for three weeks with more weeks of lower productivity following because that shit fried my brain. Others had it worse, a friend of mine was out for half a year. That is an effect worthy enough of a mask and vaccine mandate.
If seniors weren't the majority of the electorate, the economy would've won out.
There are three big, floating currencies in the world: USD, EUR, and JPY. These currencies are overwhelming used for international trade. The USD<->EUR FX rate has been quite stable (~1.10) for about 10 years. However, the JPY<->USD FX rates has risen dramatically since 2022.
JPY, likewise, has performed terribly against a basket of all FX pairs.
JPY is the outlier.
It was the Supreme Court, staffed by Trump, who stopped the COVID madness with their vaccine mandate ruling.
The other issue is that Biden and his cronies Nuland, Blinken, Sullivan et al. deliberately escalated the Ukraine situation in 2021/2022, with the well known consequences. Note that Zelensky himself begged Biden not to be too aggressive at the Munich summit in early 2022! If I were Ukrainian, I'd loathe Biden.
The Biden administration mandated that their EU "allies" would participate in disastrous sanctions, which sent the EU into economic stagnation.
The U.S. is safe because it has natural gas and the reserve currency, which means they can print money more easily. It is not to Biden's credit that the U.S. economy is comparatively better.
I'd say that over 50% of Europe is very happy with the Trump victory, the EU press does not reflect public opinion.
[0] aside from "it gives us moral cover to start deporting citizens we don't like"
What he will probably do is reverse the insane foreign policies of the Biden administration and stop the world from burning. I think he'll deescalate the Ukraine and Taiwan situations. Probably he'll not attack Iran either even though he is said to be a bigger hawk on Israel than Biden. But he also has a sense for economics and will not want another oil crisis.
Suppose you are on a tour in Rwanda to observe gorillas, and the tour guide tells you not to look them in the eye. One tourist feels humiliated by that instruction, looks a gorilla in the eye and gets beaten up. Who do you blame if you know in advance what the gorilla will do?
It was patently obvious to anyone who experienced the cold war what Russia would do if Ukraine would be a NATO member, preferably equipped with Tomahawk missiles. It was obvious to Merkel, to Obama, to Zelensky.
Of course Russia is to blame, but what is the point if you are supposed to be the adult in the room? You are also to blame.
Americans could had saved Russian economy with this move, currently facing an imminent stagflation, so I bet that Putin is also a very satisfied cat and licking his lips at this moment. He has a golden excuse to pause the war for a while in the most favorable conditions for him, and rearm himself
A flight or bus ticket to California or Colorado for a once-in-a-lifetime service costs multiple orders of magnitude less than the recurring cost of groceries and basic goods.
How many people struggle to afford buying groceries?
Economic hardship results in orders of magnitude more all-cause mortality, making it the more important problem to solve.
Emergency abortions required for health reasons are often needed when things go wrong, and when that is the case it might need to be performed either soon or immediately. Being in a state that opposes it might delay the decision in ways that injure or kill the mother.
Non-emergency abortions required for health reasons - that is, when there is significant risk but it is not unfolding yet - also happen but being in a state that opposes abortions at any level in general might make it difficult - doctors not willing to suggest it to avoid risk to their business, those around you refusing the need and convincing you that it would be bad, not to mention having to plan a medical trip to a foreign location to get it done - and in turn put the mother at risk of injury or death through inaction.
Does it somehow make it less relevant to fix a cause of death because more people die of other unrelated causes?
Far more people die in accidents than any other causes of death in the U.S., seemingly only beat by cancer and heart disease. That doesn’t make every other cause of death any less troubling or worth fixing, and it certainly does not mean that one should hold back existing treatments for “lesser” deaths or injuries.
Any avoidable injury or premature death is one too many.
There are a small number of women who have died due to their physicians and/or hospitals misinterpreting the law, just as there are patients who die every day due to physicians’ and hospitals’ mistakes. Those are issues which need to be addressed.
But — so far as I know — right now there is nowhere in the country where if a pregnant woman’s life is threatened by her pregnancy then she cannot legally obtain a medical abortion.
Four deaths, reported on by one outlet, in the past couple months:
- A Texas teenager died after going to three emergency rooms and being misdiagnosed and denied treatment: https://www.propublica.org/article/nevaeh-crain-death-texas-...
- Another Texas woman died after a miscarriage as a result of doctors not treating her due to the state's fetal heartbeat law: https://www.propublica.org/article/josseli-barnica-death-mis...
- A Georgia woman with chronic health conditions, which can make pregnancy highly risky but did not exempt her from Georgia's abortion ban, died of complications from a medication abortion: https://www.propublica.org/article/candi-miller-abortion-ban...
- Another Georgia woman died because doctors delayed 20 hours after she arrived at a hospital—9 hours after she was diagnosed with sepsis—before treating her: https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-abortion-ban-ambe...
This literally happened very recently
https://www.propublica.org/article/nevaeh-crain-death-texas-...
When you are pregnant, and particularly if you are experiencing complications, you do not have time to shop around and convince people and schedule in advance and all that. You are constrained by the spatiotemporal availability of a skilled medical professional.
The vast majority of the voters who had the opportunity, patience, ability, and inclination to follow an argument like this -- the inflation spike was global and the US did better than its peers -- voted for Harris.
Opportunity is a key part of the problem: many voters live in walled informational gardens guarded by propagandists. The only messages that can penetrate into the gardens are short, emotional rather than rational, and lacking in nuance. They are indistinguishable from the constant barrage of lies and disinformation these people are exposed to.
Isn't one of the proposals from Republicans is to ban inter-state travel for pregnant women?
There are zero illegal immigrants employed on any midwestern farm I have ever visited, known, etc. A $500,000 GPS-guided combine works better.
We didn't see much of it here in Milwaukee County. We got boatloads of mailers from WisGOP framing Trump as a moderate candidate, though.
Or do they? This strategy seems to work for them so far.
Woman dies after abortion request 'refused' at Galway hospital (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-20321741.amp).
There have been cases like this in America but I’m not going to look it up. Fortunately the other commenter did. Hope this changed your opinion :)
Multiple US woman have already died when doctors where unwilling to intervene despite significant issues being present. There’s a lot of politics involved but as an example Josseli Barnica died in 2021 before row vs wade was overturned with doctors refusing to act over legal concerns despite clear and significant issues.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/01/21/us/abortion-b...
If you don’t want to get pregnant it’s quite easy even if you don’t use contraceptives. Mistaken pregnancies need to go back to health class.
look the entire point is to stop voluntary abortions, which make up like 98% of all abortions. most abortions are optional. nobody is against medically required abortions, not even religious people.
give up already on the old and invalidated arguments.
Emergency rooms refused to treat pregnant women, leaving one to miscarry in a lobby restroom
https://apnews.com/article/pregnancy-emergency-care-abortion...
A pregnant teenager died after trying to get care in three visits to Texas emergency rooms
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/01/nevaeh-crain-death-t...
https://apnews.com/article/contraception-senate-abortion-bid...
The economy has been fine for many peoples working lives during ZIRP. But when people feel like their struggling to afford diapers and cereal most other issues become secondary.
Now we know high inflation is much much worse in the minds of voters.
Sure.
And why do you think that might be?
In other words, do you think policy changes have instantaneous effect on issues like unemployment, or perhaps they take some time?
Biden inherited an inflation time bomb which has been handled. I expect Trump will claim he fixed inflation the first report that comes out after the inauguration.
Trump also pressed SA to cut oil production to help prop up gas prices in the US [2]. So when the economy turned demand surged back pushing prices higher.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/coronavirus-aid-relief-and-econ...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/economy/special-report-trump...
The length and intensity of the restrictions were unnecessary, and the economic consequences of giving away trillions of dollars during them are why we’re in this economic situation.
What would have changed if the restrictions were 6 or 12 months shorter? Nothing.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullartic...
Maybe if Democrats just played the republican card and refused to sign stimulus package just out of spite we would not be here. Same with the bank bailout in 2009.
You... You missed out on the whole vaccines part here. Amazing.
>What would have changed if the restrictions were 6 or 12 months shorter?
Everyone would get hit with COVID before vaccines became available.
The healthcare systems were on the verge of collapse as it was; this would ensure the collapse and mass deaths (and long term disabilities for many others).
>Nothing
The confidence with which you're saying nonsense based on absolutely nothing is admirable, but the bullshit you're spouting isn't.
Next time, don't ask questions if your answer is premade.
If software developer salaries cannot be expensed and it’s now 5 times more expensive to borrow money to expand, jobs will be lost.
Oh, and the TCJA was championed and signed into law by then President Trump.
Seems like a stretch. "Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States"[1] was up into the beginning of 2022. The tax changes were known in advance for years. If the tax code changes were a significant factor, why did companies hire a bunch of people in 2021, knowing that when 2022 rolled around there would be massive taxes?
Gruez... Income Taxes are paid the year after they're incurred. Tax Year 2022 is filed and paid in 2023. The effects wouldn't start being felt until March 2023 at the earliest.
Also, literally everyone involved in tax policy thought it would be repealed. Heck, the IRS had to scramble to release guidance because they thought it was going to be repealed. The IRS didn't release detailed guidance on Section 174 until September 2023 -- six months after tax filings were due (a number of businesses asked for an extension to file but still had to pay the taxes as if they had filed on time). https://www.cohnreznick.com/insights/additional-guidance-irs...
The Section 174 capitalization for software development was included in the TCJA as a way to 'pay' for the tax cuts, but no one seriously believed it would stay in the law. The problem is congress is very dysfunctional, so once it was signed into law you'd need a congress to get it out. It's no surprise the congress in 2023 was more dysfunctional than the one in 2017.
Also, in 2021 interest rates were historically low, and as I stated initially the dual loss of the ZIRP environment and the massive change to how software developer policies worked together to kill software development jobs.
First off, 2022 taxes are not paid in 2023. Corporations have to pay taxes quarterly, not yearly.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
Second, no CFO is going to going to accept "this year's engineering expenses might be 100% more expensive (because we can't deduct it), but it's only due next year so we can keep on hiring!". The whole point of accounting is modeling the company's books to reflect its financial situation as accurately as possible, not just looking at whatever the bank balance is. This includes modeling future tax obligations.
For companies that were expensing 100% of developer salaries (which was a lot of them -- capitalization is very cash intensive), having to now eat 80% of that salary as profit and only being able to deduct 20% is devastating.
1171(!) small software companies have come together to try to get congress to repeal their changes to Section 174. They haven't been successful yet, but here's hoping that by further education of folks like yourself, they will be. https://ssballiance.org/
Is the tech bust of 2000 so easily forgotten? And then the global financial crisis of 2008?
Not entirely unreasonable.
Now, if only they had the brains to realize that the economy during the current term was shaped by the decisions made in the previous term.
Cue Trump's 2nd term being propped up by everything Biden did to un-fuck Trump's 1st term.
Now right wing commentators are saying that Trump won't actually do what he promised.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/11/wh...
At best , its going to be performative on many things. Even with structural changes to the administrative state that the GOP's project 2025 seems to be promising - it's harder than it appears.
Regarding tariffs - China is currently in an economy slump. Trump being transactional in nature , its certain the Chinese will be open to bilateral agreements. So I don't see tariffs lasting long.
In 2016 the staffers were mostly Bush people, and the 2016 presidency was mostly a Bush repeat.
In 2024 the staffers are going to be much different. If Trump gets a trifecta all bets are off -- we'll get policy set by whoever gets Trump's ear.
Then, he will apply his rule of: no adding regulation, unless you first remove regulation. The one-in, two-out program to cut regulatory costs. Considering he definitely did this in his last administration and did save ~$100 billion, reasonably certain he will do this again.
I expect a lot of voters actually thought that would be the case: "yeah yeah he has to make noise during the campaign, once he gets in he'll just give us some more tax breaks, he's not crazy."
I guess we'll see if that's the case.
Keep in mind that this is after the Biden admin/Congress gutted half of his proposed infrastructure reform. That half was already compromised compared to what progressives wanted, and they STILL couldn't pass it. Guess who stayed home yesterday?
When you say, "Your only choice to save democracy is to vote for me," reasonable and rational people conclude that democracy is already done for and simply don't vote for anyone. And there were warnings that this would happen - like the primaries in Michigan - but establishment Democrats didn't listen (or didn't care). So, now, here we are. How's that for a rude awakening?
In general easy lending benefits the richest the most - that's why you saw such a growing split between the wealth of the richest and poorest after throwing away the gold standard.
One that people tend to miss: compensation for high-income professionals. When that gets bid up, so does the price of everything they spend money on. Education/childcare, personal electronics, healthcare, transportation, food, etc. It's not just the wealthy and ultra-wealthy; when the upper middle class can pay and not feel pain, that's taken as a signal to jack up prices across the board.
> essentially most Americans are single issue voters on the economy.
They then announce pensions for majority groups like the elderly and get voted into power by the same groups they are financing.
That is so low for an upper-middle/lower-upper income country. (Most economists would not describe Portugal as high income in 1996.) I expected EU integration would have made their economy boom. You are right: I have not seen this pattern before. Normally, good democracies can "right the ship".
Why does this persist in Portugal?
I think there are a few historical reasons:
- We are only 50 years out of a dictatorship
- We were late to industrialism
- Our main business sectors are bad (tourism, agriculture, textiles)
And a few law/cultural reasons:
- Lots of buroucracy and inefficiency + high taxes means making a business here is impossible (I've sold a company that I incorporated here so I'd know ahah)
- Bad education and lack of incentives for companies to be here means younger talent leaves for greener pastures across EU and the US. We call it "brain drain".
- Because all the young talented people keep leaving, the only remaining people are low-income workers or old people (we're a very old country). Old people keep voting the same corrupt parties into power so nothing ever changes.
- There's a big "crab mentality" about people who are wealthy being evil.
Extra:
The party that played the biggest role in getting rid of our dictatorship was the communist party (that's literally their name, Partido Comunista Português), so in Portugal communism is good, and capitalism is bad.
There's lots of talk about taxing the rich here, but the truth is that there are no rich. We only have ONE billionare. If were to tax 100% of our rich we wouldn't be able to run the government for more than a couple of weeks.
Further, the democrats have been in power for 12/16 years, and multiple years controlling all 3 houses. They did nothing to help with Women's healthcare. I have followed the issue closely, and I still don't understand what they Dems were going to do to keep abortion legal. If it's a state issue, how would the President change anything ? If it's national issue, why haven't they already done anything ?
They could pass a national law that protects a right to travel to other states for an abortion if your state bans them.
This is why America's supreme court is so important: One can argue that most federal level changes in the last 8 years cane from the court just changing their mind on what used to be settled precedent.
When was this exactly? The last time democrats controlled presidency and both houses was during Obama's first term and they passed the most historic overhaul of healthcare in this country, which was a huge win for women's healthcare.
The democrat party is not progressive. If they ever have 60 seats in the senate they will fracture and argue with the progressives elements. Most of the democrat party’s constituents are conservative, religious. Most of the minorities they take for granted are not onboard with nonbinary identities, or anything to do with fetus elimination. They just are afraid of republicans for one reason or another.
Was it? From a foreign perspective it doesn't seem to have changed the conversation around US healthcare at all.
To give you some context: every country is different here but usually we have an almost free healthcare system covering everything for everybody (but sometimes you have to wait for a long time) and private healthcare that is more expensive, usually faster but not necessarily better.
Here in the UK my wife and I have between us spent a fair bit on private medical care over the last year - in the case of my wife for cataract operation on both eyes and in my case dental implants and related procedures.
What I find amusing about private health care in the UK is that in each case I have ever used it they make it clear that if something goes seriously wrong they will take you to an NHS hospital.
Privatize the winnings, socialize the losses, the "free market" working as intended.
The part where we don't have the free healthcare system is mostly due to politicians being afraid of socialism or being afraid of raising taxes or both and a very strong medical lobby that doesn't want the salaries of doctors (very high over here) to drop.
The comment you're responding to was alluding to if people could choose to not pay for health insurance until after they got injured or sick and then needed the benefits.
This was huge because if you ever lost insurance and got new insurance (switched jobs) then you were often screwed.
ACA defined essential benefits. Before ACA insurance usually didn't cover things mental healthcare. Required coverage of preventative care/screenings/reproductive care for women.
Annual and lifetime coverage limits were banned. Your health insurance could no longer drop you because you got an expensive to treat cancer.
The amount of desperately needed consumer protections ACA added were immense.
Sure there are problems with ACA, especially the marketplace part of it, but overall it was a big change to healthcare in the US.
That’s putting it mildly. Sure, the ACA was, in many respects, a big improvement over what came before it. But it’s still outrageously broken. Let’s consider the perspective of a person who wants health insurance:
1. You mostly want to be insured via your employer, and you mostly get screwed if you leave your job. The financial disincentives to insuring yourself are huge unless you qualify for the subsidies.
2. For some bizarre reason, you can use only buy insurance at some times of the year.
3. You more or less have to buy insurance through a website that is massively and incomprehensibly bad. Want to figure out what that insurance covers? It’s sort of doable, but it sure isn’t easy.
4. Whether or not you will get to fill a given prescription still seems arbitrary and vaguely malicious.
5. The whole system rubs the insane list prices of healthcare in your face, almost continuously. For drugs, even small amounts of Internet searching points out how much cheaper they are basically anywhere else.
It’s really hard to be excited about the ACA.
(For added fun, and this isn’t really the ACA’s fault but it sure is a failure of affordability and sure seems like a massive failure of government: check out hims.com. Pulling a random example, “generic for Cialis” is at least 3x the price on hims.com as it is via GoodRx.)
You can use a broker (free to you) and get the same (regulated) plans. If your situation is at all complicated you should definitely use one. Probably even for “simple “ cases.
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/high-deductible-health-p...
I’m not saying that the ACA was a bad law. I’m saying that a not-so-nerdy voter contemplating whether ACA is a great achievement of the Democratic Party is likely to be unimpressed.
Wheter it's a good idea to do this via private for-profit insurance and healthcare is another question. I prefer to just pay it via taxes.
While your complains are all true and the ACA is a mess compared to any developed country, it is still very exciting to have the ACA. For anyone who was barred from getting insurance before, it is the lifesaver, literally.
Compared to other countries, ACA isn't very good (to put it mildly) but compared to how the US was before it, it is the most wonderful improvement ever.
Edited original comment to be more productive.
I don't exactly know how much of national politics is optimizing for fundraising rather than for making citizens' lives better, but it's clearly far too great.
The reality is that:
1. Abortion has always been one of the most divisive topics in the US
2. Roe vs. Wade to begin with was a very shaky legal hodgepodge based around right to privacy
3. Codifying something like that takes immense political might and public approval neither of which existed in a significant capacity
60+% majorities have supported abortion as a right until near the end of the second trimester, and for the health of the mother after that (for 30+ years).
https://news.gallup.com/poll/321143/americans-stand-abortion....
Campaigns should be publicly funded and not be raising collosal amounts of money. Either side will get tons of free tv space on popular shows and podcasts to get the word out, why does a candidate need to raise billions of dollars? Totally messed up
> "the first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act"
https://www.reuters.com/article/markets/us/obama-says-aborti...
> "I would like to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion, or at least considering getting an abortion, particularly if we can reduce the number of teen pregnancies," Obama said.
That said, there were very few moments, where a given party had house, senate and presidency at the same time. And most of those moments were divided almost evenly in half so breaking ranks had a big effect.
I think what I am saying it is a tired talking point.
The 111th Congress was the only time in the last 20 years Democrats had a filibuster-proof trifecta and that was for 72 days. [1]
That was the government that gave us the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare.
The other Democrat trifecta was the 117th Congress[2] but if you look that's only with independents in the Senate that caucused with Democrats. Obviously also not filibuster proof.
That's the government that gave us the CHIPS act.
Think about how often parties are in power and they can't even fill appointed positions because of partisan opposition during confirmation, let alone pass legislation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/117th_United_States_Congress
Aka Romneycare, originally put forth by the Heritage Foundation. If that's the best Democrats can do, no wonder people aren't too optimistic about them.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211027180129/https://www.nytim...
And its passage has helped millions, people I know personally and probably people you know personally. Maybe anyone who'd ever heard the phrase "pre-existing condition" before. It's one of the single most effective and widely beneficial government efforts in our lifetimes.
It's not that fact that Democrats did it by taking the best parts of an opposition party policy isn't impressive, it's that the unseriousness of Republicans when it comes to their own ostensible policy ideas is depressive.
The public health insurance option, also known as the public insurance option or the public option, is a proposal to create a government-run health insurance agency that would compete with other private health insurance companies within the United States. The public option is not the same as publicly funded health care, but was proposed as an alternative health insurance plan offered by the government. The public option was initially proposed for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but was removed after the independent US senator for Connecticut Joe Lieberman threatened a filibuster.
As a result, Congress did not include the public option in the bill passed under reconciliation. The public option was later supported by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party in the 2016 and 2020 elections and multiple other Democratic candidates, including the current President, Joe Biden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_insurance_option
Well there's your problem. The GOP knows that you need to sidestep those kind of tedious anachronisms in order to wield power effectively and get what you want. The Dems needed to learn that lesson several administrations ago.
> They did nothing to help with Women's healthcare.
> keep abortion legal
Given that congress is so naturally weak, the most important part of it is the senate's role in federal judicial appointments.
Disclaimer: I'm Canadian, not American, so my opinions don't matter.
I'm married with two daughters who are in their early 20s. The abortion issue has come up in my household when discussing Trump v Kamala, but the thing that the Democrats didn't seem to get is that even though it's something that my wife & daughters care about in the abstract, it's not a PRESSING matter for them because they're not planning on needing an abortion ever, let alone any time soon.
That doesn't mean that they aren't pro choice & don't want women's reproductive rights protected at the federal level, like it is here in Canada. But on the hierarchy of things that matter to them today, it is extremely far down on the list. What matters to them most right now is the economy and rising crime rates.
The right wing also spun it as "why on earth do the Democrats think that every single woman is dying to murder her unborn baby?" And while us pro-choicers don't look at it that way, I think that kind of worked as a reminder that while it's an issue, it's just not the most important one affecting their day to day lives at the moment.
It still seems wild to me because I don't share that psychology but am probably biased because I live in a place with a social safety net and most criminals don't have access to guns here so crime is less scary to me : Muggings are rare probably because it's not very profitable and is more of desperate/drug-addict thing.
Being a drug dealer seems much more profitable and I don't feel targeted as a person. Shootings remain rare
I'm the parent and you did an excellent job of clarifying what I was trying to say.
I do want to respond to this statement, however, since I'm Canadian and in one of those countries where abortion is federally protected (and Canadians strongly favour that across partisan lines for the most part) and I live in what used to be one of the safest cities in Canada.
10 - 20 years ago, homicide was virtually unheard of in our city. I mean, it was like a once in a decade event and almost always domestic violence. Today, we can't go a week without hearing about another stabbing or shooting that happened out in public.
Recently our street saw every single vehicle broken into, including ours. We all filed police reports but no one ever showed up or even gave us a follow up call. The message was clear: the police either don't have the capacity or just don't care to deal with certain crimes now. To contrast, I remember my house being broken into when I was around 13 or 14 years-old, so mid 1990s, and I remember watching the detective powder the windows for prints.
Times have changed here in scary ways. We pay the same taxes and have the same expectations of our government as we always did. Canadians value the social safety nets and gun regulations that we have. The problem is that those don't seem to be working as well as they used to. We earn less due to inflation, pay the same or higher taxes, and get less in return. Most of us know of people who travel to the USA for health care due to our long waiting lists while hearing from Americans how great our free health care is.
Almost all of the homicides are targeted gang violence between ethnic groups, but it still makes you concerned for your safety that you are going to take a stray bullet.
What can you do about a low information voter?
they're not planning on needing an abortion ever, let alone any time soon.
People rarely plan to get an abortion. Setting that aside, more than anything, from a political perspective, this is an issue about freedom. I'm not planning on buying a firearm any time soon, but I wouldn't support a firearm ban (and thankfully, I don't have to worry about this because no mainstream politician is running on this policy). It doesn't matter what your thoughts about abortion are, women should have the freedom to have autonomy over themselves. Also, the anti-abortion laws are also preventing women from getting medicine for treating some chronic disease.
I already explained this in another reply, but while crime rates might be going down across the board, I'm talking about what my daughters, my wife and their friends are telling me. And they are not low information voters, because crime rates are sky rocketing in our area and the data supports that. We live in what used to be considered one of the safest cities in all of Canada, and now we hear about a new shooting or stabbing in public just about every week. Mostly drug and gang related.
Everything else you said, especially about the abortion issue being a freedom issue, is preaching to the choir. I agree with you. I'm talking about the mindset of my wife, my daughters and their friends and what they say matters to them.
Crime has increased in the US. The official numbers were wrong and were recently corrected, instead of dropping by 2% they actually increased by over 4%.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41859346
This is something that the average person saw. The only people who didn't were in a bubble.
0 - A website which happens to have a conservative bias and has failed several fact checks according to Media Bias/Fact Check: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/crime-prevention-research-cen...
"I think we should do more to reduce childhood hunger."
"Childhood hunger is already lower than it used to be, you must be a low information voter."
**
"I think we should do more to reduce traffic fatalities."
"Traffic fatalities are already lower than they used to be, you must be a low information voter."
**
"I think we should reduce carbon emissions."
"Carbon emissions are already lower than they used to be, you must be a low information voter."
If these are important issues for you, you're not going to want to be on the same team with the people who respond like that.
You can cite various statistics to a person up until the point their car or house is broken into. Or, until they don't feel safe at night any longer in the neighborhood they grew up.
We can double down and say these are "ignorant" voters, maybe even insult them, but I doubt that will help win them over. Even worse, it will alienate them.
Looking at 12 month running averages from FBI UCR since 2012, crime has been in a generally increasing trend from the last minimum, which was in the 12 months starting Jan 2020, to a maximum in the year starting Dec 2022.
https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...
There is a fundamental issue that pro-choice people (of which I am, as well) continuously overlook with this argument: a fetus isn't merely a clump of cells up until it leaves the woman's body. At some point it's a viable human being and also deserves rights. Is that 3 months? 6 months? 8 months? I don't know, but it's somewhere.
Most people in the world share that view; why are pro-abortionists so ignorant of it?
93.5% of abortions happen before 13 weeks. 0.9% happen after 21 weeks [0]. Since Texas' trigger laws have been put into place, the maternal mortality rate rose by 56% [1]! In 2022, there was an 11.6% increase in infant mortality! Before that, across the years 2014-2021, infants death fell nearly 15% [2]. On top of this, 4 pregnant women have died because they couldn't get the care they needed and and again, women are finding they can't get certain medicines for chronic diseases because doctors are afraid to prescribe them. If you respect these lives, I would invite you to consider what is happening in the real world alongside your thought exercises about cells.
0 - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/ss/ss7209a1.htm#:~:text=....
1 - https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/texas-abortion-...
2 - https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/20/health/texas-abortion-ban-inf...
Abortion is what's called a Wedge Issue[1]. It is so because the public opinion on the US is divided roughtly 50% for it and 50% against it.
On top of that, the US presidential election is a First-past-the-post[2] system. So if I manage to get 52% of the votes and you only get 48%, I win everything, you lose everything. You can probably imagine where this is going: Instead of convincing 51% of the people I only need to convince 3% of the indecisive, and I win.
Finally, the US is a very polarized country. The "other" is always bad, "we" are always good. So the wedge issues tend to "align". If you and I agree on abortion, we will probably also agree in most of the other wedge issues.
All of these factors together result in that both Democrats and Republicans are forced to "optimize", so their campaigns all revolve around the same wedge issues. They must, if they want to win.
If you ask me, the least complex way to get the country out of this rut would be changing the voting system to something other First Past The Post.
Unfortunately, the people who are in a position to make such a change are the least motivated to make it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_issue
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/thomas-wants-...
Even then, no contraception is 100% effective. The only 100% effective thing is abstinence. Just like getting into a car accident, the only way to not have any risk is to not get in the car. But good luck living in the US without getting in a car or being around moving cars.
I'm just pointing out the reality of their choices. They're acting like the only people who get a D&C are people who planned to get one before they were even pregnant. Most people who get this kind of care don't go into it planning on doing it. It's like thinking people planned to break their legs or planned to get cancer.
Buddy, we are long past believing NBC's interpretation of a complicated legal ruling. Your guys have been scare mongering for way too long. Believe it or not, there are lots of sensible conservatives.
Buddy, if you can't understand what these very direct words mean I don't know what to tell you. This isn't some "NBC interpretation of a complicated legal ruling", he's openly and directly saying these decisions should be overturned. He is directly stating we should reconsider contraception access, throwing gay people in prison for being gay, and recognizing gay marriage.
The modern GOP is openly talking about repealing the court decisions which legalized wide access to contraception, disallowed throwing people in prison for being gay, and requiring states to recognize gay marriage. This isn't some fringe conspiracy theory or complicated legal ruling fear mongering, its directly what they're saying.
Quit burying your head in the sand and listen to what your own party is actually saying.
You can't protect against random medical emergencies.
As I said, women's reproductive issues ARE important to them. It does come up in discussions.
The point is that people often tend to be single-issue, or few-issues voters... and there are policy issues that are just way more important to them right this very second. Issues like the economy and the housing crises.
My wife and I were living on our own and starting a family when we were our daughters' age. Our daughters not only still live with us but they have abandoned any hopes of ever being able to own a home of their own.
Our oldest daughter, who will turn 25 soon, wanted nothing more in life than to have a family and she is seeing the time window for that slip by. She thought she'd be married with a home and kids by now. She found her partner, he lives with us now too. Why would the abortion message resonate with her when what's bothering her most is that she wants kids?
From what I've heard in the news, the women who were single-issue-voters on abortion tended to be older women who are concerned about the rights of their daughters and grand daughters.
But I do wonder how many young women are in similar situations to my oldest daughter. Women who are more concerned about whether or not they can have kids versus whether or not they could terminate an unwanted pregnancy. They might not be a huge voting block, I honestly don't know. But I can't imagine that the abortion message resonated with this demographic at all.
Anyone thinking about possibly becoming pregnant should absolutely be worried about whether their doctors will be able to save their lives when something goes wrong, which is very often. If you think "abortion" rights are only about unwanted pregnancies you've got far too narrow of an understanding of the reproductive process and what can go wrong. You think Nevaeh Crain's child was unwanted, or the many other women whose deaths were just like hers?
> they have abandoned any hopes of ever being able to own a home of their own
Project 2025 pretty much ensure affordable housing pretty much won't get built anywhere near jobs are. It doubles down on NIBY housing policies and prevents densification of areas. It doubles down on requiring a car to drive to work on a long commute. Maybe they'll be able to afford a new build in a suburb 70 miles from their jobs eventually.
> Issues like the economy
Looking forward to that new 20%+ sales tax on imported (read: most things) you buy. That'll really do a lot for the economy. Good choice.
* Men aren't directly affected by it (~50% population)
* Woman over 40 aren't generally affected by it
So woman between 18-40 who can vote are the group most affected by abortion policy. And as you point out, even they aren't directly affected until they actually need one. So the skin-in-the-game for most people is very low. Most people vote and are opinionated on it as a sort of proxy for woman's rights.
However, some issues like house affordability, crime, employment, etc are very high for skin-in-the-game. People are currently affected or know people currently affected by these issues.
I would absolutely be affected by my friend dying from something which should be preventable but has been made pretty much illegal.
I am not an 18-40 woman and I am affected by the abortion policies in my state.
Most Americans don't like abortion laws the don't take into account the health of the mother. So that type of law becomes a wedge among Republicans.
Conversely, if a state passes a six week ban (Florida), that's going to draw out these distinctions among Democrats.
I'm not making a moral claim. I'm commenting on the politics of campaigning on it. I think politicians are advantaged at avoiding wedge issues and focusing on material concerns that affect the most people.
Texas's law allegedly takes into account the life of the mother. And yet mothers are dying because of this law. When you make it that the OB office needs to have the legal team on speed dial to make sure they're not facing life in prison on a regular life or death healthcare your law is abhorrent policy.
The politics of campaigning on it is to make people think only unplanned pregnancies are affected by these laws. I am making a moral claim on that; it's reprehensible.
Accidents happen. Do they not have sex ever?
In what way do you think the Republicans care about the economy? How should the Democrats communicate better that the Republicans tank the economy with every presidency only to be recovered by the Democrats who hand off a winning economy to the Republicans? To be completely honest, I don't think most Americans can even understand the argument.
Which is kinda bizzare to me as a European - American salaries and economic output are growing the fastest of basically any developed economy, _especially_ in the poorer segements of society. By all accounts, post-COVID Dem policies have been incredibly succcessful.
But that's not good enough?!
Is there hope that this will change under Republican government?
Eventually people get tired and listen to populists. That's why they get elected, because they'll tell you what you want to hear. Whether they actually have any plans of doing it or not is almost irrelevant when you're dealing with bullshit on both sides.
The only way to beat populists is to have actual concrete plans, which as far as I saw as a non-USAian at least, the democrats barely ever spoke of, and it seems to be the common sentiment across this thread as well.
Denmark is a good example of what I mean, they had a surge in right-wing populist parties due to people's ongoing and ignored issues with Illegal immigration (among other things). Know what the moderates, who were in power, did? They adjusted their policies accordingly with actual concrete plans that they set in motion. And to no one's surprise, the populist parties died down and people calmed down in general once they saw that action was actually being taken.
To be fair, Democrats are historically only marginally better in that regard.
The US series Breaking Bad talks about a well-behaved chemistry teacher who resorts to manufacturing and selling drugs after he gets cancer and finds out that his savings are no where close to covering the medical cost. He needs to magic the money from somewhere or simply die. Such a context for the story will sound utterly bizarre to almost all Europeans (including Russians).
I paid out of pocket to be able to function. Whatever the solution to American healthcare costs is it's not what we do in EU.
That is not the case - as mentioned even in pretty serious cases you might need to wait 1 year or more for something that should be done ASAP, on top of that the quality of the doctors isn't the best. This is especially bad for well-off people (as in middle class) as you pay e.g. 500-1000 USD a month and can't even get a basic check-up.
If you go east and look at Japan[0] which also has socialized healthcare the quality of healthcare there is very good
[0]: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264225817-5-en.p...
You end up with cool things like high trust, and shitty things like intense racism.
Not to mention if it was on the median so bad for citizens you'd see more broad support for repealing it in countries where it is supposedly isn't working, but that isn't really happening either.
Private insurance is not the reason healthcare is expensive in US. The reason is that services and drugs are too expensive because of collusion, lack of sensible regulation and lack of competition.
At the risk of going off topic, this is a popular, but incorrect meme. Walter could have had enough money for his cancer treatment, especially after getting the offer of paying it off by his former cofounders. He started selling drugs to provide for his family because his cancer was terminal. (And continued because of his own hubris.)
One in the very beginning of the show, when Walter’s old friend Elliott offers him a job at his company (that Walter originally created with him, but later quit, and then it ended up turning into a very successful business afterwards). With the explicit mention of their health insurance being able to cover all the costs of his treatment.
Then later in the show, Elliott and his wife straight up offered him money to cover everything, feeling that Walter deserves it (not in the least part, for being an original cofounder who was unlucky and quit right before the company got big).
There were more moments like those that i keep forgetting, but claiming that Walter started manufacturing drugs as some last resort to cover his medical bills is complete revisionism.
This is an incredibly bad example and a meme that clueless people (usually Europeans) love to bring up time and time again but if you watch the show carefully, you'll see that Walter actually had health coverage for his chemo therapy from his school insurance but he resorted to selling meth because he wanted the best chemo therapist in the sate of New Mexico, and one of the top 10 in the whole US, so he had to go privately out of pocket. In Europe you'd also need a boatload of cash or a top private insurance if you'd choose the best private chemo therapist and clinic in the country outside the public health system where Walter would be on long waiting lists if he were in Europe.
And reason number two, he mainly sold meth because he had a huge ego that prevented him from accepting charity for his treatment and he loved the danger and thrill of it in his mid-life crisis to compensate for being a looser/push-over his entire life holding his career back despite his scientific brilliance, nothing to do with the US health system, that's why the show's writing and character development was so good.
Anyway, pointing at a fantasy TV show as an argument for real life issues is just silly. It's not real.
This is extremely incorrect take. Ask anyone in France, Germany or the UK. The quality of outcome is extremely small between public and private even for the most complicated procedure. Perhaps in private you will get a better experience in terms of customer service.
In fact some of the most notable experts usually work for both the public medical sector and run their own clinic.
This is as incorrect as saying in Germany you have to go to a private university to get access to the best professors.
There are also loads of datapoint supporting the "fantasy" take of the series. For example loads of american only start going for certain cancer screening at age 65 when it becomes free, this can visibly be seen in the data where there is a sudden jump in detection at this age. Again, this kind of behaviour would sound very bizarre for most Europeans.
Walter (the protagonist) didn’t start manufacturing drugs as the last resort to pay medical bills. From the get-go, Walter got offered a job by his former co-founder friend Elliott (who ended up turning their startup into a successful corp, while Walter ended up quitting and becoming a teacher), with the explicit mention of their health insurance being sufficient to cover any medical expenses Walter might incur.
That happened literally in the first few episodes of the show. Walter refuses because of his stupid pride. Later on in the show, Elliott and his wife straight up offer Walter to cover all medical costs (current and future ones), and he still refused. He had many many fantastic outs that didn’t require him to continue manufacturing drugs (or even starting to do so in the first place).
I am mostly upset about this inaccuracy, because it undercuts one of the most important aspects (if not *the* most important aspect) of the show. It is a story about a man who lived a life full of regrets, feels impotent, and found an excuse to do all the bad things that make him feel good, self-important, and inflate his ego to crazy highs, all without feeling any remorse whatsoever.
For example if I understood correctly he got "punished" by the system for preferring to work as a teacher than remain a cofounder and ended up losing his private health insurance this way.
Also, I think that the fact that his wife offered to burn her savings to fund his medical expense will be very difficult for most men to accept it is not really an "out", especially with the survival rate of cancer, you might end up burning her saving and then leaving her fend off for the kids by herself. Also what happens if he took the offer then she got cancer or they got hit by another big medical bill?
It doesn’t, which is why I said “while I […] agree with your larger point about wealth distribution” in my original reply. My gripe was about the overplayed and incorrect “Breaking Bad is about a teacher who got pushed to manufacture drugs due to medical bills” trope, not about your larger point.
> if I understood correctly he got "punished" by the system for preferring to work as a teacher than remain a cofounder and ended up losing his private health insurance this way.
He had that private health insurance waiting for him, as Elliott instantly offered Walter his position back upon hearing the bad news. Walter simply refused that offer and decided that getting involved in manufacturing meth was more fun and rewarding to his ego.
> Also, I think that the fact that his wife offered to burn her savings to fund his medical expense will be very difficult for most men to accept it is not really an "out"
Walter’s wife didn’t offer that. It was Elliott (the cofounder) and his wife that offered it, both of whom are close friends of Walter and are multimillionaires due to their company’s success. They themselves said that for them it wouldn’t be a financial hit at all, and they insist on helping out their close friend in need.
he thought he had terminal cancer, so he would die soon, and probably was worried his family future expenses won't be covered?
The entire situation (as an EU country citizen who moved to another EU country) and the narratives around it are funny to me because they're the same as the ones going around for years in my birth country.
"Side X should learn they should get better candidates, otherwise people are not going to show up" way of thinking included, which has only led to further decline as the "conservatives" win and make the situation worse taking more and more seats and control in state controlled companies while at the same time pushing their own companies to absorb more and more of the budget. Yeah, not showing up because you did not like the candidate was a great success - if you wanted the decline to accelerate, that is.
Well, good luck US friends, to you and us all.
Economically, inflation hurt. Real wages may have come up to compensate, but you get the inflation first, and then, some time later, then you get the wage increases. It still hurts. Even if the wages increase more, it still takes some time to recover.
Emotionally, it's not just the pain (and the remembered pain) from the inflation. It's Clinton calling people "deplorables". It's Biden calling them "garbage". It's the feeling that the Democrats have abandoned the working-class people - abandoned them for a couple of decades, in fact.
Trump speaks those peoples' language. He understand their sense of rejection and abandonment. Those are the people that the Democratic party claimed to champion, but the party took their support for granted, and championed a bunch of identity causes that the working class doesn't identify with at all.
Turns out ignoring and insulting your long-term base isn't a good way to win.
No fancy economics equations can compensate for continual sticker shock at the consumer level.
It has never been enough, in at least 70 years, for democrats to do good enough. They are graded on this insane curve compared to perfect, and they always fall short since they haven't had serious (more than 60 senators) political power in decades, so they can't do much.
Consider the Palestine issue. I wonder how many young progressives stayed home because Harris refused to say "I will ban Israel from buying US weapons", despite it being clear from polling that doing so would lose her some votes and undeniably increase republican voter turnout. But nope, they refused to see that reality, so they didn't vote for her "maybe we will tell them to kill fewer babies" tactic.
Oh well, in just a few years the problem of Palestine will probably be solved for good. I hope those voters are happy.
Meanwhile republicans can say "I have a concept of a plan" and say that harris should be shot by 9 guns and they get 70 million votes.
My brother is the weird conservative that thinks "Trump didn't win the election in 2020" and "maybe we should regulate companies a little", but that didn't stop him from voting for the one shouting for violence. Maybe that's because he has, even during bush's term, been of the opinion that "all democrats should be shot", which he says right in front of me. I bet he wonders why we don't have a better relationship. It's always for something absurd too, like he said democrats should be shot because of Michelle Obama saying children should be able to eat healthy food at school, which for some reason made her responsible for the decline of school lunch programs since the 80s (a time which he did not experience). It's just another nonsensical thing republicans believe about their country because fox news said it every day for a year even though it's objectively untrue. Our state's school lunch program was better under Obama than it was when he was in school and yet he is sure that Michelle Obama, who has no powers as a first lady, was personally responsible for decisions our STATE made about it's school lunch program.
I don't know what else to say. They believe lies, when I tell them that they believe lies they tell me to my face that I should be shot, and when I say "fuck you" to that, they insist that I'm so divisive and partisan. It's just absurd the reality they live in. It seems so stressful to believe that the government is going to send a liberal twink to steal your guns and shit in your litter box and trans your kid.
But when you can go in front of a judge and say "nobody rational would watch our news program and believe it" and "we literally made up out of whole cloth a story about how the democrats stole the election, despite the fact that many of us were not so sure about pushing such a total lie" and suffer no consequences, what the fuck else is there to do?
Compared to pre-pandemic - Housing prices have shot up incredibly - Loan interest rates are two or three times higher - Every day goods are higher - Car prices are higher - Insurance is higher - Utilities are higher
And that would be fine, prices go up over time after all, but all of that is on the back of pay, that for most people, has not gone up anywhere close to enough to cover all of that, if it's gone up at all.
"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat."
Meanwhile there are substantial differences between the two wings, what services and programs they think government should provide, how problem solving should be approached.
I feel that his success here suggests that this is a strategy that will succeed globally, and that many political candidates are going to be emulating his “style”.
Yup, it just came without the crass jokes and the mannerisms but I guess the confidence was pretty high that people would forgive her because she's just "not trump".
I think they totally bungled the messaging and stuck their head in the sand. With all the billions of campaign money, they spent most of it calling trump a fascist or orange idiot a bunch more times, hoping that's enough to bump voter numbers. There is a dose-response curve there and after some point it just doesn't yield linear results.
Ultimately she lost, and probably should have even more aggressively emulated him by promising things that aren't even real. Like how do you circle the promise that the war in Ukraine will be over tomorrow. I'm not making it up, that was repeated ad nauseum on the campaign trail. I guess all that matters is winning.
I don't care about that but the people that do make or break the democratic party. Unfortunately the democrats seem incapable of learning that if you don't appeal to those people, they will lose.
It’s clear it has support from rank and file republicans as well, it is more than feasible that if republicans win the house too we will see tariffs in short order
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trumps-new-tariff-proposa...
Wage gains won't keep pace with any price increases either, Republican's have already outlined policies that are regressive to average Americans[0][1]
About the only thing tariffs will do is consolidate power at the top and allow the largest corporations to buy out smaller ones that can't cope as well.
We are remember, talking about broad spectrum tariffs here, which will hit any import, from food to solar panels.
[0]: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/32a303df-1977...
[1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/10/30/trump-reduce...
Yes, prices will rise, the question is whether it will increase their leverage in the job market enough to boost their earnings enough to counteract the higher prices.
The highest levels of leadership of the Republican party have shown time and again that they want a permanent poor underclass through their policies (both enacted and proposed) and actions.
There's no sense in speculation here, if they can put the boot on labors neck, they will 100% of the time
But point taken, you think that the net result will be worse for poor people. I don’t necessarily disagree, it just seems that this one bit might be somewhat positive for the poor.
Temporarily perhaps, the push for automation in manufacturing (and farm operations) will be very strong.
I can't imagine there will be iphone factories all of the sudden in the US.
Those kinds of items effect people day to day.
I look in my refrigerator and I see a couple cheeses from Europe, butter from Ireland (and from the USA), a Belgian beer I still have around, and food from the US. We are, as a nation, completely self sufficient in food production, we turn a bunch of corn into ethanol (very stupid) and export enormous amounts of foodstuffs of all kinds.
There are very few nations, in fact, who could completely close their borders, in and out, and feed themselves. American could do this easily, furthermore, there would be widespread and worldwide starvation if we stopped exporting (no one wants to do this, just making a point).
This is such an odd claim to make.
And how much we get from Mexico
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2021/november/u-s-fresh...
But we can easily feed our entire population off our own agricultural production, and well.
Google leads me to this link.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
This has taught me nothing new. We produce and export positively enormous amounts of food, we also buy a lot of it.
My point remains: that last part is completely optional because this country is food sufficient. If world trade were to shut off, and America could neither export nor import food, many millions of people would starve to death.
But none of them Americans.
> What about when tariffs are placed on US items, demand will drop with US made things.
Maybe that will happen, but over long term that isn't the dominant effect. The main effect is the tariff protected industries raise prices because the don't have to complete with international suppliers any more. They soon price themselves out of the international market. It doesn't take very long - a couple of years usually.
That's how it starts. It is usually tolerated because the jobs at the expense of higher local employment was the goal. Then it flows outward as industries that aren't tariff protected are forced to buy local stuff at more expensive prices than their overseas competitors. "Stuff" here includes labour, because these tariff protected industries can afford to pay their employees more. (That was one of the attractions of the tariff idea, right?) The solution is obvious - tariffs for those industries too. Your exports go through the floor.
Eventually it becomes obvious even to Joe Citizen in the street. Locally produced stuff can cost multiples of what the overseas producers can make it for. (Literally, multiples. People start to yearn for the time an electric drill could cost $20.) The quality goes down as well.
The time for change arrives. I still remember our treasurer calling Australia cowering behind tariff walls a "banana republic" [0]; NZ had the same moment without such theatrics. The tariff band aid was eventually ripped off in both countries.
The pain was immense. Protected industries go rapidly broke, unemployment sky rockets. It takes years for the new internationally competitively industries to develop. But here we are, 30 years later, the last 20 without a recession and now with a GDP bigger than Russia's.
Still if the tariff plan is implemented, the next few years will be very nice for USA citizens. I guess the even frog in the pot enjoys the warmer water for a while. Enjoy it while it lasts.
[0] https://theconversation.com/revisiting-the-banana-republic-a...
There was talk about this in the first term too, and it ended up with a lot of money from tariffs being used to subsidize farmers because they found themselves doing so poorly that suicides spiked.
They also talk about the problems of losing competitive pressure from protectionist systems.
BLS data shows real (ie. inflation adjusted) wages has gone up since the pandemic.
You can’t argue about feelings
https://sciencenotes.org/what-would-happen-if-the-earth-stop...
If wage gains kept pace with productivity gains it’d be a very different and vastly better economic story for the average American
It stagnated in 2008-2016 but they still voted for obama, but when it finally started rising in 2016 they voted for trump?
If wages increased with productivity increases we'd be in better shape overall as a society, but here we are.
Please be more specific if you are explaining why American voters have got angry and done something stupid that will make things worse or if you are defending that stupidity as a good thing that will help the situation you are talking about.
This makes their own lives, in which they are still better off than 99.9% of the history of humanity, feel worse.
The most recent wage gains failed to make up for this fact
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff...
Where's the evidence this is happening for a majority (or even something vaguely resembling one) of people? I've already posted official statistics that show inflation adjusted median wages are up.
Everyone likes to point this out like it somehow made up for all the wage stagnation of the last 40 years and it most definitely did not.
Not to mention these wage gains are slowing fast.
[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff....
The gap might be real, but it's existed for decades. Moreover at least when it comes to explaining why people voted for Trump: while I have no data to support it, "we're poorer because of inflation" is a much more popular sentiment/election issue than "the top 1% are taking the gains for themselves", especially among republican voters.
They deserved it because they worked hard for it!
That might be so, but it's better than people's vibes, which famously flip-flops based on whether their preferred party is in power.
>that may not apply for every individual or subpopulation
I never claimed that, but the parent comment did imply real wages have not gone up "for most people".
Also, the median stats say nothing about how people below it are doing. By definition, that is 50%, and that is also about the number of people voting for Trump, alongside your run-of-the-mill racists and fascists.
They're actually doing about $50 better, because there was a recession in 1980. Moreover, the $50 (or $30) dollars are "1982-84 CPI Adjusted Dollars", not today's dollars. In today's dollars it would be $158.28 (or $94.97). Moreover, given most people's expectation and discussion for income increases are the raw dollar amounts (ie. not inflation adjusted), it's not a fair benchmark for real wage increases.
>By definition, that is 50%, and that is also about the number of people voting for Trump, alongside your run-of-the-mill racists and fascists.
Given how the votes are roughly 50-50, you can make the opposite argument for Harris, replacing "racists and fascists" with "college students and woke activists".
> Given how the votes are roughly 50-50, you can make the opposite argument for Harris, replacing "racists and fascists" with "college students and woke activists".
Yeah, that is exactly what I am saying. And it seems to bear out: In the demography of income of > 100K, democrats win, below it, Trump wins.
The average household income is 80k(ish) the average house is 420k(ish)
In Bethlehem, PA (a fairly middle of the road place tax wise) that means $5050 take home pay a month and a mortgage payment (FHA 3.5 down, 6.7 interest) of $2650 a month. That is more than half your pay just on a mortgage, not pmi, not insurance, not utilities, not anything else. Do this calculation across the country with localized numbers, do it with rent instead. Add a car and insurance for it into the mix. Then try adding in health insurance, groceries, etc. You are going to find that the numbers result in average people being squeezed and guess what? That lines up with peoples actual experience.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paycheck-to-paycheck-definition...
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/amid-a-resilient...
My interpretation of this is that pay has not kept up with inflation.
Edited to be less witty
The overall situation of housing and college costs have been increasing for a while this last round of inflation really was a big part of the last straw.
Source? Is this simply because rural counties are doing worse than urbanized counties, and there are more rural counties than urbanized counties, such that if you don't account for population you'll come to the conclusion that "vast majority of the counties had wages falling behind inflation", even though that's not true for the country as a whole?
[0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEDLISPRIPERSQUFEEUS
Pennsylvania did not experience the same uplift in housing prices in 2020-2022 that much of the rest of the nation did as people are net leaving the state.
PA is actually one of the places least affected by inflation not just in the US but in the world.
The median home in the Bethlehem, PA core based statistical area costs $200 per square foot in October 2024. In October 2019, it cost $120 per square foot.
I'm sure you can find homes that list for half the cost per square foot just as well as someone could find homes that list for double the cost per square foot. That's why the median is useful – and it has increased 66% over the last five years.
If you think things aren't good enough for an average person in one of the statistically best periods a capitalist economy has ever seen, there are redistributive alternatives. That doesn't seem to be what Trump voters are expecting. Instead there seems to be a nostalgia for past better times, which isn't really explained by "people are squeezed" based on math that would almost certainly have worked out just as tightly ten years ago.
Something else is going on. I don't claim to have a full explanation but none of the attempts to "fix" BLS statistics that I've seen have been more persuasive than this.
Edit: Without the snark, lots of people believe their rent, grocery bills, energy bills etc. have gone up a lot more than official inflation numbers (and that can be true even if the inflation numbers are “accurate” for some definition of accurate), and you’re not going to convince them using anything derived from these inflation numbers.
Isn't that literally what happened in his first term? Remember "I built the greatest economy the world has ever seen"? These claims were backed fully and completely by the stock market and not the rank & file. And this is the same situation we find ourselves in now. All these years later we're still in a situation where "the economy" is going gangbusters, but the average person feels left out.
It doesn't matter. Trump claimed he'd build the greatest economy again. He didn't provide any details on what he plans to do that will actually improve people's lives. He just let people jump to their own happy conclusions.
He did provide high level detail. He said he'd use tariffs to exclude foreign made stuff, which will necessitate "made in America" and bring manufacturing back. He said he'd balance the budget, which (theoretically) has long-term effects. He said he'd deport illegals, which should reduce demand for housing and hence prices.
You can disagree with any of those things, but I don't think it's right to say he didn't offer anything specific.
I mean; he offered 'specifics' - they simply didn't make any sense on cursory examination. How to fight inflation? Tariffs! How to make already expensive goods cheaper? Tarriffs!
Hell, re: deporting illegals, he didn't even bother to do that his first term, Obama did it at a dramatically higher rate.
It's all a "I'll fix everything by doing nothing" smokescreen.
Trumps literally running on Tariffs and fixing inflation. Claiming you can do both and it's disingenuous to combine them when discussing each candidates approach is honestly asinine. "Yes, he's pro-gun! but He's also in favor of confiscating all guns. But they're two different policies so it's a disingenuous rebuttal to link them."
> how far their credibility has fallen with the common person
This is True. Somehow there's an incredible double standard at play in the minds of waaaay too many.
In the middle of a national emergency, Trump toured the country spouting fabricated tales about Kamala wasting FEMAs budget on transgender surgery for migrants - which had a clear and direct adverse affect on the actual recovery efforts as multiple centers had to deal with bomb threats, armed insurgents, and a general hostile populace as they tried to help people. It was of course all fabricated idiocy that directly hurt the very people who needed help the most, but that's not "constantly lied to"?
"He just talks, you can't assume anything he states is true or that he'll follow through" is incredibly stupid because people really do believe him, and it's incredibly damaging to the core of our country. But somehow he gets a free pass, while calling out his exact words is "constantly lied to".
It's not fabricated, this is based on a question she was asked by the ACLU.
> ACLU: As President will you use your executive authority to ensure that transgender and nonbinary people who rely on the state for medical care - including those in prison and immigration detention - will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care? If yes, how will you do so?
> Harris: Yes. It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition. That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates. I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained. Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.
No, but he had a very simple and catchy message that even people with the lowest IQ can understand and remember: "Fuck illegal immigrants, fuck China, America first, USA no. 1".
Election messages need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of education and intellect. If you start boring people with facts and high brow speeches that only the well educated can understand, you lost from the start.
Republicans understand that the less educated a voter is, the more likely they are to vote R. It's not a coincidence that they are trying to gut the education system.
How?
Do you see the problem?
Sure, Trump didn't cause the pandemic, but neither did Biden and the inflation isn't unrelated to Trump's fiscal policy being looser than it needed to be even before the pandemic either, as well as being fundamentally the Fed's job to solve[2]. It's difficult[1] for an incumbent to win by attacking the track record of the last government especially when much of it was factors outside their control, but not impossible, especially since Trump has presented wavering voters with plenty of other reasons not to vote for him. Trump is living proof that excuses work...
[1]Not impossible though: an unpopular British government won a majority in 2014 by constantly blaming slow post recession growth on the other party's borrowing five years earlier
[2]You can absolutely guarantee that if Trump was in power the US would have experienced at least as much inflation, and he'd have wasted no time in blaming the Fed
This is more or less the direction I was heading w/ my post. I don't think it's a messaging issue per se. Rather it's control of the messaging. The economy in general has been on a steady path for a while, despite ups & downs: it's trending towards a bimodal distribution where certain parties are doing quite well and others are doing less well. But what I've seen the last several election cycles is the indicators that dominate what I see on TV, read online, etc swap depending on who is in power. So my expectation is that literally nothing will change yet we'll be hearing about how awesome the economy is for everyone in several months.
Would have been more effective to remind people why they didn't vote for him than remind them of his behaviour afterwards which he's perfectly good at doing himself.
They've been pretty good for some people.
I'm not gonna go all "woe is me" since we're doing fine, but as someone with a family of 5 the discretionary income basically went to zero the last 4 years.
In fact, so good, people think anything buy 10-20% yearly gains on assets is bad
Every company I join literally has an arm in Mexico, India, Pakistan, Colombia or Ukraine - and it always started feeling like at any minute those people would have my job. And they do. I want an administration that makes it so that those people don't have my job. And yes, I have always been willing to work for a lot less, but all the other Americans want more and more and more, so that it's expected for a programmer in the US to make 200k, so these companies decide to hire someone in Colombia for 80k. I'll take 100 and work a lot closer than that person in Colombia. But no companies here will listen to that. And I'll do it as someone with 20 years of experience.
But the only thing people on the left care about, as usual, are issues that actually don't matter. Yes I get it you want Gay rights and you want Abortion rights, but the reality is those things are not going away in the states you're already in. But on the other side, American people are being pushed into a terrible economic state.
Go ahead and not listen, HN doesn't. It's WAAAY to left.
Also, maybe look into a little history while youre at it - the economy is not even close to the worst one ever, see: 1930s, 1970s, the turn of the millenium, and 2008-2012 for examples in living memory.
I'm tired of pretending it's not. Want to call me a coastal elite like it's a slur? I'll wear it with a badge of honor. We are better than you at economic planning and becoming prosperous - also with defending social freedoms (i.e. legalizing the mushrooms).
We lost the low information voters. Bad from the perspective of winning elections but good from the perspective of self selecting your friends and people you associate with. The democrats really are a social club.
This is what matters.
Telling people 'X' when their eyes/lived experiences tell them 'Y', and then frequently insulting them for not agreeing on top is certainly part of the reason for the popular vote going as it did.
i have no interest in coddling people's feelings and telling them how right they are when they are operating with this level of analysis. Im not a politician so i dont have to deal with that, but im so tired of trying to explain how the world works to stupid people and getting shit for it because im not validating their delusions.
The disconnect between government data and the economic realities MANY people experienced (as evidenced by exit polling on the economy) only further salts the wounds for people not doing well.
There were no economic failures during Joe Biden's presidency.
John Deere: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/john-deere-faces-b...
GM: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/21/business/gm-layoffs-kansas/in...
Stellantis: https://www.npr.org/2024/10/11/nx-s1-5145932/stellantis-jeep...
https://intellizence.com/insights/layoff-downsizing/leading-...
I have my doubts that Trump will change that.
If "the economy" is going to be fixed, first Congress and the senate will actually have to start passing bills again, but that's probably not happening for another decade
https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/39563784/sports...
So while it's a small percentage of GDP, it is a much larger percentage of their budget.
Things with limited supply are becoming more unaffordable because the rich are much richer than they were before. So if housing is limited and is seen as an investment vehicle, it becomes unaffordable.
The same goes for health care. There is a limit supply of medical care. Some people can afford much more than others which compounds the issue.
Americans (and most of the collective West) can afford all things that are not in limited supply - food, clothing, gadgets, transportation, etc. This is amazing in the context of history.
The weirdest thing is that both health care and housing do not need to be limited supply. It's completely artifical. We make bad governing decisions that force it to be so. Our problems are not economic but social/organizational ones.
Relatedly, I was quite surprised when recently I realized that the median (adjusted for PPP) disposable income in America was the highest in the OECD (except Luxembourg):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
This means that the average american really really is financially better off than anywhere else in the world. I'd say that their quality of life isn't - they die much earlier than the rest of OECD, for example. But they are definitely the richest. And not just the richest american but the average american.
The economy is 100% intentionally managed to protect the prior generations story mode way of thinking
I don’t think this corresponds with what most people think that means. i.e. gross income - (taxes + housing costs + food + health/childcare). I certainly didn’t.
People want a single family homes with a nice property in nice area. They want a short commute and all the convenience of modern life.
There is in fact a hard limit on how many single family homes you can have in a an area. You can build them somewhere else, but then you get long commutes or short commutes to low paying work.
HN, let me remind you, most people do not work in tech banging on a keyboard all day with mild collaboration. Most people still need to commute to their jobs at least once a week. The majority still need to go in everyday.
We're not building out or building up. So yeah. It's bad.
At least here in San Francisco, even old condos have HOA fees that are within shouting distance of "market rate" rents... on top of the absolutely absurd purchase price. It's madness.
If I ever raised a family [0], I would very, very strongly prefer them to live in a reasonably-sized condo or apartment in a big city, rather than in the suburbs or in the sticks. There's more to do, better and more diverse food, a far more diverse set of people (and ideologies) to meet, and the environmental impact of one's consumption is much, much smaller per-capita than living outside of the city. [1]
It's to city managers' great discredit that they don't prioritize making it reasonably possible for families to have a decent quality of living within the cities that they manage. (If they did this, one would expect the quality of living for every ordinary person in the city to inevitably become substantially better.)
[0] And I will not, because I would be an absolutely terrible parent.
[1] Or, that was the case prior to the collapse of shopping in many big cities. Now, I guess many folks get stuff shipped direct to them, just as if they were living in the middle of nowhere.
That doesn't really tell you all that much useful. Disposable income just deducts taxes from your gross income. What really matters is the cost of those other things we're talking about: food, housing, healthcare, childcare, etc. When you subtract those out as well, you get discretionary income, and I bet the US is not leading at all there.
Suffice it to say that trying to directly compare individual wealth across disparate populations is so disingenuous as to be tantamount to spreading falsehoods. People feel poor because they are poor; Americans simply cannot afford many of the things that other developed economies provide for their residents. We can make lots of small changes to help with this^ (i.e., we don't need a massive overhaul or revolution), but the people calling the shots have to actually admit that people are not doing well, and that the costs people face today are burdensome. They won't, because they're afraid of not being reelected (and then they lose anyway).
^Solve food deserts by opening bodega-like shops in both urban AND suburban neighborhoods.
^Replace surface parking with structures housing amenities that people can walk to.
^Increase mass public transit access by building rail and bus/bike lanes.
Looking at the numbers, it doesn't seem so much that America chose Trump as they refused to choose Harris; her popular vote total is in the middle of Obama's, and Trump's is roughly the same as last time. I recognize and agree that Trump is worse. As much as Harris wanted to make that what the election was about, as with Biden in 2020, that's simply not what it was. The election was about if Harris could do better than Biden, as an executive. She couldn't show that she would, so the people who came out for Biden did not come out for her.
The economy is good in america, but that just means that the amount of "resources" in the country is increasing, but, if "average joe" benefits from that or not is a question of how those resources are distributed.
Left/Right is about economy.
Being on the right means that you find it more important that the total pool of resources is increasing.
Being on the left means that you care more about how the resources are distributed.
What happened here is IMHO that the conservatives did the populist thing, they claimed that regular people would get more resources if they won, while still claiming that they would distribute less resources away from wealthy people.
They are not wrong in saying that the economy is good, it is just that since there is no left in american politics, it seems like some people have forgotten the other perspective, since redistribution of wealth have been almost an insult in america for so long. Yet, last time he was president, trump managed to send everyone a check, signed by himself, but paid for by taxes, without being called an evil communist.
I listened to a radia program where poor americans where interviewed, and that was the thing that they remembered about trump, he sent them a check.
So, in conclusion, there is a large group of poor americans, that associate the guy that wants to remove taxes for rich people with what I (according to the above definition) consider to be left wing politics.
There is, though? It’s just no represented at all because of FTPT there is based no constituency where it can get 50%. Usually not even in Democrat primaries.
This gets parroted too often. America objectively provides more abortion access than Europe. Speech here is undoubtedly more expansive than in Europe. Sure, unions may have more power in Europe, but not so much more that I'd be saying "there is no left in America".
Every single person I know feels this economy is terrible. Of every age. From new graduates, to senior people. Even the most extreme Obama or Bernie people feel like things are going very badly.
Everyone on campus was consistently outraged when Biden would gloat about his economy.
It's not Trump. I have no idea what his message even is.
This is an own goal. Democrats believed the total bullshit that economists spew about how good things are. When people actually feel how terrible they are.
My wages are up since Biden started. My rent, my biggest expense, has held the same. NW up a lot from stock market gains.
There seems to be a lot of inflation with food ,restaurants and domestic work, but isn't lower wage people getting higher wages a good thing?
Their wages did not rise anywhere near commensurate with the increased costs of those goods and services - the same goods and services that those people would be buying
America wide looks at worse flat: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q (ignoring covid years which distort this)
Food might be up 30% in biden's term for all I know. And maybe wages are only up 20%. But as long as rent is 0% and asset growth kept track with inflation (it's blown past it), you are still ahead.
I suspect this is just standard human loss aversion at work. I feel this even from my own wife who looks at our economic position worse than me even though it is the same numbers. What's worsened becomes more important than what's improved, even if rationally, it nets out even.
My rent was up 30% and it was my largest expense. DoJ has been dragging its heels on punishing the companies that were a part of this gouging-via-algorithmic-price-fixing-and-warehousing, and now that Trump is going to be in office, those lawsuits are likely dead in the water. Very much a "Thanks for nothing, Joe," situation.
In gaslighting, the perpetrator insists on denying the victim's perception of reality, while actually controlling the facet of reality that he denies is altered. In this case, Democrats control the means to alter the economy via leaning on Congress, the Treasury, and the Fed. They manufactured an environment where earners would lose out to the concerns of asset holders (the "soft-landing," rather than a swift and severe FFR rate hike and tightening of Treasury holdings that would have squelched inflation), but insist on telling earners that everything is okay, because the metrics that matter to asset holders are doing well. In carrying water for this line of argument, you're participating in their gaslighting. People aren't doing well, full stop.
A fast rate hike might have caused massive unemployment which would be much worse.
A fast hike would have caused pain, but the money printing that we did anyway would have helped mitigate that. Instead, it just went to propping up asset prices. Bank Bailout 2.0; we didn't learn our lesson, and the incumbent party was yet again ousted.
I’m skeptical about the vibes based methods of evaluating the economy, I think the economy really is better for the lowest income workers, but forget stock market gains. Also, rents remaining flat might be a Bay Area specific phenomena. Or even SF specific? Don’t know where you live.
I'd like to get out of here but can't move because of mortgage rates, among other reasons. I'd like to change jobs but tech layoffs have flooded the job market. It's an anxious time. My 401k is doing great though.
I don't blame Biden for all this. There was absolutely no choice but to pour enough stimulus into the economy to cause massive inflation in order to prevent a revolution during COVID. But if I'm feeling the hangover I'm sure the real working class is staggering.
I likely don’t count towards unemployment statistics. I don’t qualify for unemployment since I was a contractor before.
In my current job search, I’ve sent out more applications and had more interviews than the rest of my career. Granted, I found jobs more through connections than cold applying in the past. I’ve been tapping connections in this search too, though. It’s rough out there. I’ve contemplated taking an exit from tech and picking up a trade.
It sure feels surreal to me when I see reports of a strong economy.
I mean, frankly as a Gen Z man I don’t understand this at all. I’m doing a lot better than I was 4 years ago. Finished school, got a good job, etc.
Not to mention these wage gains are slowing fast.
[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff....
Where the Democrats went wrong is they looked at the economic figures for stuff like corporate profit margins and the stock market and said "look how good the economy is!" when those profit margins are high because they've jacked prices and regular consumers are feeling the squeeze. Unfortunately there's little a President can do about that. Corporate consolidation was largely complete before they even took office and monopolistic behavior is to be expected. The pandemic supply chain disruptions gave companies cover to increase their margins and that's what they did.
I think I'm an average person. Car prices came down and I was finally able to buy a sedan. Unemployment seems low. Eggs are expensive, sure, but on the other hand, my brand of yogurt always seems to be on sale and oatmeal prices are flat, so it's kind of a wash there. The economy seems pretty fine to me.
Certainly, there have been no threats to shut down the government (like in '18-'19), which did do a number on my retirement plan at the time...
And, more importantly, today's inflation is by large firms exerting their market control and monopolistic tendencies. How many grocery companies are there and in their region? Kroger is trying to buy out Albertsons to completely dominate the midwest, to lower quality and increase prices like all monopolists. What needs to be done is anti-trust enforcement which Biden has attempted. But none of this is known by 90% of the country and 0% of Trump voters.
No but there was plenty of "if you're married and vote for Trump you're a misogynist" or "no real man with daughters can vote for Trump" messaging which rightly fell flat.
That Trump won the popular vote is astounding. That he's currently ahead in Michigan is insane, politically/electorally speaking. By 10pm last night the MSNBC crowd was already starting the "this was just about the economy," "no incumbent Dem could have won," "no challenging Rep could have lost" cope.
The Democratic party has an opportunity here to put DEI, identity politics, and culture war nonsense in the garbage where it belongs, and everyone on the left who was talking about unity and bringing America together 24 hours ago has an opportunity now to show whether they meant it, or if they only meant it on their terms.
It doesn't matter how many people vote for you, your policies can still be anti-democratic.
As far as I have read, Guiliani has been accused in a civil lawsuit of saying he was going to sell pardons, nobody's provided any proof or evidence that Trump knew about it or did anything, and nobody has even had criminal charges brought let alone adjudicated.
I'm happy to be proven wrong but two third parties being engaged in an unresolved civil claim is a long way away from "Trump sold pardons."
How do you win an election when your opponent is apparently not bound by reality? Maybe Harris should have just promised puppies and rainbows and candy.
If you want to support a compromise: most of what you need to do is shut up everyone who will only accept their extreme position.
She did, and no one fell for it.
Consider that, just maybe, you're the one not bound by reality.
Fact of the matter is most abortions are elective. It is, in fact, about unwanted children. It is however a shame actual health risks are lumped in - mostly due to marketing.
For the common folk, economy is their purchasing power.
That's where there's the disconnect.
Which can be separate from the purchasing power.
There is this bizarre mixed signals problem where all the metrics look strong, and yet all the people are complaining.
My personal belief is that the crazy economics of the pandemic was kick in the head to most people's perceptions of finances. Things got really good for a lot of middle and lower class people, and now there is pain in the return to normal.
And housing.
I say this because I fundamentally believe that Democrats need an answer for this if they want to remain relevant. You can’t milk reproductive freedom for eternity. Americans want the focus to shift back to a more nuanced and biologically adapted conversation around sustainable social narrative. That or we need mechanical wombs.
This seems to be an oblique reference to something specific about that healthcare. If someone doesn't articulate a proposed specific amount of time or objective physiological thresholds for a procedure, they aren't serious. I saw no evidence for this from either campaign, so I guess they agreed the issue was not at play.
Were there a bunch of ads explaining why tariffs are going to cause pain and raise prices? And would be likely to spike inflation again?
I’m guessing no due to the election result but please confirm.
Yes. They billed it as the "Trump tax."
Part of the problem is that most people lack the cognitive capacity to understand the legal argumentation of Roe V. Wade and how shaky it was and so they out of incompetence set themselves up as women's rights constitutional amendment obstructionists
Instead, they ran ads implying that husbands were trying to force their wives to vote trump, a narrative that comforts their own biases but does nothing for the people they needed to convince.
Because sensible people don't think that Trump presidency means "no healthcare for Women".
So to blame this on "unmarried white men" is counter productive.
It's caused by intentionally mismanaging health crises while sending healthcare to Putin. There's nothing mysterious about this. It's simple warfare, but on the terms used within the Russian regime domestically.
We've been the Zone for some time now, and the fog isn't any lighter this morning.
The best knowledge is how to benefit from this. And the topmost rule is that Trump wants to live out his life without fear of court. We may have to strike a deal that the stability of America depends on that.
If this were true it would mean Americans are dumb as rock and don't really care about "boring", technocratic but important decisions like climate change, geopolitical alliances, etc. - and just want a showman to dazzle their softened brains.
Don't get complacent; the process producing European leaders like Putin, Zelenskyy, Orban, Meloni, and Erdoǧan is no better, nor other American leaders like Lula or Maduro, nor Modi. And, although Xi's path to power doesn't depend on how relatable his stories are about how he had difficulty climbing into a garbage truck, that process is flawed in other ways that are likely worse.
Nietzsche made this case really strongly in his chapter/essay “The Flies in the Marketplace” back in the 1880s, and pretty well predicted how this would emerge play out half a century later in Germany. “ Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place,—and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour.”
The tribalism at this point is insane, it’s basically organized religion. You choose your tribe and get assigned a (terrible) religious leader and a list of dogmas you have to subscribe to without getting ostracized. Why should my view on trade be linked to regulations be linked to climate be linked to drugs be linked to criminal justice be linked to refugees be linked to Israel be linked to identity politics be linked to abortion be linked to guns? No idea, but take it or leave it. And the choices of religious leaders? Between someone who lies as readily and confidently as he drinks water and someone who’s a boring ladder climber and <omitted because this is an overwhelmingly one-tribe site>. No thank you.
The reason it becomes a problem is that there the only options for each "tribe" is one of two extremes, and that these are perceived so fundamentally different it is hard for people to find common grounds. When you have many more parties, you have a wider spectrum where you can have partial agreement and disagreement with much softer borders between political strongholds, and tribes can incrementally move within the spectrum without having to switch all their beliefs and ideologies from one day to the next.
Being more understanding of tribes with other ideas rather than making them villains would also help both sides in communication and political mobility.
Watching, they discuss a study about gun control and I though omg I was thinking about that recently and the study they presented answers the question I've been pondering about gun control. If you watch the video, you will understand my disappointment.
I had been living in New Orleans including when it had the 8th highest murder rate ... not in the United States but the world in 2022 (it was #1 in US hence not 8th). The city couldn't hire police officers and close 120 position had been unfilled. There is a very strange phenomena happening in the past 2 years, the crime rate in New Orleans is plummeting without police. [1] So, in the Veritasium video, they talk about a gun violence study and I think, that is exactly the question I'm asking. Does gun violence go down if law enforcement is removed from the equation because that is exactly for unknown reasons happening New Orleans today. Nobody is taking away guns in New Orleans and everyone I know has at least 2. I was a little disappointed with the study but tapped my self on the shoulder asking the correct question when presented with it.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_OApdxcno
[1]https://www.fox8live.com/2024/09/19/how-new-orleans-went-mur...
Smarter people did better than Dumber people. The people with a score of 8,9 on numeracy did the best [1] but not as good as they should've. This is basically best shown on page 12 [2] on the actual paper, people with high numeracy have a better chance of correct answer than low numeracy.
I suspect the effect is even across low & high numeracy but because high numeracy people were more likely to get the correct answer to begin with. Akin to say you playing a toddler in Counter-Strike. You're more likely to win a round than them. So if for a round I disconnect one of your controllers then the disconnection is more likely to cause you a loss than the toddler because the toddler was going to lose anyways, the effect of disconnection for them is dwarfed by their innate ability.
[1]: https://youtu.be/zB_OApdxcno?t=413
[2]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2319992
The dude isn't some rushed working single mother. He had amble time to choose what he wanted to convey and instead chose that title.
When your study creates 2 populations (those with good numeracy and those without) and you make a claim that one of those populations "do worse" than it's always implicitly with respect to the other population.
That is a good theory, but coalitions can also easily create stalemates on many topics and effectively rendering a government incapable of any significant action. There are recent examples in EU countries.
Coalitions can partly negate the benefit of the “spectrum”, but each member still answers to a different body of voters and going along with too many conflicting proposals would put them at risk of losing the confidence of their voters. Not differentiating from the other coalition members puts the party at risk of voters jumping ship to the others, and each party ultimately wishes to grow their own voter base.
Nah, tribalism of this sort is absolutely not human nature. People naturally form tribes and define ingroup/outgroup boundaries around their actual relationships and communities.
It takes alignment of a lot of unusual circumstances to get people to attach their identities to "tribes" that are actually aggregations of completely unrelated strangers grouped together on the bases of abstract symbols.
People are naturally loyal to their families and local communities, not to continent-spanning political organizations.
People are indeed loyal to their local communities - which includes having ideologies that would not greatly offend your peers - but everyone has different communities. Yours might include family A and B. Theirs might include C and D, and E and F, respectively. Continue a few rounds and you’ll see that each social circle is unique and inter-connected.
No one within this “super-tribe” can have a different ideology without offending their local community by aligning with the opposite extreme - even if your opinion only differed slightly, your choice is one of two extremes.
In order to fix this, you need people to have more choices so that they can select something slightly different from your community without offending it.
The point is that equating these ideologically polarized aggregations of strangers with tribalism is a huge stretch, and not really valid. They're two very different phenomena.
Yes, social circles are unique and inter-connected, and most people are simultaneously members of multiple "tribes", but this has nothing whatsoever to do with vast aggregations of strangers linked only by abstract symbolism.
What we are dealing with is a local community (for which I believe "tribe" is a perfectly valid use), which is directly and closely linked to nearby communities in such a way that, when combined with a binary and divisive choice, makes the whole network form a virtual supertribe.
With only two choices, so you are either 100% aligned or 0% aligned which makes it very difficult to have connected communities with differing opinions. Each individual is either aligned with their local community, or at risk of being ejected from it. With no connected communities of differing opinions, this in turn means you get ejected from all other possible local communities - the entire virtual supertribe. This makes it far less likely that someone will deviate than if it only affected their own direct connections.
If you had, say, 10 choices, you would be able to have a community that was only 70-90% aligned with its connected communities while still being tolerated, so no virtual supertribe would form.
Call it whatever you want: tribalism may be an omnipresent manifestation of human nature, but "supertribalism" is something qualitatively different and not remotely as normal.
Heh.. well.. California *was* majority white not even a decade and a half ago. And, the judge that put the final nail in on that issue for California wasn't exactly a white person.
So..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_California_Proposition_18...
Inflation has been a shocker. The border being flooded is terrifying. The economy is and has been struggling in many peoples lives. And the democrats want to still focus on identity politics.
I think they can easily win in 4 years but they need to change their ways. They need to abandon the poisoned ideology that Obama inspired.
...
> And the democrats want to still focus on identity politics.
Does typing this out not cause the slightest pang of cognitive dissonance?
The idea of illegal immigration being "complete disregard for law and order" is based solely in feelings of fear or animosity, not in facts.
Maybe I'm wrong but I feel like a better pro-immigration strategy for Democrats would be to agree with the fact illegal immigration must be stopped and to debate the methods to stop it. And then secondly, argue for opening LEGAL immigration to more people since there are many benefits to it when done in a controlled and deliberate manner.
No amount of border wall or lawfare will change that for Mexico (I personally believe we should be working hard with Mexico to re-assert law and order, that WOULD reduce illegal immigration). No matter what we say, the horde of bodies will continue.
So what are you going to do? Are you going to shoot them? How many strangers will we shoot, how many mothers and children, just to insist that we really care about that border? Will America be better when we kill a thousand people a day in the south? How will doing that improve the economy?
The permanent, irreversible demographic shift that conveniently favors Dem politics is only one of the many, many problems caused by turning a blind eye to unprecedented hordes of inherently law-disregarding third-worlders taking advantage of our weak border enforcement.
There are actual real genetic disorders Trans people are dealing with.
Republican's just chose Trans people as some small group dealing with a difficult to explain condition and decided to pile on them.
Not really. If you want to go back a Decade, then it was legitimate equality issues.
You can't just say, people shouldn't be equal and claim you are fighting against 'identity' politics. Like women being allowed to open bank accounts without their husbands permission. Why do Republicans want to go back to those days? Unless you actually listen to them, and they quote some Bible Versus about Women being property, then you see the actual agenda.
What is the term for 'take a couple isolated examples and call it a movement'? motte-and-bailey goes both ways.
There is no widespread 'trans women competing against biological women'.
Completely made up issue to stir outrage with the radical base.
The people who bring the issues back to identity politics are not dems.
Unless… perhaps the solutions didn’t matter, and the polls themselves were much stronger than the results.
On the issue of identity politics, Democrats have been all in for nearly a decade, and only in the last year or so, when it has become apparent they are out of step with the majority of Americans, have they begun to back off. It’s not unexpected for the Republicans to now be the ones bringing up identity politics given how closely the Democrats have aligned themselves to it for so long, and the current backlash towards it. The damage is done and it will take many years of priority shifting for Democrats to get over it.
> identity politics
This has squarely been a republican plank to rile and invigorate their base, regularly creating issues where none existed to get their team up to vote,
The fact that this can be blamed on the dems is always strange. I mean, the whole point of Fox was to create a counter narrative to address the march of “liberal science”. The goal was entirely to handle science and research, and present ways to combat this with feelings. Again - my favorite example is creationism.
And Kamala Harris was an uninspiring candidate, the democrats have proved to be the definition of "lesser evil" without any true identity with teeth to speak off. Still, Donald Trump is a pedophile, a rapist, a good friend to Jeffrey Epstein. I don't understand how anyone can be morally bankrupt enough to vote for someone like that.
A woman? Lots worse than "liar" could be said about one of them, I'm curious what makes you think both candidates are equally bad but don't dare say it.
The single greatest thing the American people can do from this moment on is to stop hating each other for political beliefs, put that aside, and just talk without expectation or trying to convince someone. Just talk. America has let political identity supersede all else.
Many conservatives, including many of my own family members, have enthusiastically declared "all democrats should be shot", for usually really odd and mundane things too, like Michelle Obama saying children should eat healthily. They blame her for school lunch programs in my state going downhill, primarily from reduced budgets that prevent the school from buying anything to eat other than a shitload of frozen chicken patties. But no, apparently that reduction in funding, which was decided at the state level and mostly done during Bush's admin when no child left behind fucked with school funding, is her fault.
None of the hate came from democrats. The first mean spirited thing said by democrats was when Hillary called republicans a basket of deplorables.
Republicans have been calling democrats satan worshippers, literal biblical demons, degenerates, sexual deviants, etc since the 70s.
Republicans walked away from basic decency. Not democrats. None of us feel comfortable talking to our Trumper friends and family because they are our parents who raised us to hate others and we had to individually of our own accord grow past that. They are our brothers who literally tell us we should be shot back in the mid 2000s, before you can even blame identity politics. They are our mothers who taught us we were sluts for wearing a skirt and deserved to be raped. They are our grandparents who taught us that having a baby out of wedlock is an ostracization worthy event. They are teachers who spent a lecture talking about how slavery wasn't so bad. They are bosses who force you to watch anti-union propaganda before you can work.
Fox News specifically has been declaring and waging regular war on most things that aren't stereotypical 50s americana since it's inception.
Like what fucking more do you want from us? How do you talk to that?
Please.
Nobody I know watches Fox News. My social circle is almost entirely current/former US military expats, so it's not easy to even access cable television outside of work, if you even work on a US military base (and not everyone does). Most people are tied into YouTube, podcasts, etc.
Mostly economically liberal, socially conservative, with graduate STEM educations or MBAs. Mostly prime working-age males or kinda close to retirement. Significant over-representation of minorities. Religiously either atheist, Catholic, or Muslim. Almost all vocally Trump-leaning or at the very least VERY anti-woke.
The anti-Trump contingent in my personal life is all older people:
(2) retired boomers, one a white Progressive guy from the Pacific Northwest, the other a black guy from Virginia, both with TDS from consumption of legacy media (NYT in the white guy's case, mainstream cable news in the black guy's case)
(2) almost-retired black women, both unmarried, one with no kids and the other a now-empty-nester with adult adopted children. Both watch a lot of US TV as well.
Trump wasn't elected, the bad inflationary economy created by monetary shenanigans elected Trump.
That's pretty sad state of the system. Policy positions should be the primary thing voters care about.
"It's about mobilizing people by giving them something to care about."
Yeah, but this is how you get the most extreme candidates. Look at the primaries. They have very small numbers of voters, and the voters in just a few states set the tone for those elections due to timing. You can make a huge difference by mobilizing voters with increasingly extreme positions or rhetoric. As you said, status quo doesn't energize. That means the people are less likely to get involved fir the staus quo unless they have a strong sense of duty about voting.
I disagree hard. You should have a strong policy that people can believe in. When the average person sees that the price of certain groceries are 3x what they used to be, they stop caring about petty personal attacks.
But it seems nobody cared anyways, he didn’t need to hide it
I think what you're saying here is that neither policies nor personalities matter as much as outcomes. And yep, that seems right.
And Trump owns those outcomes now for the next few years, for better or worse.
Note I'm not saying Trump is honest - it's just some of the democrat dishonesty was off-the-scale.
As an example - "Biden is fine to serve 4 more years".
Such obvious dishonesty is really damaging when voting is largely emotional.
Their strategy, at least the past three cycles, has been "I offer you nothing, but do you really want to vote for the other side?" And I don't see that changing.
To clarify: I think this is an important issue, but I think the past four years demonstrates that the promises democrats make regarding protection of abortion rights are empty ones. The capability to do something is demonstrably there (look at Trump, he got Roe v Wade overturned, which is huge, and it's not like he has more power than a democrat president), the will to wield this capability is not.
- there's something on offer now that Biden wasn't offering four years ago
- Harris' offer is the same as what Biden was offering four years ago
That's a mathematical fact.
In the first case, my question is "what is it?" Personally, I haven't seen anything in the messaging of Biden and Harris' respective campaigns to indicate there is a difference between them on this front, but I could've missed something, and I'm glad to be corrected.
In the second case, we have a means of seeing what this offer actually means in terms of actions and policies. And judging by the accomplishments of the Biden regime on this front, that's basically nothing. Effectively, nothing is on offer on the abortion front.
there is a real not very small risk of the us stopping(1) being a democracy in the next 4 years, and even if not it will nearly guaranteed heal other autocratic rulers weighting that against the democrats learning a lesson they already knew (but might not have listened to) seems like a pretty terrible deal
(1): Assuming you can call a 2 party system democratic, which given how the elections worked out (power dynamic wise) the last few times is clearly not that clear anymore (it still is democratic, but in a gray area). Let's be honest if people had effectively/power dynamic wise more choices (e.g. multiple presidential election rounds ranking of candidates where votes of eliminated candidates spill over etc.) I think non of the last 2 presidents would have been elected.
I also think you would be pleasantly surprised by the number of people who voted for Trump who would not be happy with the dissolution of democracy.
Also I think you'd be hard-pressed to get a majority of SCOTUS judges to be happy with that.
You on the other hand present no counterfactual at all.
Democracy will be lost if there are no public institutions to enforce rules in a way which keeps nobody in particular with too much power.
Democracy will be lost if core players of said system do not respect the rules anymore and either try to negate, obstruct or otherwise hinder balance or peaceful transfer of power.
Trump has clearly shown to be capable of the latter and his desire for centralizing power around him.
Read some of the testimony of former staffers that emerged over the past few weeks.
And the SCOTUS ruling has given him a carte-blance to enact his ideas - without impunity.
The Senate or House will not or hardly force him to compromise on legislation, MAGA captured the Republican party.
The legal changes and Trumps demonstrable behavior are much more akin to a Putin in Russia or a monarchy than to a democracy with equal institutions governing.
The constitution isn't worth the paper it's printed on if it's just being ignored.
SCOTUS has not obliterated the balance of power AFAICT? Otherwise Biden would've had more power than he does/did, right? I'll need more details about this obliteration.
SCOTUS judges are indeed majority conservative. But you'll need a tad more to indicate that "conservative" translates to "supportive of dissolving our democracy". I'll accept statements they've made to that effect, anything they've written, or whatever else you have. But we know you have nothing to indicate this at all.
Your concerns about economics have nothing to do with dissolving democracy. BUT (because I'm passionate about this) – mainstream macroeconomics is pseudo-science peddled by charlatans anyway. It's too multi-variate for them to effectively predict the outcome of basically anything at a macro level. They're not Harry Seldon even if they wish they were.
Your concern about him being buddies (sometimes frenemies) with Elon Musk has nothing to do with dissolving democracy. Elon Musk can't enable that in any shape or form. I guess he could make Trump dictator of Mars if his plans for SpaceX pan out, though.
Your concern about RFK Jr being in charge of public health has nothing to do with dissolving democracy. RFK Jr believing that vaccines cause autism or that fluoride turns the freaking frogs gay has nothing to do with the state of our democracy.
As you helpfully point out, Trump tried and failed to mess with election certification last time around. The institutions holding their own against him is literally the opposite of what you are trying to argue.
I'll concede that maybe the risks have never been higher, but going from 0.001% to 0.01% isn't a huge deal in the grand scheme of things.
---
And here is my answer to your new comment:
> Democracy will be lost if there are no public institutions to enforce rules in a way which keeps nobody in particular with too much power.
This is true. Luckily the institutions that actually enforce this are not the ones Trump et al have expressed interest in cutting.
> Democracy will be lost if core players of said system do not respect the rules anymore and either try to negate, obstruct or otherwise hinder balance or peaceful transfer of power.
This is clearly untrue. Someone trying and failing to mess with democracy is actually evidence of the opposite – that the democracy is robust. As I said before, Trump being unable to stop election certification is not the evidence for your argument you think it is.
> testimony
You mean like the testimony from all the people in the military that aren't big fans? You don't think that maybe the military might have something to say if the President tries to become a dictator? Support of the military is usually required for that, and Trump doesn't seem to have that much support in military leadership.
Which SCOTUS ruling gives him carte blanche to enact anything he wants with impunity?
So far this is all going according to the constitution. The house passing bills which are then passed by the senate which are then signed by the president is... our democracy. I don't see the Judicial branch abrogating their responsibilities to the Executive branch, nor do I see the Legislative branch doing that, even if they support Trump for president. Just because they'll be able to pass whatever they want for 2-4 years doesn't mean they're going to pass something that dissolves democracy. And so far you have nothing to indicate that those branches are interested in doing that. Just your fear running rampant.
You claim things (RFK can’t be a danger) but can’t back them up other than “I think so.”.
Know who called Trump a fascist?
Not me, not the Democrats, but Mark Kelly, a four star general and his Chief of Staff who spent hours working with this person.
Howard Lutnik, a NY billionaire and chief headhunter of Trump’s transition team is on video saying that all admin officials must show fidelity and loyalty to Trump: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JKyRO7MOeyo
He is also running around talking about charging past critics, like Kelly, with treason.
I really don’t understand how anyone can be the dog in the “This is fine” meme in light of these people’s words.
If I told you “you’re just scared” when I’m building a web app and say I’m not worried about SQL injection because my users are nice and who would do such a thing and my app is perfectly secure, you’d rightfully laugh in my face and call me ignorant.
This is the exactly same scenario for the politics we’re in.
If you can present specific, on the record evidence that all I’m saying is a) wrong or b) obsolete in light of new data, I’d be more than happy to take a look.
Simply arguing with “trust me, bro.” isn’t that productive, unfortunately.
Don’t take my word for it: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-rachman-review/id1...
While I agree with that statement, I think you are ignoring that virtually all of the conversation about how the Constitution and Bill of Rights are out of touch with modernity is actually coming from the left. I don’t hear anyone on the right really arguing that point—its quite the opposite actually.
Trump runs for a 3rd term, with the help of his existing support (including Musk).
Vance fails to certify states that are unfavorable to Trump or refused to list Trump as a candidate for 3rd term, announcing the Trump has won. Congress may object. Bad news, it's R controlled.
The issue is brought to the Supreme Court, however Trump will effectively still take the position as per ceremony.
Supreme Court decides in favor of Trump, under the doctrine of strict interpretation (bad faith is an existing loophole).
This is just one of the many paths to breaking down the existing political system.
What you and I consider "democracy" may differ. These series of events would be a breakdown of American democracy, regardless.
He tried. There are books and interviews, available today, describing how unprepared he was (ie the basic housekeeping of staffing positions) to take his position as the head of the executive branch. He had no political infrastructure, which has been since remedied by some rather fringe conservatives (related to prj2025). He is unable to manage anything, ruling through typical narcissistic behavior of delegation and blame. He has a colorful history of exploiting legal loopholes. The only thing Trump consistently does, is prop up his own image and power to continue to operate in this manner.
> he also could have packed the courts and didn't.
Meet reality. He did enough by taking whatever Republicans put in front of him. I see no reason to believe it won't be repeated.
> trump is not going to run for a third term.
This is not a compelling statement, in the slightest.
Again, this is one possible path for deconstructing American democracy, which easily sprung to mind and is dependent on his health in 4 years. Saying it's impossible, is another opinion.
Same with SCOTUS. They're appointed for life. What in the world makes you think they are more loyal to Trump than to the foundation of the US? Hint: they're not. 2/3 of his SCOTUS appointments are Federalist Society members, who LOVEEE the constitution).
Someone made a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_oppose...
Now I certainly don't know what's going to happen in the next 4 years with any certainty, but Trump was not exactly a champion of democratic norms the last time and there will be far less to restrain him now. Those who opposed him in the GOP have been pushed out and the judiciary is far more friendly. Many of those that own or control platforms and news publications were either eagerly cheering Trump on or signaling they would be more deferential now.
We have a much longer history as a democracy than democratic backsliders like Hungary so I don't think it's a given we're destined for the same fate, but I think the risk is a lot more than zero.
You claiming this is a good result from any perspective is so strange. If anything, it shows the U.S. is a lost cause and that the majority of Americans are narcissists alongside the person they just elected.
The Republicans have won by actively dumbing down and pigeonholing their constituency.
Yes! You're right. You should have run a stronger personality. Much stronger. Harris didn't "think big". She should have been more strident in advocating for censorship, inflation, imprisoning her political enemies, and legalizing crime. Please run these stronger personalities in every election from now on. We'd appreciate it.
Thanks, and much love,
Republicans
Democrats should study those people very very intensely and understand how they lost them. It was exceptionally radical to vote for Obama in 2008, people were calling him a cupboard muslim and terrorist sympathiser. They really believed he will deliver change and create a decisive break with neoliberal policy (both domestic and foreign), it is quite amazing that exactly these voters would vote 3 times for Trump after that.
Yet apart from Obamacare Obama delivered basically zero change in foreign or domestic policy. You simply can't take voters who went out of their way to vote for you for granted in this way and expect there won't be a backlash.
What are you talking about? He got 68% of the electors; 53% of the population voted for him. That’s not radical: that’s mainstream.
The fact that Obama won so much of electorate implies that there were quite a lot of people who radically went against their usual political leaning. Those voters gave him the benefit of the doubt that he would shake the system.
It sounds plausible, but I haven't seen anyone discuss it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama%E2%80%93Trump_voters
although anecdotally most people know people personally that voted Obama then Trump. Obama was very much a populist outsider in his original campaign, he even pioneered devious social media ad targeting.
Wonder if keeping Biden have been better. He got 80M+ popular votes, after all! Why swap him out? I guess Harris was seen as Biden++, already working for Biden admin and younger, so naturally she would get 90M+ popular votes or something.
We're a democracy.
- A quite smart and kind Woman who believes in demcratic values
- An extremely selfish, through and through corrupt and unbelievably stupid bully with a clear agenda to end the Democracy
The chose. That's all. Nothing to see here.
Any less was always a crap shot....
This speaks to relationship between Bidden, Harris and the Dem elites...in that where no alternate leadership can rise...
Trump, personally, will not do much to contribute to the Republican cause. Trump's contributions will mostly be saying dumb things that get his opposition riled up and energized to vote against him next time. He's also going to be a very old sundowning president--it's Republican's turn to defend that.
Our biggest failure as a nation was not convicting him sooner and more decisively.
You say The courts are not apolitical as a left leaning you sound you surely have said the Supreme Court is right focused have you not?
The political choice was allowing someone to avoid prosecution pending the results of an election.
But I have some optimism that prosecutors and courts will be less willing to allow this in the future. Prosecutors need to bring cases sooner, and courts need to move more quickly, to avoid this kind of bad outcome in the future. Lesson learned.
Neither party responded to this until Trump came around. Meanwhile, the Democrats also seemingly gave up on the whole social safety net argument as well. Obama at least ran on helping people but, well, I don't see that anymore. While I agree that their messaging has failed, I ultimately think they've failed to provide any substance to their argument.
A lot of people want this loss to prove that Democrats should have been stronger on Gaza.
A lot of people want this loss to prove that Democrats should have rejected identity politics.
And there's a long tail of other things that people think a Democratic loss will push the Democrats towards: protectionism, isolationism, socialism, etc.
The Democrats are going to lick their wounds, crunch the numbers, and probably move towards Trump on economics. Or something else. 95% of people who are hoping that the Democrats are going to suddenly see the light on their pet issue are going to be disappointed. They aren't going to go hard left on Gaza. They aren't going to go hard right on identity politics. The loss is going to cause a whole bunch of damage, and we're going to get very little if any long-term benefit to weigh against it.
The fact that Houthis have shut down shipping, and the US hasn't stopped them is absolutely shameful.
And by helping its ally more, the war would have ended quicker leaning to overall less death. Which is why a majority of Muslims actually voted for Trump.
Right. The misogynists won. There are simply too many people in this country who don't want a woman President.
I don't put blame on Harris' campaign, since it actually did discuss and put out policies to help people beyond just calling Trump a fascist and evil. That you think (or at least say you think) they didn't shows how badly their message wasn't conveyed BY the media that are the only people that can convey it.
If the local news owned by Sinclair is your station and it says only right-wing talking points, if two newspapers can have their endorsements scuttled by their billionaire owners, if podcasters like Joe Rogan can pass along Russian misinformation and facebook memes as truth, how can the Harris campaign get through to people?
But was the campaign actually passed down to voters? and did those voters willingly seek it out, since it will not be presented to them in their chosen bubbles? The entire system of billionaires blatantly criming in an election without repercussions and the media manufacturing consent silenced any chance of fair representation of what is happening and who is at fault. Like inflation being a consequence of Trump's policies and not Biden's due to inflation's inherent time lag that most people never learn about
To be fair to Republicans, they could say "ya know, we do believe human civilization has caused climate change and there is a government role to address it. We just disagree on the terms and mechanism for how that should work"
I mean, come on.
Well when you put it like that.
But really, it's interesting how this time around my entire Puerto Rican side of the family voted for Trump. All lifelong democrats too. These folks are the core of the country: Teamsters members, paraprofessionals, and mid-tier civil servants. They laughed at the joke about the pile of trash. They left Puerto Rico in the 60s for a reason.
As much as you don't like to admit it, your idea of "divisive" and "racist" and "violent" is based on a subjective standard. It just is. A lot of people disagree or don't find it offensive enough to care. I can't stress this part enough; these are the actual majority of America as indicated yesterday.
This is all to try and point out that this is a great time for the Democrats of America to take a hard look in the mirror and realize that, if this guy is so bad, then how the hell did he win so convincingly? I'll give you a hint but it involves the fact that a lot of these demonized Trump voters are, indeed, very fine people that would give you the shirt of their backs if you needed it.
Less than a third of Americans cast votes for Trump in this cycle.
I was inartfully making a claim that voter apathy is a big thing, and as a result no winner can ever really claim to represent a majority of Americans.
IIRC 2020 was the only election of modern times where any candidate garnered more support than "did not vote." Putting it clearly here: neither Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan garnered support of the majority of Americans. It's not a partisan argument I am making here.
A form of government where a third or 40% of the governors routinely fail to exercise their duty has problems.
Logically their hands are dirty now.
Either way, it is such mouth foaming of the wokespeople that fuels the right.
For example:
> they're literally paying a guy to enact those policies and views.
Not literally, no. There are so many layers of indirection, that you could as well say everyone using money pays a guy... Either way, this applies in the same extent to people who voted for Kamala Harris so I guess we can say from now on, that Kamala voters literally pay to enact misogynist and transphobic policies and views.
Keep demonizing Trump voters, it will surely convince them to not vote Trump ;)(well they can't vote him on the 3rd term, but if you demonize them, they will sure continue voting against you).
It is rhetoric that tries to paint the picture that his supporters must be racist and transphobic, or at the very least tries to create a chilling effect where people are afraid to come out in his support for fear of being labelled as such.
> He questioned Harris' racial identity during the campaign.
It was an obvious jab at the identity politics of the democratic party. Besides - regardless of how stupid it is - questioning someone's racial identity does not make one a racist.
> He claimed at numerous rallies that boys would come home from school as girls without their parents knowledge.
I'm sure he means that literally and there's clearly no explanation for wanting to ban the promotion of sex-reassignment to children other than being transphobic.
Look, I don't like the man either and I'm nowhere near what he represents politically, but these attacks are ridiculously transparent to me and anyone who isn't so overjoyed to swallow them as truth they've become completely blind. It's fooling nobody but the already fooled. To everyone else it's actively off-putting.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/president-trumps-plan-...
I agree that you can’t generalise, since there are many voters who are simply not aware of positions / policy like the above. Having said that there are plenty who are, and they love to troll by saying the bad part out loud then dissembling through hand waving or claims of irony or victimhood.
Off-topic rant… I’ve seen identity politics mentioned over and over again the past 24 hrs. I don’t know what the definition is, but promising to dismantle the legal and medical apparatus surrounding an entire identity sure looks like identity politics to me. And personally, the only time I am exposed to any form of identity politics is when I see conservatives screeching about the topic whilst espousing heavily political opinions on why they don’t like certain identities.
That policy clearly and specifically targets children from a medical perspective, not an "entire identity".
You could say arguing the government will only recognise two genders or ban people born men from womens sports is transphobic, but it seems a weak position. The policy doesn't do anything to adult trans people that I can see, beyond the sports element.
The summary appears to be "adults can make these decisions, not kids", which a few years ago was seen as a fairly moderate position.
It is fine to say: "I think his policy is transphobic.". Do not say or imply: "If you support Trump, you must be fine with his transphobia."
Not only is the latter a disrespectful way to have a political discussion, it's also likely to backfire once people are in the voting booth. It is especially likely to backfire if people take the time to actually look at his position and find it to be moderate.
Logically those groups are racist transphobic and misogynistic support Trump. It's factual because it's logical.
In fact, I would much rather prefer conservatives go back to saying slurs. I'd much rather hear 'whore' or 'slut' than having policies to chase women out of state for getting a legal abortion.
I'd much rather hear 'fa*got' than have PrEP coverage revoked causing another HIV epidemic.
I'd much rather hear 'tr*ny' than have even more transgender people kill themselves.
Conservatives desire an ideal argumentative perspective where they can actively harm others and claim they didn't cause the consequences. It doesn't work that way. If you support an action and are aware of the consequences, you support the consequences.
MLK was arrested and convicted many times. Mandela spend decades is jail. Navalny was convicted and ultimately killed in jail.
When the government is after you for your political activity, such convictions don't count for much.
> He questioned Harris' racial identity during the campaign
When a candidate was selected for the office for belonging to certain race and gender [0], and bases political messaging on racial identity [1], I think it makes it quite valid for questioning.
[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/28/politics/joe-biden-potential-...
[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/turning-page-...
The "actual truth" of the matter does not matter today -- the perception is truly that he is a god-like hero, come to save the masses from the oppression of the elite.
openly going after him that way and trying to "destroy" him (letisha), using the legal system as a bludgeon for political reasons was a huge mistake. so this continuously worked for him, not against.
you could take anybody of any party and find a venue somewhere in the country with a cooperative DA and get a jury to convict on some felony. [1] people realize this and aren't fooled. so it just isn't done. it probably isn't done more because it's a self-own than because it's morally wrong, but that's politics.
the ends certainly do not justify the means, but regardless it's also an incredibly stupid strategy.
> racist and transphobic views
unfortunately, these words, as well as "nazi" and "fascist" have been misused, abused, and overused to the point of utter uselessness. so now it's far to easy for people to just say "maybe i don't like DEI or i do like having police dept. so apparently makes me a 'literally violent racist' now. this is just more of that same vitriol, ignoring it"
trump did not win the election. he just stood around while the radicals and extremists on the left lost it for themselves. bigly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_the_man_and_I_will_giv...
Yep. The ‘Twitter Left’ (pejorative) royally shit the bed with this one. Their unbridled vitriol contributed heavily to the overall ‘no words mean anything anymore’ nature of US politics. It’s really the primary way that the Left contributed to the whole phenomenon.
Dare point out that something someone did isn’t actually ‘fascist’, and dare suggest that the implication only serves to muddy the waters, and you’ll be chastised by someone that in all likelihood isn’t as much of a ‘radical leftist’ as you in any meaningful way.
I hope the loud kids are happy with where we’ve ended up. Evidently so, because it’s only gotten worse.
Post truth. As in people can lie, other people will expect they are lying, and still promote The liar.
people are still feeling the residual effects of the economy. they felt that and decided they wanted change. not to mention Harris had a 3 month ramp up, and people didn't know her.
twitter was filled with "woke" around 2016 and 2020 by the way; Americans still gave the Democrats the popular vote.
> people are still feeling the ... effects of the economy > they felt that and decided they wanted change.
this i agree with, except that effects are "residual". it's not improving for most people on the bottom 1/2. it's brutal out here.
> Americans still gave the Democrats the popular vote
now this is widely reported that as not true [1], CNN showing ~51.2%, which would be the best in 20 years [2].
[1] https://www.cnn.com/election/2024 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...
that was a mistype. I meant to say the residual effects of COVID on the economy.
> now this is widely reported that as not true [1], CNN showing ~51.2%, which would be the best in 20 years [2].
I think you misunderstood; I meant that the Democrats won the popular vote in 2020 and 2016.
They should have nominated Mark Kelly. The GOP ran on "this bitch hates America". You can't run on that against a 4 star rear admiral who also went into space.
It's clear with how people ranked issues on exit polls,
Absolutely nobody would have won for the Democrats. The economic sentiment was too powerfully negative
If I've learned anything since 2016 it's that you absolutely can convince ½ of Americans that a 4 star rear admiral who also went into space hates America.
Look how hard Fox has to struggle when they debate Pete Buttegeig or Sanders. Confident, well spoken, white male policy wonks with plans for the working class are Fox News worst nightmare.
Conservatives lose all principles and decency if Trump says it.
Criticizing a single or several military generals doesn't mean you are against conservative principles.
Despite what you may believe, military generals can be wrong, political, biased, etc.
Insinuating that they should be put to death, personal insults, etc.. all because they did things he didn't like. I would recommend searching for the rhetoric used using the two names I mentioned above. You probably don't care, but both have come out and said he's a threat to the constitution and a fascist.
Seems weird that conservatives would be okay with trashing top military brass in that manner.
He was a Captain [1]. And what on 'Earth'(!) is a "4 star rear admiral"?
This is it. I think people are drastically overestimating the complexity of the average voter's decision-making. We vote based off "vibes" in America unfortunately. Which means good ol' fashioned sexism and racism is all you need.
Trump didn't get more people to vote for him than 2020. That's very telling and seems to be something people keep ignoring.
Take a look at the demographics of who didn't come out to vote.
I don't know how many more elections we need to accept the fact that a large chunk of this country straight up won't vote for someone that doesn't pass the "Hey, I'd have a beer with that dude" vibes check. It's depressing but the evidence is the evidence.
Not sure whether it's more efficient to fix these errors first, or just power through moderating the thread manually, but boy does the latter suck.
Throw more hardware at it! Get a maxed-out Macbook same day delivered.
Server(s?) seems to be holding up well given what must be record activity levels.
Even in Safari? [1]
[1]: "As of July 22, 2023 Safari is the only browser that supports tail call optimization" https://stackoverflow.com/a/37224563
Saying that it would be worse with the other side is absolutely meaningless, no other administration (red or blue) let something like this go on for a year and even expand to another invasion down the line.
From Israeli intelligence sources itself, it was noted that the Hamas attacks were planned in part as a response to the abraham accords under trump (Israeli/Saudi appeasement and the movement of the US embassy to Jerusalem) which Hamas warned against.
Third, Trump literally ensured the US was the first country on the planet to recognize Israel's domain over the Golan Heights, which is internationally viewed as annexed land. And it's likely further annexations will be recognised as well, with no recourse, leading to the gradual decline of the Palestinian political project to the point that it ceases to be an issue (e.g. look at US history, its 300 million non-native Americans are here to stay, it's a political non-issue)
So yes, Trump is worse. Not only did his middle-east policy help cause the escalations in the first place, recognize Israel's annexations, Israel would be even more free to run wild in Palestine than before.
It is worse. Just look at how happy Netanyahu is with the Trump victory is all you need to know.
And even if we go by what they say instead of what they do and did, Trump at least keeps hammering the point that the war will need to stop as soon as possible. The Biden administration has openly supported the Israeli escalation in Lebanon very recently. And has shown absolutely no care for putting an end to this (other countries like France for example, supported Israel in Gaza but openly condemned what happened in Lebanon).
Again, Trump is a lot of things, but he does not seem to like war. Biden on the other hand seems rather unbothered, and tries to pretend to care while providing almost the entirety of the munitions that Israel has been using to genocide Gaza and invade Lebanon. But at least he doesn't recognize more Israeli annexations I guess (not that he ever condemned the settlements or did anything against the current settlements either, but hey he's just the president, not someone with power to do something about it right?).
So to see the mental gymnastics that Democrats do to openly support Biden while also sweeping under the rug the dire consequences of his foreign policy behind 'both sides would do it' is extremely off-putting. The side that's doing it right now is the side that they are actively openly supporting! I guess I am biased as I have close friends that had to flee from their homes and had their entire family properties obliterated in Gaza but still.
Ps: Netanyahu reacted to Biden's victory in a rather similar way, so what would that mean ?
What I will do is argue that Trump would've been even worse. What I will do is again, reiterate, that the current violence is in part a direct result of Trump's actions. For one in Saudi/Israeli appeasement, the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, the recognition of annexed lands. We know this to be true. These are massive and likely irrevocable steps in US policy that slowly will end the idea of a Palestinian state and turn them into a native-american minority in someone else's state.
Further, we know that Netanyahu is in power because of Trump's support. Trump was famously pissed at Netanyahu for congratulating Biden indeed on his victory, noting he recognised the Golan Heights as Israeli land during the election which massively helped his win. These guys are doing each other favours. There is absolutely no reason to suspect Trump would've restricted Israel more than Biden. Trump doesn't care nor do his followers. Trump has done things Biden hasn't, and he's likely to do more.
> Trump at least keeps hammering the point that the war will need to stop as soon as possible.
Biden has been doing the same for more than a year now, only its toothless. Trump may stop the war but only by giving Israel exactly what it wants. Do you think he's going to use his credits for a Palestinian cause, for what benefit to him? Due to his own ethical standard? Don't make me laugh.
Again, not defending Biden, but Trump simply is worse for Palestinians. I don't think he would've protected Palestinian lives any more, but rather set the scene for more Israeli support, more annexations, more military aid, and more future escalations. Israel has had lots of plans that didn't get pushed through (e.g. pushing Gazans into Egypt and taking Gaza as part of Israel) that might well be a reality under Trump.
> Ps: Netanyahu reacted to Biden's victory in a rather similar way, so what would that mean ?
No. He was the literally the first leader in the world to congratulate trump. For Biden it was extremely late, even 12 hours after the US media had called the election. He didn't refer to Biden as president-elect and in the immediate subsequent tweet went on to thank Trump for all that he had done. Now that Trump won again he called it a great victory and the greatest comeback ever with exclamation marks. It's not a regular political message 'congratulate the new guy and start up diplomatic courtesies', it's happiness. His cabinet celebrated the victory. 2/3rds of Israeli's support Trump. This is not for nothing.
I don't really know how to explain it but it's basically: we know what will happen if this administration stays, we don't know for sure what will happen if it changes. So I'm not at all saying that I'm supporting Trump for his Palestinian policy (lol), I'm just supporting anyone who isn't part of the current administration (meaning that a democrat candidate that didn't explicitly say that they wouldnt have done anything differently from what Biden did, like Harris has stated, would've been ideal)
Having a chance to talk to more people in meatspace this year, it was a surprise to find out how many people have only a passing interest in politics, but still vote. Like, the average user here probably reads 5+ news articles a day, but there are plenty of people IRL that will read one a month, or maybe just skim a headline. They don't really keep up-to-date with the race. They mostly vote by feel and pragmaticism.
People always talk about "shy" Trump voters, but what makes me more curious are voters that match the description above. If you put someone in a voting booth who isn't interested by news, who do they vote for? I mean, Trump has a lot of surface-level qualities - he's a tall, confident white man who's a successful boss of business and an anti-establishment outsider - and maybe that's enough to capture this demographic.
Then the last paragraph shows you have a long way to go.
> If you put someone in a voting booth who isn't interested by news, who do they vote for? I mean, Trump has a lot of surface-level qualities - he's a tall, confident white man who's a successful boss of business and an anti-establishment outsider - and maybe that's enough to capture this demographic.
I live in a rural working class region. I have beers with these guys all the time. They're my best friends and I'm the odd coder guy that works from home.
They do not care about the surface level qualities, besides the fact that he's hilarious. They might not read articles but they listen to podcasts a lot on their commutes at 4AM in the morning.
They don't want war with Russia, they're pissed about the COVID stuff, and they aren't happy with the price of gas.
They don't care that he's tall.
> They don't want war with Russia, they're pissed about the COVID stuff, and they aren't happy with the price of gas.
They want to grow their families, low prices, government to stay out of their business. They want to grow their side jobs, like contracting or excavating or HVAC. They distrust smarty-pants paper pushers. They work side-by-side with a sudden increase of illegal immigrants.
None of this is simply surface level, at least not more so than any other human being. We're all just humans bro.
What happened with covid? Trump was a complete clown, but they still support him? Sounds again, very, very surface level.
You say they don't care about his height, or his gender maybe, or his race, but if he were a short female minority, that would 100% affect their opinion, even if they didn't understand it or wouldn't admit it. Very surface level no?
We're now 8 years in of the elitists calling anyone who disagrees with them stupid, shallow, and racist.
You have learned nothing.
Your first sentence is based, if you can't see how following a couple of simple talking points like "herp derp gas is to spensive" isn't anything but surface level, you're actually stupid, because I'm telling you, there is a shitload more to gas than it coming out of the pump at a price someone wants it to be. You can't just vote for cheaper gas, trump isn't an oil well.
Also price of gas isn't the only things I mentioned. You hilariously omitted war with Russia, and all the other plausible reasons one might vote for Trump, like making illegal immigration harder than legal immigration, reducing bureaucracy, wanting to cut red tape to go to Mars, lower taxes.
You could assert all these things are somehow superficial, but that doesn't make it true.
It does seem like Russia will continue to push west once they take Ukraine. At this point it seems like this is almost inevitable without US support.
We have a lot of Ukrainian people in Canada and they are mortified by this event. To them, US support was a lifeline. Some friends were literally crying over this turn of events because they’re terrified for their family back home.
If Russia takes Ukraine and is emboldened to continue west, how will this impact the USA? Will you want to remain uninvolved and isolated? Does it really seem safe to allow this to continue?
Or do you think nothing much will happen and this hand wringing is unnecessary? Or perhaps that Russia won’t move further west, or it’s fine that they might?
It strikes me that a lot of Trump’s policy is that of a remarkably uninformed person who struggles to connect dots and anticipate the results of these actions.
This. The Neville Chamberlain comparison has been used to involve us in every major war since WWII and literally all of them turned out to be total disasters.
That's why this is so dangerous, he's a con man, and everyone supporting him has bought into the con, because I never see any trump supporter posting a clause that says they will stop supporting him the moment he crosses line x, they just support literally anything he does or will do.
Do you seriously think Russia was going to be able to attack another country if they took over Ukraine? 170,000 wouldn't even be enough to actually hold on to Ukraine (in Kosovo, we needed 1 soldier for every 34 people to preserve peace, that would be over 1 million Russian soldiers in Ukraine to occupy it).
This assertion simply doesn't make any sense to me.
I doubted it at first, but historically speaking, this is a completely Russian thing to do. That country has chewed through men like crazy under worse circumstances.
You went off topic and started defending all trump voters.
This is what America needs more of — people from different worlds just having beers together, and realizing that we’re all normal people trying to get by.
Do you know of anyone who can articulate a compelling case of why Trump would make a good president? I’m left-leaning but I want to understand where others are coming from.
1. Don't want war with Russia. Trump's presidency was relatively low-war. He's also expressed a great desire to end the Ukraine conflict. If the Donbas and Crimea is the price of avoiding Nuclear war, I'm on board. The moment that switched me to deciding on Trump was when Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala.
2. Protecting kids. I don't think kids can consent to medical gender transition. It amounts to state sanctioned child abuse. I have kids. Once you're 18 go ahead do what you want.
3. Illegal immigration. I lived in South America for 4 years. My wife is Colombian, we just moved back to the States. Legally. It was a long and arduous process to come in legally. That should be made easier (something Musk at least has espoused) and coming in illegally should be made harder. I know quite a few illegal immigrants and they are being abused by the urban elite to build their summer homes. They're not living a better life and they're stuck here.
4. Federal bureaucracy. The federal bureaucracy has become a parasite on our progress. Just look at what's happening with SpaceX. This ties in with the immigration thing. The problems we have with immigration are actually that the lazy and corrupt bureaucracy takes years to process something that should take 2 hours. (and does! even in "third world" countries like Colombia)
5. Trust. Everyone who hates Trump likes to talk about how much he makes stuff up. But he's authentic. Meaning he rarely reads from a script. He talks off the cuff. He's not controlled. I'm tired of having politicians that basically hate half the country and think we're dumb because we don't like to listen to their corpo-bureaucrat speeches
On the contrary, the risk of nuclear war increases when Putin gets Donbas and Crimea. Because what he wants next will be even more valuable to nations with nukes.
Appeasing sounds great but at some point you run out of other people's countries.
It's like Charlie Brown and the football.
If Putin ever gets tired of war, he seems to quicky recover and start again.
Do you have any evidence of these plans?
There was a press conference where they accidentally showed a diagram with arrows continuing through Ukraine into Transnistria, which is Moldova's equivalent of the Donbass.
You have to be very ignorant of geopolitics to think that there aren't more countries like Ukraine that Russia would like to return to their empire.
Some might join voluntarily but many -- like Kazakhstan -- won't without a fight. Unlike Ukraine, most of the others are not conveniently next to Europe and hence will be impractical for western nations to support.
After Ukraine falls, Moldova is next, and then the various -stans will be rolled up in quick succession. This will create a Soviet Union 2.0, which will be a net positive for Russia, and a mixed bag for the rest of the world. It'll likely be a net negative for Europe, which is why they're supporting Ukraine now.
"the rest of Eastern Europe" was the claim
Sure, not all of Eastern Europe is at risk.
So... is that okay then in your mind? As long as Putin only takes some of Europe, that's acceptable?
Which is not Russia advancing and occupying Eastern Europe at all. Nope. Just friendly neighboring acts.
But if you pay any attention to what's going on in Russia, there's not much doubt. Their TV talks about it and their politicians talk about it non-stop. While civilian economy is winding down and the only jobs that pay decently are in the MIC and the military; kids in grammar schools are being taught how to disassemble assault rifles (and that's in a country with historically paranoid gun controls) and how to hate the enemy (which, for Russia, is every foreign country). Their historic military anniversaries used to be just commemorations, but now they are all-consuming cultural events that last throughout the year, non-stop, as symbols of the military might and glory. They are trying to create a death cult, and have been doing it for the past 10 years, at least.
Russia is gettin North Korean troops to fight for them because they are losing so bad, but Russia is also an aggressive superpower hell-bent on invading even more countries with far better defenses than Ukraine.
This isn't accounting for Russia's disastrous demographics problem. The biggest reason they are moving so slowly is because they can build new artillery, but are demographically forced to do everything they can to minimize casualties.
It also isn't accounting for Russia trying to get a permanent peace deal 2 months into the conflict. That's not the behavior of a country bent on conquest.
Finally, I can't take people seriously when they are basically asserting that Russia believed they could take over all of Eastern Europe with just ~200,000 troops. When Ukraine changed from regime toppling to an actual war, Russia was caught with their pants down. They had to hire Wagner and draft prisoners to buy time to start pushing soldiers through training. If they'd been planning some large invasion campaign, they would have started serious troop training a handful of years prior and have millions of already-trained troops.
It's because it's not based on fact. These people (rightly so) hate Putin. But just because you hate Putin does not mean he is capable or intending to be Hitler.
Same actually goes for Trump actually. Just because you don't like the guy doesn't mean he's literally Hitler.
I’m asking rhetorical questions because I know you have a biased view on the topic. You’ve long forgotten the humanity of the other side because of the propaganda.
I see Russian propaganda efforts are still going strong but so easily disproven in this day and age.
You may want to try understanding what has factually been happened in the conflict. You know, for its own sake.
Instead of just asking rhetorical questions, and imagining the stories that you think people must be telling about it.
When invading powers think they've prevailed and have their prey over their knee, and attempt to seal their conquest with a treaty -- they always call it a "peace deal".
You knew that, right?
Pretty much the entire reason I stopped being a loyal democrat. It’s hard to call the other team a bunch of fadcists when your own party set up hotlines to dime out your neighbors for having a picnic in their backyard. Or close your kids school for two years. Or destroy your community by shutting everything down (except protests, but only for certain topics). Or threatening your job unless you take a medical procedure. Etc…
And let’s not forget the massive economic damage caused by all that. This election is basically the result of democrats absolutely horrible covid policies.
Bodily choice? Nope. Get a shot or loose your job.
Deaf or have language issues? Hope you enjoy not being able to read lips. Fuck you though. Only Covid mattered.
Education? Nope. Close schools for two years. Prevent kids from going to the only sanctuary they have from abusive care givers. Fuck kids. Only Covid mattered.
99%? Nope. Transfer massive amounts of wealth from poor to rich. But hey at least I’m privileged enough I can work from home.
Small business? Nope. Close small businesses and celebrate ordering all your shit on Amazon (to be delivered by poor working class, expendable delivery people so you can stay comfortably isolated working from home at your large house and not get exposed to those deadly deadly Covid germs)
Science? Nope. Almost none of the covid interventions had any science supporting them. We were literally running an uncontrolled experiment that nobody consented to.
Data? Nope. We will actively suppress people who take public data showing Covid isn’t as bad as portrayed. Let’s also treat deaths with and from COVID as the same.
Elderly care? Nope. Lock them in their care home and let them die completely alone. But hey, zoom calls, right? Oh yeah and when grandma dies, no funeral for him! Only George Floyd can have a funeral.
Minority’s? Fuck them. Only Covid matters
Community? Close it all down. Fuck them. Only Covid matters.
Anti-authority? Naw. Call this 800 number and dime out your neighbors BBQ. Cheer on when the police arrest somebody for sitting on a park bench or going onto the beach. Cheer on authorities towing cars parked at trail heads. Cheer on people getting fired for not electing a medical procedure.
Naw… these assholes deserve the loss. They brought it on themselves when they sold their souls to politically driven covid hysteria.
It blew mind how so many people I thought were in “my tribe” could so rapidly turn against virtually every single value I thought we shared. The real moral is fuck tribalism and if you are scratching your head wondering why Harris lost. This is why.
When COVID happened in March 2020, I talked to my Trump supporting cousin and she said it was being blown out of proportion because there was an election coming up.
I dismissed it and even expected it from the Trump side to say that.
But now I realize they were totally right.
It just goes to show that party politics has nothing to do with values- just does my tribe have power or not.
Glad to see there are some of us that still care about these basic American values, and willing to change our minds in defense of these values.
It's a spectrum of course. The friends you describe sound like they fall somewhere in the middle of caring about politics vs not. My point of discussion is on the people at the low end, as these are likely to swing. People past a certain threshold of attachment have had their votes locked in for years.
If you went to vote you obviously care about politics at least a little. The idea Trump won because people don't care about politics but then went and voted for him is inherently self contradictory.
That they're simply "attached" to him because he's tall or whatever is obviously elitist and it's exactly this mentality that repulses the people who voted for him, ie the majority of the country.
But I've come to the realization that both sides have an ugly component that is winning out on online forums. It's the classic tale of the vocal minority controlling the narrative.
So to answer your question, being habitually online, and using that as a basis for your opinions on the world will very much make you vulnerable to a serious blind spot.
The amount of shit-flinging on Reddit, from both sides, is shocking to me as a non-American. That people can espouse so much hate towards their literal neighbours is unreal to me. This country is so divided that I'm not sure how things will be fixed soon. Online has become such a cesspool that it's not possible to sit around the same fire any more.
I like to think that the majority of people are waaaay more moderate than what you might think from looking at social media. And I would encourage anyone to try and interact with more people in meatspace. Don't try and convince anyone of anything, but try to understand why they feel the way they feel, and have some goddamn empathy.
I blame two things for our current situation:
1. Social Media. In hindsight it makes perfect sense, but polarizing content will generate more engagement, and since engagement is a primary KPI for many platforms, that is what the Algorithms will select for naturally. It's a positive feedback loop, that resulted in people defacing their neighbours front-yard political posters, and then smugly posting about it on social media. Because of course that's how you'll convince them to vote for the other party.
2. Two party system: I like eating meat, and I would like to continue doing so if I can. But I also care for the protection of animals and sustainable utilisation of resources. But because meat is part of the Carnivore party's platform, and everything else is part of the Herbivore party's platform. People might support more worker's rights, but now in order to get that they must also be anti abortion. It's a broken system and it breeds deep deep divisions.
There was a study done on bipartisanship in the US senate, where senators were mapped into a 2D space and pulled together slightly if they voted together, and pushed apart if they voted against each other. 50 years ago the two parties were mixed together, then slowly but surely drifted apart. The animation over the years was like watching cell division. There's now only a couple of senators left in the centre, everyone else is far apart in two blobs.
I have zero in common with people that make their hatred of transgender people a substantial part of their politics -- but have never talked to one and have never been influenced by one in any way.
It's like talking to an alien species that singles out green eyes. Not blue, not brown, just green, but with a seething hatred that goes beyond anything I have ever felt. "You need to also hate the green-eyes or you're bad." is not something I can wrap my head around. Not now, not ever.
The Internet has nothing to do with me feeling this way about green-eye-haters.
Just take a look at the Trump rallies. Even if you agree with 100% of Trump's policies, look at how he talks about women. Could you repeat what he says in the workplace? No, you'd get fired. Not for being republican, but for sexual harassment.
If you were able to support anti-immigration policies without calling entire classes of people "garbage", then maybe people wouldn't get mad at you. But for a lot of republicans, they just can't do that. They don't know how to word their policy support without saying something incredibly offensive.
Or, for example, it's one thing if you're pro-life. But a lot of republicans will use words like "slut" and "whore", and even President Trump wants to "punish women". Again, this just isn't acceptable speech in most social situations.
Until your average republican and, hell, our president, figure out how to address these topics without being offensive, people will get offended.
Does my Colombian immigrant wife somehow hate immigrants and women because she thinks Trump would be better than Kamala?
This is what I'm pointing out. Having republican beliefs is fine. Can republicans voice those beliefs without bigotry? Often no. For Trump, certainly not. For many, they can't either.
If you just say "Trump addresses immigrant better", then okay. If you say "they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats, we have to clean up our country" then... yeah you're getting pulled into HR.
Actually hating immigrants and being politically (and sometimes factually) incorrect are two different things. The latter is forgivable.
So he didn't say it.
This kind of "but he didn't actually say the word hate" pedantry is unconvincing.
But you're right, even in that speech, he is pretty explicit about which kinds of immigrants he doesn't like; the ones from south of the border. He doesn't seem to have a problem with white immigrants. Thing is, I think it's true that racism isn't close to being the thing driving the political realignment since he came on the scene, but that doesn't mean it's false that he's racist. Both things can be true.
This is a lie.
> he is pretty explicit about which kinds of immigrants he doesn't like; the ones from south of the border.
This is a lie.
We're tired of your lies. Do you not get it? When will you get it?
I've heard Trump say many, many vile things about women. Certainly, almost everything Trump has said in the context of women cannot be repeated in a professional environment. If I talk like Trump at work, I am liable to get fired. And this doesn't even touch on him being convicted of rape by a jury of his peers.
He's also said vile things about immigrants and even naturalized American citizens. He's peddled propaganda about Obama not being a true American, undoubtedly on account of his skin color. He's questioned Kamala's blackness in very offensive ways, too. Not only does he speak poorly about immigrants, he treats black and Latino Americans like garbage. Sometimes his campaign outright calls them garbage.
After a certain point, Trump's misogyny and racism is undeniable. When people do deny it, I either favorably think they are ignorant to all he has said or their brains are detaching from reality. I would hope it's the former, in which case that no longer works because I've just informed you. If it is the latter, I recommend therapy to begin to address the delusions you have formed.
Sure. The "every woman in his life" part is a stupid statement to make. It's a complete suicide for one's credibility.
The comments about him not liking immigrants from south of the border (Mexicans? South Americans? Anyone who comes in through the southern border?) are also made up. He doesn't like illegal immigrants and is very explicit about that -- who would like criminals after all. None of it has to do with ethnicity and there's no evidence you can show me to claim otherwise, since it doesn't exist.
> I've heard Trump say many, many vile things about women
Okay, although not really relevant to what I responded to. Besides, without having examples of what you're referring to, I can only say that "vile" is subjective, and saying "vile" things is different from doing vile things. We've said all kinds of "vile" things about women in our friend groups, just like the women have said "vile" things about me and my buddies in their friend groups. This is normal, and if you claim to be above all that -- cool. Find friends who align more with your values, but don't think for a second you're better than me and mine. That will be decided by our actions and accomplishments.
> Certainly, almost everything Trump has said in the context of women cannot be repeated in a professional environment.
Indefensible position, no idea why you'd choose these words. If you said "some of the things" instead of "almost everything", you might have a case. Even then, what does it matter? In professional environments, you know what you can or can't say. In other environments, it's the same.
> And this doesn't even touch on him being convicted of rape by a jury of his peers.
Word against word about an event hypothetically happening in the 90s. There was no evidence, and this is lawfare. I know you haven't read the court documents, but you could check them out.
> A bunch of nonsensical accusations without direct quotes or context to anything
You could try providing some context on what you're talking about. A barrage of mindless accusations doesn't count for much, no matter the number. It just tells me you're repeating someone else's words.
> He doesn't like illegal immigrants and is very explicit about that -- who would like criminals after all
I said it elsewhere but I'll say it again - this is just plausible deniability.
Similarly, Hitler never hated Jewish people. He hated greedy business owners. After all, who doesn't hate the greedy?
Trump has explicitly stated he plans to remove protections for recent immigrants who are here LEGALLY and he plans to undo naturalized citizenship. You cannot claim he only hates "illegal" immigrants.
Regardless, that doesn't even touch on the incredibly racist comments he's made about Obama and Kamala. His issue is anyone vaguely brown and not a man, which is typical for a republican.
I'm not gonna hand hold through your delusions. Point blank, what you're writing is at odds with reality. I would respect conservatives much more if they weren't such cowards, but they typically are. These days, the cowardice and shame of conservatives has gotten so severe I have to ask leftist about Trump's policies. Seriously, conservatives won't even utter the policies they support because of the supreme shame they feel.
You can either admit Trump has said, often, many racist, sexist, transphobic, and otherwise offensive things, or you can deny it, in which case Trump is still the same person and now you're also a liar. So you can only hurt your position and, in fact, republican ideology as a whole by doing so. A lot of people already believe you to be liars - certainly, you shouldn't try so hard to prove them right.
He's talking about people coming through the border without being vetted, who are dangerous to the country.
Do you think that people should be able to come into the country freely without any vetting at all?
He was pointing out a specific problem, maybe your imagination turned that into the much more general "all immigrants are bad" when he's never actually said or suggested anything of the kind?
Just like you don't need to say "I hate women" to be a misogynist, you don't need to say "I hate immigrants" to send that message. You just don't.
Also I don't care about Melania. "I have a black friend" type arguments are shallow and worthless.
In reality, when Trump talks about immigrants he talks about illegal and problematic individuals. On top of that, he also talks about not immigrants a lot.
Trump was just repeating the same thing that many other people heard, a resident at a town council meeting in Springfield, Ohio claimed that some group of migrants there had eaten someone's pets.
Was it true? Who knows? People tend to repeat a lot of things they hear but haven't verified themselves. For example in that same debate, David Muir falsely repeated the lie that crime was down nationally. Do we take David Muir to HR?
That kind of obvious logical inconsistency, coupled with the assumption of moral authority (which for whatever reason seems to be the subtext for so many of these conversations), rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
So then Trump didn't do his own research and will pretty much just believe anything? Wow, it sounds like you think Trump is an idiot.
I don't understand this line of thinking from conservatives. When Trump is criticized on the things he himself has said people will argue we shouldn't listen to Trump, because he is stupid and he lies. So he's stupid and he lies... and yet you support him?
Either he is a strong leader, in which case we should take what he says at face value, or he is a fraudster, in which case we should expect misinformation. You can't have both. Talking down about the person you support reflects very poorly on you.
> David Muir falsely repeated the lie that crime was down nationally
Crime IS down nationally.
And you understand this isn't the type of thing that would get you fired from a job?
While people on the left may often be wrong, they aren't wrong in a way that can be interpreted as racism, sexism, or homophobia. This won't get you sent to HR - and that's the difference.
Conservatives have a really hard time supporting their position without using tools which are unacceptable in professional environment. If you don't support immigration, then great! Now defend that without racist rhetoric. Trump can't do it, so if that's your role model then you better find someone else.
You can say, for example, that there are challenges to gender-neutral bathrooms. Okay that's fine. You can't say "those dirty pervy <slurs> are molesting our little girls!". Do you see how that's now bigotry?
How many republicans are able to do 1 without ever touching 2? Very, very few. Certainly Trump can't, and Cruz can't either. If those are your role models then it's no wonder you can't express your beliefs.
Depends on where you are in the country.
Yes, it is not surprising that people who are in the minority in a place with a strong majority viewpoint are less excited to rock the boat. But very few places are like San Francisco.
I expect the same happens in conservative strongholds too, with liberals self-censoring. I know I wouldn't be comfortable openly discussing my (leftist) political views in, say, suburban Texas.
>I just cannot understand how someone can support someone whose rhetoric demeans her on two axes.
Hmm. Doesn't seem like you are interested in understanding.
How do you know they are speaking freely and not just trying to fit in while secretly cloaking their true thoughts and views?
Imagery, vibes, personality, all of these have powerful effects on people, educated or not.
Few can express how these intangibles impact them, and if they can they are usually won’t say it out loud,
This is why you NEED to run a primary, to debug your campaign. You don’t know how your candidate looks and feels to people in Tennessee, etc until you try it.
And these same people are gonna be pissed about a bunch of the stuff Trump does, because they truly had no idea what he was saying he would do.
This is how "thermostatic public opinion" works.
They have 401ks. Own small businesses. Have Mortgages. Send their kids to public schools. Budget for their families. Hell, even farmers are trading commodities and are very familiar with the markets. There are so many legitimate factors that go into who they vote for.
Try X.com for a full rounded perspective where all are welcome. Community Notes show misinformation, but do not ban someone from sharing their ideas.
I read all of the major sites, subscribed to NYTimes, WaPo, etc, and X.com is by far the best source of information.
Some people really loath Biden (me), the Democrats and/or Harris.
Not true at all (in terms of STEM degrees from legitimate schools).
Instead of asking why they didn't consider voting Democrat or why Trump was a consideration you respond with the equivalent of "well maybe you're not an intellectual"
I've seen a trend of Democrats resorting to attacking anyone that has different views than they do instead of taking the time to understand.
Anyone with opposing views gets labeled idiot, racist, Nazi, bigot, etc...
It does nothing to bridge the gap and bring people to your side. The opposing view still exists without being challenged. I would imagine it just pushes some people into an echo chamber of their own.
The whole system is just so polarized that both sides absolutely despise each other, and so both side dehumanize the other. I don't see this ever improving, it's just a shit show where both sides blindfold themselves to opposing ideas and fling as much of it as they can.
That isn't what they said. They said that the PhD, by itself, isn't sufficient evidence of intellectualism.
Which is a perfectly natural reaction to have to anyone who, like the commenter being responded to, holds up their PhD as a defense of their intellectual prowess.
Someone bragging about having a PhD is very strong evidence that they dont hate the intelligencia
It is a piece of paper, however, that credentials me as being part of the technocratic system.
Love your intellectual curiosity. The choice down to Stein vs Trump didn't raise any eyebrows?
Or why did I single out Biden for loathing and not Kamala (I pity) or the Democratic party?
Bragging about having a PhD is mutually exclusive with it.
>And the rise of anti intelllectualism in the USA continues to rise.
Trump is not anti-intervention abroad as matter of policy, which I could support. Trump is anti-intervention (pull funding for Ukraine) when it helps his team (Russia) and pro-intervention when it helps his buddies (Miriam Adelson and her zionist ilk). I do think Trump will end the war in gaza, but it will be because Israel exterminates the remaining inhabitants and annexes it and the west bank. Mark my words. There will be no consequences for them doing so, because they have Trump and the US by the balls.
And, I agree with you on the second point, that the US would be better off with stronger manufacturing. There was a lot of good stuff in the inflation reduction act and the CHIPS act. At least domestically, Biden wasn't the disaster that he was wrt foreign policy. But again, it seems like Trump's inability to stand for anything is going to cause issues. We'll get tariffs but those are a pretty blunt instrument that is going to decimate American manufacturing while it gets up to speed.
It's wild that we agree on the direction of the country yet come to such different conclusions. How does this happen?
Do the words Abraham Accords mean anything to you?
Similarly, I'm aghast with the war in Gaza, so I was on the fence on Trump.
Why do you think Trump will be better for the war in Gaza?
Genuinely asking.
I have friends from the "wrong side" of Ukraine and their family has been shelled by Kiev since Maidan.
As to Gaza, I see Trump and Kamala tied. I have to project Biden's admin onto her because otherwise she is completely devoid of content to judge her with. And this admin's record is that of Bibi bandolier.
So on the bloodshed in Gaza they're tied. On the blood spilt in Ukraine Trump's ahead. Advantage Trump.
Which leads me to Dr. Stein. A courageous Jewish woman who has the backbone to stand up to Bibi.
EDIT: if you want to know more about it Stephen F Cohen, a lifelong liberal married to the editor of "The Nation" wrote a book about it "War with Russia?". It came out in '19 based on his weekly interviews by John Batchelor. Prof. Cohen died in '20 ('21?)
With regards to Ukraine - how do you judge the accuracy of the French documentary you watched? Who financed it? Even in a far fetched scenario where you believe Putin felt threaten with NATO closer to his borders - does that suddenly make it ok for him to invade a sovereign state? Especially given they made an agreement to respect their territory in exchange for Ukraine giving up their nukes? Oh right - Russia's word means sh!t.
PS: Stein is fully in Putin's pocket. Don't buy the Green Party BS who only exists for a few months every 4 years.
The left "disappointed" you? That's a quaint way to describe material, personnel, logistical and diplomatic cover for a genocide. Real cute.
By contrast, all we have on Trump are mean tweets and executing a (stupid) decision by Congress to move the embassy.
"how do you judge the accuracy of the French documentary you watched? Who financed it?"
It's one of a vast volume of data that have definitively proven Biden's role. It is coherent other sources in a way that the narrative we're fed by the likes of The Economist isn't. The French made an easily digestible documentary for those who want to wade into a complicated story. It's a starting point. Prof. Cohen's another.
Btw, Hunter Biden's laptop - now validated in court - acknowledges Biden's culpability and form part of the whole of evidence.
"Even in a far fetched scenario where you believe Putin felt threaten with NATO closer to his borders - does that suddenly make it ok for him to invade a sovereign state?"
Do we really need to list the countries Democrat and GOP presidents have invaded for BS reasons? And Putin invaded for the genocide Banderites were committing in Donetsk. I have friends in Donetsk, so I have primary sources.
"Especially given they made an agreement to respect their territory in exchange for Ukraine giving up their nukes?"
The agreement also required Ukrainian neutrality,m. Meanwhile, Zelensky publicly declared in late '21 he wanted nukes. Anyway, there were the Minsk II accords that the Ukr. were in violation of.
"PS: Stein is fully in Putin's pocket. Don't buy the Green Party BS who only exists for a few months every 4 years."
Im not afraid of Putin. I'm afraid of the Lobby class in DC.
So how do you think it's possible that this "genocide" was taking place at the time, when even now, several years later -- you will not be able to find a single reliable report of any kind documenting it?
NATO funded the expansion and upgrade of Ukrainian army for the next 6 years, and then reaffirmed the Ukraine would become a member in 2020, leading to the boarder buildup. Russia demanded Biden to disavow membership or face invasion, and Biden refused.
From the Biden administration perspective it was a win win situation. Ukraine falls and NATO support grows. Russia fails, and Russia is weaker.
It did no such thing. NATO formally rejected Ukraine's membership application in 2008. And there it has sat, in the doghouse, ever since.
This led to Russia taking Crimea to send a message.
Russia's regime invaded the Crimea and Donbas on the 2014 on its own initiative, out of its own ideological motivations; nothing "led" it to take that action.
NATO formally rejected Ukraine's membership application in 2008
No, its not.
> After hot debate, NATO declared that Ukraine would eventually become part of NATO in 2014. This led to Russia taking Crimea to send a message.
That’s a very nice theory, except it has nothing to do with the facts. The declaration that Ukraine would “eventually” become part of NATO was not made in 2014, it was made at the 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest when NATO also bowed to Russian pressure and declined to offer Ukraine and George Membership Action Plans to serve as near-term on-ramps to membership. After that:
1. In 2010 Ukraine adopted a law prohibiting joining any military bloc, abandoning efforts to join NATO
2. Russia invades Crimea in March 2014
3. Russia invades eastern Ukraine in August 2014
4. In response to (2) and (3), Ukraine’s government in 2014 announced it would seek to have the non-bloc status law repealed and restart efforts to join NATO
. . .
n. At the NATO Brussels Summit in 2021, while again not granting Ukraine a MAP, NATO “recalled” the 2008 statement that Ukraine would eventually be a member.
I think it would be only fair to include serval things on your timeline. Between 1 and 2 of your list you have the revolution ousting of the pro-Russian government that passed the 2010 NATO laws.
You also have a number of escalations following #4. In 2016, Ukraine was granted the Comprehensive Assistance Package (CAP), comprising the advisory mission at the NATO Representation to Ukraine as well as 16 capacity-building programmes and Trust Funds. In 2018, Ukraine was officially given an aspiring member status. In 2020 Ukraine was given the Enhanced Opportunities Partner status, Which is that status formerly held by Finland and Sweden, and currently held by Australia.
>> It is all about NATO expansion into Ukraine and entirely avoidable. > No, its not.
Do you seriously think that we would be in the current situation had NATO flat out told Ukraine "no", or if the US had backtracked in the 2020s, instead of pushing forward?
They did in fact give a flat "no" to both George and Ukraine, and that was the key outcome of the 2008 Bucharest Summit. What you seem to be missing here is that despite the nice-sounding press release you shared in the other comment, their formal application, in the form of their requests for what's known as a Membership Application Plan, was denied:
From 2008, Russia began stating its opposition to Ukraine's membership. That March, Ukraine applied for a Membership Action Plan (MAP), the first step in joining NATO. At the April 2008 Bucharest summit, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer declared that Ukraine and Georgia would someday join NATO, but neither would begin Membership Action Plans.
One can read those various press releases ("communiqués") that came later as hedges / equivocations -- but that's all secondary. At the time, it was crystal clear that their applications had been rejected, and this was really quite a bit deal at the time.
As to whether we would be in the current situation right now: that gets into hypotheticals of course, but the main point is that Putin definitely did not launch those invasions simply "because NATO", but because his disappointment with the change of government in Kyiv in 2014 (and at least one of Putin's insiders has said there had been plans to at least re-take the Crimea since way back in the early 2000s). And as a way of perpetuating the regime's power, and cementing his own legacy.
That's why the whole NATO encroachment line is basically a foil -- it's just something Putin says, but it's not the reason he launched those invasions.
No, we’d be in a situation where Russia was firmly in control of Georgia, Ukraine, and probably Moldova, and was actively pressuring, e.g., the Baltic republics.
The way we’d be in a better situation is if NATO had told Russia to take a flying fuck in 2008 and extended MAPs and interim security guarantees to Georgia and Ukraine, and backed those guarantees up with forward deployed forces.
I agree that MAPs and security guarantees in 2008 could have prevented Russian expansionism.
I agree that Russia would have significantly more control and influence in Ukraine with a "No" answer from NAT0, and be forced into many Pro-Russian positions.
I think better situation is relative to objectives. I think generally from the military strategic perspective, the current state of war is close to optimal for the USA, and far superior to either Ukraine in NATO or Ukraine in Russian control. It drains and isolates Russia, increases NATO spending, and spreads NATO influence. It does so for a tiny economic cost and no US military lives lost. It is a military strategists wet dream. However, I also think the current outcome is abhorrent from the moral, philosophical, and humanitarian perspective.
My main criticism is that I truly believe that US chose to take action to bring about this outcome over the much more humanitarian outcomes. It is easy to play chicken with Russia when the US has nothing to lose and everything to gain from a collision.
My ideal outcome from a moral perspective would have been a militarily neutral Ukraine (because I do not support extension of NATO for the sake of expansion) and some sort of autonomous Crimea and Donbas as Russian clients (because I support political self determination).
What criteria do you use to judge hypothetical outcomes, and what do you think should be optimized for? I suppose this is ultimately the crux of these disputes, and the historical chain of events is just window dressing.
I know that I've probably been wrong ten times for every time that I've been right about something like this, but that didn't make it any easier to watch the last six or seven months. You're correct that there was nothing else anyone could have done to avoid the train wreck by the time Biden withdrew because the only way to avert it would have been to change speeds way back before we got to the sharp curve. The worst part is that I don't even think that Harris would have necessarily been a bad candidate if she had been given a proper chance from the start; there are articles as far back as early 2022 mentioning that her public appeal was hurt by the Biden administration tying her to issues like immigration and election reform. At minimum, ignoring the harm to her future electability showed extremely poor foresight, and it's not hard to imagine that it went beyond negligence to the point of outright sabotage of someone viewed as a potential threat.
In the end, I think his policies turned out to be great. But he didn’t have the skills to capitalize on the gains, to seize them and point to them as “wins”. Instead we often saw a somewhat slow, very old but good natured grandpa who was clearly not fully present all the time.
The policy on Gaza though, that made 0 sense. He had the power to bully Netanyahu into stepping back but consistently took no action. Solving that crisis would have been HUGE for reelection, keeping them festering only contributed to the feeling of chaos.
That would be landslide GOP, California goes red bad.
I won't get one about the other 100 click bait trash pumping out of the news machine.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12909752
The 2nd obvious observation is that HN now manage to fit 9435!!!! comments ( and counting ) in a single page. I downloaded it and it was ~18MB or 2.7MB zipped. And Arc is now Clarc and works on multiple core. I guess this thread is a huge battle ground for further optimisation. I also wonder if this is the most comment HN thread.
We're not ignorant, we care a lot and we're not being duped. We're really tired of the high gas prices, the moral hypocrisy of the left, the domestic law fare going on attacking political rivals and most of all, we want to afford our groceries and experience a better economy.
Telling us, that the entire base that voted for Trump is either heartless, naive or stupid just isn't going to cut it in reality. People that voted for Trump believe that the President is the diplomatic representative to the world for the American people. He literally got shot and stood up pumping his fist in the air. Joe Biden can barely walk down the stairs without tripping. Kamala had a "phone" call with an undecided voter just yesterday and when she showed the screen it was the camera app. Our choice this election was either the badass who after being shot wanted to show the crowd he was alive or two bumbling idiots. He's not my first choice, but he's a lot better then the Democratic Party offered as alternatives.
We want an American who will fight for business and fight for America to win. We want lower gas prices, which will then make it cheaper to transport goods across the nation and help lower prices in the grocery store.
Trump is not the best person, but he was the better option out of the two party system.
Do you think the President has anything to do with all that? The USA pumped more oil during the Biden administration than at any time in history. How is a President going to fight for business? Seriously, your comments come across like you have no idea what the President can or can't do. Do you understand where the power lies in the USA? It lies with Congress and massive corporations, the President is just theater for the masses.
But you don't even blink when Trump hammers on about the trade war he's going to start with everyone?
Musk even had to re-iterate his point, and make sure that you'll embrace for "hardship" in the near future, should they get elected.
I mean, good luck with those gas and grocery prices. You're gonna need all the luck you can get.
While I concede that subjectively, Trump can come across as badass and Harris might have been "phony" at times, when it comes to the policies both sides are defending during debates and even the way they express themselves verbally during debates, Harris comes across to me as someone who has better ideas and can explain them far better.
I think that the difference between politics in Europe vs the US is that the latter is based much more on cult of personality. And sadly that mode of operation is becoming more common here in Europe as well.
I personally don't care for the personal attacks and mud slinging. Let's bring back intelligent debates.
I approve of Trump's policies:
* A secure and stable border where we do not allow millions of illegals to cross into our country
* Abortion states issue to deal with
* Smaller government - hiring of Elon musk to eliminate thousands of Federal jobs
* Drill baby drill
* End homelessness for American veterans
* The free American college education through an online school
* Bringing medical production back to America
* The establishment of tariffs on Chinese made products to reflect China's tariffs on American imported goods
* Ending the wars
You can look and see how well that turned out in the long run.
It was a mess, but we had actual elections that mattered. The parliament had factions that were fighting each other. The president didn't run everything.
But people wanted a "strong hand", and so they got sold one.
Which is why he left the race back in July. Did you miss this fact?
Kamala had a "phone" call with an undecided voter just yesterday and when she showed the screen it was the camera app.
Actually this anecdote, and your touting of it, showcases just how naive Trump voters really are. The story has already been debunked on multiple fact-checking sites -- not that it needs debunking, because every single one of us knows how flaky phones are these days, and if you just brush them the wrong way you can set off all kinds of random apps. We all know this, because it happens to each and every one of us multiple times a day. (To add to this, it almost certainly wasn't her own phone, making such a mixup even more likely to happen). There's just absolutely nothing of substance here. Any reasonable person hearing this story would just roll their eyes and say, "Yeah right". They wouldn't even waste more than a second or two thinking about it, because it's so obviously bogus.
But what kind of reactions do Trump supporters have, when a story like this pops up on whatever website or newsapp they're addicted to? A variety we might guess, but judging by your own, for some reason it doesn't even occur to them to second-guess or fact-check the story. They just believe it, because a website told them it was important and they probably read other comments on that article page or social media feed with all kinds hyperemotional reactions indicating that it was a valid and important story, too, so by gosh, I guess it must be, right?
And then they go on the internet and share it with their friends, and they tell 2 friends, and so on, and so on, and that, in so many variations about other completely baseless rumors and smears, like Kamala's alleged drinking problem, her "hearing aid", about her "turning black" and so forth ad nauseum -- exactly as you've done right here, right now.
Not surprisingly, they also have no problem believing that a guy pumping his fist in the air means he's a "badass" or that this is demonstrative of the key qualities we need in someone to run the most powerful country on the planet. Instead of being yet another indication of the obvious shlockmeister and con artist that he is.
Which is what brought us to the outcome we got last night.
More recently Joe Rogan
She actually received a great deal of backlash from "vote blue no matter who" liberals for her criticisms of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party.
That's the most chronically online thing I've read in a while.
My brain remembers things.
And search isn't broken here
Yeah, right now is why that was a bad idea.
- US out of NATO? Trump will at least threaten that. The larger European countries are currently weak militarily by historical standards. There does not seem to be enough will in Europe to spend at US levels, outside of the countries on the front line, such as Poland and Finland.
- Ukraine war: Heavy US support for Ukraine probably stops. Whether Ukraine surrenders is up to Ukraine. Ukraine can fight on, but won't win much. Trump will meet with Putin and will give Putin much of what he asks for.
- Israel's wars: US support continues.
- China vs. Taiwan: Reduced support for Taiwan. China starts treating the area inside the nine lines as their own lake, and no US Navy craft go there. Pressure on Taiwan increases. China will attempt to get Taiwan to cave without actually invading. A blockade is possible.
- Trade with China: heavy protectionism on the US side. Few other countries will go along. Overall, China's influence in the world will increase.
- China's influence in South America will continue to increase. This isn't noticed much in the US, but it's big. South America now trades more with China than with the US. China controls about 40 ports in South America. The US had military bases around the world. China builds ports.
I am most worried about East Asia, really hoping Taiwan survives the next 4 years.
The US alone currently has more than 2x the military expenditure of the entire EU. The US also has a larger GDP than the entire EU.
The US supplies the main bulk of Ukrainian military aid. https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
The EU would have to make some very serious budgeting changes if they wanted to fill that void. A bunch of EU politicians would need to make the case for deep budget cuts, tax increases, war bonds, or some combination of those.
Even if it turned out that Trump has some backroom deal with Putin, and pushes hard for Ukraine to surrender - he'd be an absolute fool to not take that kind of money, and sell arms to European allies, and Ukraine.
That's money in the pocket for the US arms industry.
The silver lining is that the war costs much more to Russia - and that economic damage is accelerating as long as the sanctions are up. Russian interest rates being over 20% is a sign that things are starting to turn dire.
Whatever booming economy they're reporting, is a economy cannibalizing itself.
So, if Ukraine has the means to keep fighting, that will weaken Russia financially.
I don’t think your average US citizen realizes how expensive and difficult things are going to get as US global influence eventually hits an “unrecoverable dive”
The point is that US enemies are now openly mocking the US for stating "don't" so blazingly, then doing nothing. They see that the US will not use real force, so they openly defy the US now.
If it happens, it happens this year.
It would probably be a poor move for China to blockade Taiwan (an act of war). If the US decides to intervene, it would be very painful for China without a pre-emptive strike on US bases in the region. For all the talk of Trump as an anti-war candidate, he didn't seem to say no to many military strikes as POTUS, and this hypothetical would represent the US' best possible entry into a war over Taiwan.
I can't recall a single instance where China announced anything about Taiwan that wasn't reactive. They just keep repeating the "one China" policy.
Their official stance is that there's no need to invade Taiwan because Taiwan is already part of China and they reserve the right to use force to enforce their territorial integrity.
The practical manifestation of that policy has been that China and the US both get to pretend that their view on Taiwan is the reality and nobody will do anything if the other side doesn't rock the boat.
Their red line is a formal declaration of independence by Taiwan. As near as I can tell, all but one of their "military exercises" has been in response to actions that get close to that line in diplomatic terms https://globaltaiwan.org/2024/10/chinas-military-exercises-a...
During many of those exercises effectively blockaded Taiwan. They did that for a week after Pelosi's visit and they experienced no pain in response.
I draw 3 conclusions from these observations:
1) China will not invade Taiwan without some external stimulus
2) China is prepared to blockade Taiwan in the event of any attempts at secession
3) China has established that secessionist behavior is casus belli for a blockade in the eyes of the international communityThis means US soldiers dying in Iran if the escalation continues. I’d hardly call that “generally isolationist”.
Israel has no chance of fighting Iran without US troops. Trump received a hefty amount of Zionist money this time around (Bill Ackman swinging right is crazy) and is cozy with pompeo et al. The writing is on the wall.
Interest rates are either average, or below average, provided your lookback period is longer than the last 15 years of zirp.
Whether higher rates are good or bad is irrelevant considering the economic churn that occurs when a system that's built up around one set of assumptions (cheap money and low return on fixed income) has to rebuild itself around a new reality.
Trump publicly pressured the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low so he could campaign on the economy.
Had he not intervened inflation probably wouldn't have been so high in the years to follow.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/business/economy/bonehead...
Trump is currently leading by over 5,000,000 votes and there does not appear to be momentum to change that lead in the remaining precincts.
Obviously, I don't think 50% of the population is stupid, but every time I try to "understand" it's becoming increasingly clear it's about his "charisma" and "our team" and less about hard policies.
People out here voting against their own interests or blaming things on ignorance (inflation, etc.).
What is that? Supply chains have improved. The labor force has expanded, partly due to increased immigration, and that's helped to take some of the edge off of the supply-and-demand imbalances that we had when inflation was very high two years ago." https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/examining-how-economic-pla...
Immigration: "After hitting a record high in December 2023, the numbers of migrants crossing the border has plummeted since then. Harris and the administration have credited their tough anti-asylum measures for stemming the flow, although increased enforcement on the Mexican side has also played a key role." https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2024/where-trum...
Abortion rights: "At one of her first campaign events, she stated that if Congress “passes a law to restore reproductive freedom, as president of the United States I will sign it into law.”" https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/how-kamala-ha...
If you don't like what her positions are that's your prerogative but it's just not true that she did not have answers to these questions.
I think this is one of the disconnects: inflation has been decreasing. What I think people hear, which is wrong: the prices of things are coming down.
They're not coming down, they're increasing _slower_ than before, and before was bad. Prices for lots of things are much more expensive than before covid.
The reason that "inflation is better now" didn't stick is because half the country was telling the emperor they were clothed, and half the country saw a naked person.
What is your point?
There was a massive international financial crisis that outed the Labour government and brought in a Tory/Lib Dem coalition government based on promises of government austerity.
There was an independence referendum in Scotland where the main campaign point for staying with England was to ensure they stayed in the EU etc.
Then the Tories managed to pin the blame for the failings of the coalition on the minor partner and drew a line under that for the next election.
Then there's brexit, which was really a vote to put an end to bickering inside the Tory party. But the population, narrowly voted to leave the EU! This was very much a protest vote.
Then there's a utter crazy story of quick rotation of prime ministers and scandal and sleeze and very very poorly-received budgets and things.
So then this year Labour are back, and their main strategy was 'at least we're not the Tories'. They are not popular, but they are not the incumbents.
... yeah, fuck it.
in reality this was maybe priority #10
the main campaign point was currency
And then there's Nigel.
That would be the charitable interpretation, the alternate is that they are knowingly misogynistic, deeply racist and have strong fascist leanings to follow a flawed corrupt politician with cult-like devotion.
Shitting on your voter base is no way to win sympathy.
If you talk to the median voter their thinking will be like "something happened three years ago I was mad about" or "my husband wants us to vote this way because he saw it on TV" or "the Democrats want to legalize incest" or "I like voting for whoever I think is going to win" (and yes these are all real.) They especially do not have coherent opinions on economic policy.
Mainly the problem is the US doesn't have a coherent media ecosystem anymore and Republicans were better aligned with newer media, ie Facebook posts and bro-y podcasts like Rogan. So TV ads and "ground game" don't work.
Part of the reason why political media has seen such a decline in quality is because of that fundamental lack of understanding by the people. Neutral nuanced analysis doesn’t resonate because that’s some combination of too incomprehensible and not entertaining enough, which has led to the media landscape we have now where it’s turned to the televised version of junk food: hyper-processed with lots of salt and sugar and practically zero nutritional value.
That said, to some degree I don’t place fault on the people for this. A lot of it comes down to inadequacies in the education system when it comes to civics, wherein young people are not well equipped to become highly functional, fully conscious voting adults.
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Economic vibes with simplistic immediate effects if truly were a major factor then 2020 Biden would have won with bigger margins than Reagan did .
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Countries with far poorer literacy and school attendance rates and patchy education systems vote quite well informed.
In India for example every candidate (party or independent) must have a simple symbol because many voters cannot read, yet nobody is saying Modi wins because of lack of awareness or good understanding of his Hindu nationalist agenda or extreme right wing policies.
It is the third election for both, voters have had a decade to see the effect of the policies have had first hand no matter what they have been told
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Body electorates aren’t as dumb as we like to explain away.
Education, economics, even disinformation (foreign and local) all play marginal role, but can’t explain the core
At some point we have to accept that this is a deeply racist(who come in all colors) misogynist society with facist Christo white nationalism deeply ingrained.
There are aspects where we can compromise, or empathize and learn to live together on such as economy or immigration, basic human decency and healthcare are not it.
Also bit rich that we have to listen to their grievances, they haven't afforded anyone that courtesy, or respected the process of democracy.
If the results were other way round, we would be hearing conspiracy theories about election interference non stop. You can only compromise with people acting in good faith, it is clear that majority of Americans don't want to do that.
Echo chambers like HN or typical workplace of typical HN user give skewed image how much rational folks out there generally are. Most people that I ever met are trivially susceptible to smart manipulation via emotions, even to the point of shooting their own foot.
However we don’t get to use manipulation foreign, partisan or otherwise as crutch or excuse, post 2016 was full of that: oh there was Russian influence, he didn’t get popular vote or we didn’t know what MAGA stood for, as am sure there will be blame now on Biden not stepping down, Harris not having a primary, Gaza and inflation and dozen other things, and the platform would shift even more to right chasing the non existent center, instead of resetting to the left. The right has figured it out there is no centre and it is pointless to try to aim for it.
Bottom line is this is who Americans are , maybe the country can change and be better maybe not , but denying reality of is not the place to start.
Misogynistic was my first qualifier, it is not an coincidence that Trump has won only against women twice, and it is not an oversight that in 250 years America is nowhere close to electing a woman president.
misogyny is hardly the only factor but if there was woman on the top of the ticket than it absolutely seem to be number one factor .
You have to keep in mind it just wasn’t symbolic like in 2016. There are real tangible immediate threats to reproductive healthcare that this election also represented.
You're going to need to show your working here. How'd you get to this conclusion?
Women account for 51.1% population .
There are 25(15D:9R) female senators (25%)
There are 126(92D:34R) congresswomen (29%)
There are 2424 (1583D:815R) female state legislators (32.3%).
In addition to be poorly represented they are mostly democrats with 2-3:1 split from republicans.
It is important to note that ratio grows poorer higher the office , beyond senate it is 45:1 for VPs historically and 46:0 for presidency .
Given the higher life expectancy for women and fact that political office comes late in life they should be if anything more than 50% if gender does not play a significant role.
if not misogyny then it is on you to show why either women are specifically unqualified(!) or unwilling or uninterested in public office and why republican women in office are disproportionately missing in what is already low numbers
I can't see how anyone else in her position would have done much better. I don't blame Harris much.
I envision actual politicians and journalists calling trump what he is more rather then less.
Well, the US Supreme Court decided more or less exactly that presidents can break the law and get away with it: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czrrv8yg3nvo
And "calling him what he is" has so far failed to sway his supporters, I don't see how it will do it now. OTOH, he (probably?) won't stand for election again, so the point is probably moot...
I stand by "politician should not mean being lawless". US Supreme Court being pro lawless when it comes to GOP is just politics of US Supreme Court. It does not mean law should not matter or that trying to apply law is fighting dirty.
no, they did not. The court pointed out that the remedy (specified in the Constitution) for a president who breaks the law is impeachment and conviction by the house and senate. After which, that former president could be subject to prosecution.
It is funny how these things turn out and who actually does what in the end and how differently it is treated.
I agree, but I call it "dirty fight" because that's what it's perceived as by the Trump supporters.
It is not dirty fight, full stop. Dirty fight would be to act like Trump and his supporters do or approaching it.
I suggest Democratic party to become more aggressive rather then forever trying to paint themselves as "the adult ones" and forever put themselves into center. It just does not work and serves only to allow overtone window to move toward radical conservativism.
I suggest we stop demanding that "both sides" are described in the same terms. I suggest we stop following nonsense:
> We need to talk to them, we need to understand where they're coming from, we need to help clear the air between "us and them" so that there won't be an "us and them" and so we can _together_ avoid people that tell us what we want to hear.
For example, conservative Christians are coming from the point of view of someone who thinks women should be submissive to men, should have less legal rights, abortion and contraception are wrong because they allow for safer sex.
For example, quite a lot of people in GOP are coming to it with idea that being gay is disgrace, being trans deserve severe punishment and that being criminal is cool as long as you are rich white guy.
Actually engage with these rather then euphemism them away.
The economy might be what swung this vote, but long-term it's hard to understate how much ground the D's have lost among religious voters for "embracing sexual immorality". Believe it or not, bringing up hypocrisy does work on many of them (at least it might make them stay home) and mere apologies won't erase it. Latinos are where this jumps out in statistics, but it's far from limited to them.
Possibly the reason D's didn't do that (much) was because it would have little down-ballot effect, and no effect on future candidates?
(on another angle, we could've seen "we have reined in Trump's inflation so at least it won't get worse", "Trump gave unconditional handouts without the Democrat-recommended constraints", etc.)
They reelected the DA that's prosecuting Trump on one of the populous counties, on the same election where the state swung further towards Trump.
Outside of the urban areas even "blue" states are red, or "purple."
The reality is that America voted for this guy. It's not nearly as regionally divided as liberals in America want to think.
For me, it means not going there anymore. I just won't cross the border for any reason.
Canada is next. There’s no escape from this kind of madness.
Not with a bang but a whimper, etc. etc.
But they can feed themselves.
And yet they hold democratic counties hostage. Somewhat like parasites.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/southern-crossroads/...
Alberta outright banned renewables development for 6 months and then slapped a huge set of restrictions on them after that "moratorium" was lifted. A tax on electric car owners added. The conservative parties nationally are on a constant drum beat about the national carbon tax and it's doomed. Weak emissions caps we have are also doomed. Any little things that have been done for the last 10 years will be undone.
At a recent party convention in Alberta, the ruling party passed a climate denial resolution as official party policy.
Amazingly lots of people on this forum trying to sanitize what these people are about.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2024/11/06/UCP-Members-More-CO2-H...
Sigh. It's always a minority of humanity that has to save the rest from themselves, as they kick and scream and resist every step of the way.
Democratic counties produce goods that generally require an education and are significantly more valuable. Think big tech, big pharma, engineering, etc.
Democratic counties would be just fine without conservative counties. The inverse is not true.
If Conservative counties stopped sending food to Democratic counties, the Democratic counties would collapse into chaos LONG before they are able to secure alternative food supplies. It's a Hell of a lot easier to go 90 days without "Big Tech & Big Pharma" than it is to go 90 days without grains and chicken from flyover country.
1. The Blue States having their farming largely in Red Counties.
2. The Blue Counties, aka the cities, do NOT have enough food to last until they can negotiate. New York City has a ~5-day food supply: ( https://www.nyc.gov/assets/foodpolicy/downloads/pdf/2016_foo... ). In 2017, 20% of New Orleans was considered food insecure: ( https://icic.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ROCK_Resilient_F... )
Let's just assume you can secure beef and other foodstuffs, from, say Argentina, on DAY ONE of a Red-County food blockade. A ship from Buenos Ares to Los Angeles takes 20+ days. So even if you acted immediately foodstuffs would arrive in LA two weeks after the supermarkets would be empty.
No, I was aware of this, I just didn't think it mattered as much, and I still think it's not that big a deal if there are a few months to adjust.
> The Blue Counties, aka the cities, do NOT have enough food to last until they can negotiate. New York City has a ~5-day food supply: ( https://www.nyc.gov/assets/foodpolicy/downloads/pdf/2016_foo... ). In 2017, 20% of New Orleans was considered food insecure: ( https://icic.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ROCK_Resilient_F... )
On this I stand corrected. I was thinking of all the food in the state though, and I mean all food period. Everything in warehouses, everything in every supermarket, etc.
In an emergency situation, all the food in NY state would surely last more than 5 days? Besides, I don't think it would take that long to negotiate food trade for a short term emergency period, maybe from Canada.
If the red states really could hold blue states hostage over food, then, well, that sucks. I guess ideally trade could be stopped gradually in a more civil way instead of blockades where people would suffer, I'm sure a ton of shit red state people buy on Amazon and Walmart has to come from blue states, so there would certainly be something to leverage.
My point was inaccurate, but I think the larger point I was trying to make still stands - eventually, blue states would not need red states if they could move farming to blue states, there is enough land to do so especially looking at the latest map with how few blue states there are. Red states really have little to offer that blue states can't replace in a few months. The inverse is not true.
I'm having trouble finding detailed sources on food warehousing, but what I've seen so far suggests that because of Just-in-Time logistics, there is actually very little food warehousing away from the "last mile" distribution locations. Keeping large quantities of food stored is expensive (climate control, other methods to avoid contamination) and laborious (government-mandated inspections, etc.), so I'm not surprised if there aren't many places sitting on a 30 or 60-day supply of chicken breasts or something unless some government agency forces them to do it. Businesses see every type of unused inventory as a cost center.
> I guess ideally trade could be stopped gradually in a more civil way instead of blockades where people would suffer,
Well the whole point is to communicate the "nuclear option" of non-gradual blockade that risks immense suffering.
> I'm sure a ton of shit red state people buy on Amazon and Walmart has to come from blue states, so there would certainly be something to leverage.
It has to come through Blue ports, but something like 70% of Amazon products are made in China: ( https://www.statista.com/chart/33376/share-of-items-sold-on-... ) ( https://notochina.org/how-to-tell-if-a-product-is-made-in-ch... ). Sourcing stuff from China is about to become massively more expensive for everyone if Trump goes through with his tariff plan. The other problem for Red States is shifting overall logistics chains away from West Coast container ports (such as Long Beach) to Red Texas and Florida ports. Even if the capacity requirement drops because Red Counties have lower populations than Blue Counties, it's still a logistical headache, and expensive.
> eventually, blue states would not need red states if they could move farming to blue states, there is enough land to do so especially looking at the latest map with how few blue states there are
If it was reasonably profitable for that land to be used for agriculture, you better believe these massive agri-businesses would already be raping, uh, I mean "cultivating" those areas.
> Red states really have little to offer that blue states can't replace in a few months. The inverse is not true.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs would suggest otherwise: people can absolutely live without Apple Vision Pro and Hollywood movies.
Also consider that law & order in cities is already tenuous (partially thanks to Defund the Police and the Summer 2020 riot fallout). Do the cities have the law enforcement manpower or WILLPOWER to suppress even a week's worth of absolute chaos from supply disruptions before they devolve into Haiti-level anarchy? They can barely maintain order even now. ( https://www.foxnews.com/us/fallout-from-weekend-chaos-philly... )
I liked this podcast from Zachary Elwood:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5DYBm6we1WcTtktFpqHj7K?si=A...
Give them the show they want, promise them something and they happily make you their king.
They don't ask you to fulfill the promises. They just want to hear them.
That's it.
All they had to do was actually do anything about the tens of millions of immigrants coming over the board, but they ignored it and Trump used it against them.
The Democrat party is ran by a bunch of idiots. Hopefully this is a wake up call for them to get with the real world on issues.
Calling someone Hitler when they clearly aren't is also not going to help people support you especially AFTER he was president before and they experienced a presidency under him lol.
> In the last four years, those “extra-continentals” have risen to 53 percent of all court cases. They have arrived from countries such as India, China, Colombia and Mauritania.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/interactive/2024/...
Fine. I'll bring some of my own statistics. There might be ten million undocumented immigrants living in the United States total. There are fewer than half a million illegal border crossings a year; if the expected lifespan following an illegal border crossing is, I don't know, forty years, then it's obvious that the overwhelming majority of illegal border crossings don't convert to undocumented immigrants. These numbers are easily available on the relevant Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni..., which itself has extensive citations from a wide variety of sources. Saying that there are "tens of millions crossing the border" is clearly and blatantly incorrect.
And, of course, that's not even getting into the real meat of the issue, that's just sarcastically calling out the surface-level lies. No, what I really want to say about illegal immigration is that undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than either documented immigrants or outright citizens, that they pay more taxes than they cost in government spending, that they do not affect job access or pay of legal residents, that they prevent offshoring, and that they contribute to GDP via spending and labor. Undocumented immigrants are, as far as I can tell, purely positive contributors to America at every level I look at, for the people working alongside them and going to school with them all the way up to the grandest statistics. If we truly wanted a healthy economy - if we wanted more citizens to have better jobs, if we wanted more money for education and healthcare, if we wanted less crime and less exploitation of labor - we would legalize all of them and invite more in after them.
Also, I thought competition was good and that we needed more of it. That's the usual fiscal-conservative line, right?
I'll further note that there are more job postings open right now than there have been at any time since 2000, that unemployment right now is incredibly low considering the pandemic and 2008, that the unemployment that still exists can be fairly easily traced to the previous trump presidency rather than any other cause, and that multiple detailed studies (refer to previous Wikipedia link) fail to find that illegal immigrants have any effect at all on the jobs or pay of American workers. Having more workers in total increases spending which opens up more jobs, for example, standard jevons paradox stuff. Your conclusions are not supported by any kind of evidence, your models do not describe or provide accurate predictions of reality, and your proposals will not work the way you think or claim they will.
Many people are coming in, some of them don't integrate and cause problems, the center says it's not a problem and the left says let's have more of them.
More people are coming in, problems are getting worse (both real and imaginary), people are getting upset, the right realizes they can use that and they build their whole agenda or that and win the elections.
The number of countries this has happened in increases, so non-right parties need to rethink their strategy if they want to stop losing.
A 10% increase in 'right' votes means roughly 10% more influence for the 'right' opinions.
In the USA, a tiny increase in 'right' votes means 100% more influence.
One bigly reason I voted for Trump was because his first term was by far the most peaceful both this country and the world at-large ever was in my lifetime.
For four years we didn't start or join any new wars, we even flat out refused to when the military industrial complex begged to Trump to start one with Iran after they shot down one of our drones. North Korea didn't fire a single missile and China wasn't anywhere as loud with their saber-rattling (I'm Japanese-American, I care deeply about Japanese security). Russia didn't invade Ukraine. Israel and Hamas/Hezbollah/et al. weren't brutally killing each other.
For four god damn years life was actually peaceful, and I want that again.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_Korean_missile...
> Russia didn't invade Ukraine
Russia invaded in 2014 and the conflict stabilized (but didn't stop) in 2015.
In the meantime, the Syrian civil war was raging on.
Similarly, if we ignore all the events in the prelude to WW2, the world was a very peaceful place. According to Hoover, Roosevelt was a threat to world peace, not Hitler.
I'm not implying anything with the analogy, I'm only trying to illustrate that the world was not peaceful between 2016 and 2020, despite the president's efforts.
Perhaps if we had gotten 2 consecutive terms, it might have provided more long term stability.
So you vote for change, yet the economics policies stay as unequal as always. But in the process you supported a rapist and a criminal who calls execution of journalists, suppression of women, blatant racism and just death and destruction of non-privileged people everywhere.
It wasn't the case last time with Melania. And it won't be the case this time with Musk.
It is not even that since what they basically propose is to dial down the war in Eastern Europe but get more involved in the war in Middle East and possibly soon in East Asia. That stance always seemed very confusing to me as a non-US person.
Europeans seem to overestimate how close America is to Europe.
If you live in the Western half of the United States, Asia is much closer than Eastern Europe, most US military deployments are in the Pacific, and most foreign trade the US has is with Asia.
Both parties campaigned on leaving the Middle East, but it is difficult to disengage from the region without devolving power to a regional ally (similar to how the US historically let France take the reigns on African relations). Historically, that ally has been Israel and Turkiye, but relations between the US and them have fallen precipitously.
More like stop trying so hard to bring us closer to a WWIII. The USA's current foreign policy is the main cause of all the turmoil we're seeing in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Anything that can change it should be welcomed by anyone with a desire to live.
Faltering US support for the Ukraine will tempt Russia into more territorial expansion towards or even into NATO.
China will probably ramp up aggression against Taiwan and against the Philippines. It is a minor miracle that no lethal shots have yet been fired in the persistent and aggressive military incursions into Philippines territorial waters. Several navy vessels have already been damaged this year.
I believe that the best way to release tensions in the Middle East would be by improving relations with Iran - but Trump bombed the deal that would have enabled that. The relqtive economic stength of the US could have been a good motivatir. Now Iran is aligning itself with Russia.
Nobody has attacked the USA since Pearl Harbor. Military strength has been used to impose hegemony over other parts of the world, not to protect the nation.
> There are a few places in the world where US involvement can lead tonkore stability.
How can you say that after the countless deaths, pain, and strife caused by the USA in the Middle East, Asia, and South America?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
Seems big to leave out especially since your next remark is about strife caused by the USA in the Middle East...
The 11 September is the perfect example of the USA bringing instability to the world and giving life to future enemies through their reckless interference in the Middle East.
I'm not a scholar of military history. I assumed that no one would dare attack the US because the US military is larger than the next ~dozen militaries combined?
But the utility of military build up is non-linear. There comes a point where further gains for your side are marginal while further losses for your adversary are existential. A neutral Ukraine represented a sufficiently balanced state of power that rendered war negative sum for Russia. We overextended ourselves in trying to peal Ukraine away from Russia's orbit. NATO in Ukraine would have been a strategic noose from which Russia would never escape. The Ukraine war is blowback for American policy towards Russia, i.e. expand NATO up to Russia's border, bait Ukraine and Georgia for NATO membership, foment anti-Russian movements in Ukraine that lead to the expulsion of the Russian-friendly president of Ukraine and install someone western-oriented.
Reminder: Ukraine was (strongly) against NATO membership before Russia invaded in 2014.
NATO threat is a red herring that Russia likes to dangle in front of the western countries to cover up its expansionist agenda. The only reason it's "afraid" of NATO is NATO can make that agenda much harder to pull off.
pretty much the democratic party has to introspect and stop blaming voters for their failed campaign.
> The Democratic Party.. lied to the American people about the cognitive health and fitness of the president. It prevented, threatened, litigated and otherwise eliminated the ability of other [Democratic] candidates for the primary to compete, to get on ballots, and to even participate in a debate.
The reality is, nobody who was wringing their hands about Biden's cognitive abilities, or his son's legal problems actually cared about either issue. If they did, they wouldn't have voted for an mentally declining criminal today.
I agree that Democrats denying Biden's cognitive decline was a disaster.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/01/politics/donald-trump-liz-che...
Maybe I'm a bit too optimistic, but rather than "people want Trump" I read all this debacle as "people want something different from the Democrats".
Democrats still play by the rules for some reason and don't call out the shit done by the other party with simple enough terms.
At the same time, the Republicans have perfected the twin strategies of sowing distrust in neutral media reorting and playing the victim card consistently to everything, even their own attacks.
By the time the first ad-libbed bold faced lie is checked and sourced, he has told 42 more. It's not a game you can win by playing by the rules.
A large percentage of Americans aren't interested in what the Democratic Party is selling. The party can either stick to their policies and live with these kinds of showing, or take some time to really think about what the American voter is looking for.
What does it say about Trump that so many of his lawyers and advisors ended up in jail and that so few former cabinet members endorsed him? What does it say about his supporters who cared not that he raped children with his pal Epstein?
Remember when Cruz and Lindsey Graham spoke honestly about Trump just before November 2016? Recall what they said then to what they say now. It’s a cult.
Maybe you're too young to remember Bill Clinton?
He was accused of sexual harassment by a number of women (including a rape). His relationship with Lewinsky (22 years old), is highly exploitive in terms of the power he held over her career. While he might have supported women's right politically, he was certainly exploitive in his personal life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_sexual_assault_an...
There were also a number of "questionable business dealings" in his past. Arkansas land deals, Whitewater, almost impeached by Congress for lying.
But I'm sure you'll say "oh, those were just trumped up charges by the Republicans". Ok, then don't blame Trump voters when they think "oh, those were just trumped up charges by the Democrats".
So while people got worked up, he got re-elected handily.
It's funny to me when people entirely overlooked Clinton's life because they liked him as a President and they liked his policies.
You'd think the Democrats would know this.
It would benefit humanity if people were taught to be consistent in their views. If they understood that extremism is when the cause is more important than the truth.
You’d be wrong. I don’t have your apparent level of inconsistency.
America isn't an idea any more than England is an idea. We're a specific group of people with a specific heritage.
Thats an awfully arrogant position to take.
All these show me that American culture is spiralling towards incompetence, just like the Romans.
If you look at American history, it's been much worse.
I’m not saying Trump will fix any of this. I’m just saying people feel like PC culture has gone over the top while a 20oz Coke has tripled in price. Harris campaigned on “we’re not going back” but a lot of people would trade Trump’s insanity for housing prices of yore.
In addition, people tend to associate outcomes with the administration in power even if it’s due to a prior administration. Inflation appeared under Biden, not Trump. Inflation decreasing also does not mean prices decreasing.
It's nonfalsifiable. People will settle on the simplest observation:
it happened under Biden
But of course that’s far too much nuance for the average voter anywhere.
Also how many people blame it on Biden while giving Trump credit for Obama's work.
Political memories are very short. Trump can get excused for the botched Covid response because it’s ancient history, but Biden can’t get excused for global inflation which followed from the same disaster.
This comes across as very out of touch. By "navigated it" you mean brought inflation under control. But it's not like prices came down.
The $1,500 per month grocery bill that was $1,000 in 2019 is still $1,500.
People don't look at the CPI and think "phew, glad the Fed was able to get inflation back to target" they think "I remember when I used to have $1,000 left over each month".
And they remember that every single month.
The lack of basic macroeconomic education is truly becoming an ever more problem in free societies.
Living in capitalism while not really understanding basic tennents makes one ripe for manipulation and that way endangers freedoms we all cherish.
8 years later, after all of this political baggage, prosecution, and media repudiation the Democrats managed to lose in resounding manner – not just the electoral college, but the senate, house, and popular vote.
This is after what is arguably a great Biden presidency, economy-wise. The Democrats have centered their entire identity for the last 8 years about being anti-Trump. There are no bright spots in the results for them, no messaging that they can hang their hat on, and build on going forward. From a base building perspective, this is brutal. The next election is square one for them.
(Which was good! But voters hated it because they don't like change and don't like inflation.)
In this case they were blocked by Manchin/Sinema from anything like filibuster reform, but they did get some big important economic reforms in.
Some people are better than other people at convincing other people to do things in a certain way. Might have a little to do with genetics, probably more to do with education and size of platform, which is mostly a function of whose legs you popped out of and a little bit of whatever magic sauce makes you, you.
Most people that are good at convincing other people to do things a certain way are doing so in a way to personally enrich themselves. Sometimes they have a little more empathy, or perhaps intelligence, and know the personal enrichment can't be too flagrant, but regardless they all share that goal.
Unless one becomes too much of an outcast from the other good-convincers (think e.g. Lenin, Mao, CKS, Washington and his friends) and they convince everyone to go kill the followers of the other good-convincers until an equilibrium can be reached where either only one good-convincer is being enriched or at least both are to an acceptable degree.
This dynamic will play out eternally. Part of the mechanism of good-convincerness being sustainable is that you never disturb that equilibrium too much, so in this case to ground it, hence why the democrats tried to pivot right to fight accusations of being leftists (an ideology very much opposed to this idea of the best convincers being extremely personally enriched). In the end, they didn't really lose. Kamala will continue to likely have a powerful political career, and if not she can at least write some books and die phenomally wealthy like Hillary will. Democrats can switch from having much federal power to being an opposition party. Nothing actually changes, the message simply switches from "give us votes and money to enshrine whatever it is you care about" to "give us votes and money to fight fascism rah rah." Both messages are of course a lie, the real message is "give us votes and money in a way that allows us to continue to collect votes and money."
The message is that in the global zeitgeist, the natural human tendency among everyone, good convincer and not, for liberation, personal agency, and fulfilment, is obviously not being met when no matter where they turn there's someone telling them that if they want these things they have to all support a given good convincer. In the early Soviet Union, communist leaders too advantage of the opposite zeitgeist to achieve the same thing. Right now, the reactionaries have acquired a greater share of the zeitgeist, maybe because their messaging coincides well with several refugee crises and the inevitable climate refugee crisis.
In my personal opinion these tendencies can't be rewarded in this form of top down hierarchy where it's good-convincers pitting their supporters against each other. Imo we can overcome the nurture and saecular aspects of what makes someone a good convincer (education, self determination, material conditions provided for) to make everyone more level in their ability to convince others to do things. Early societies had this more "flat" organization, where the best convincers lived basically on raw rhetorical ability (look up some old Cherokee transcriptions for their interactions with missionaries, they were genuinely hilarious and viciously good at humiliating rhetorical opponents), and even that could only go so far.
During the Spanish civil war I believe the anarchists did a phenomenal job educating and "leveling the playing field" among an astounding number of people - off memory as I'm on my phone, something like 70% of their economy had been syndicalized. Somehow they convinced a shitload of the population to think deeply about their engagement in society and politics and become active, daily, if not hourly, participants in that process.
This fascinates me and I want to try this again. It of course involves sucking it up and talking to Trump supporters which I find very difficult because they say some very silly things, but regardless, if an alternative power structure isn't injected into the mix, the game of good-convincers playing hackey sack with the zeitgeist to maintain power will never end.
What was the opposite zeitgeist?
That’s a good attitude, because nothing is truly solved with a Trump presidency. His victory was always just an expression of the undercurrent. The electorate has just voiced it, for a second time, but that’s all.
Also, the DNC should really stop forcing unwanted candidates down people's throats. It doesn't work, even when you spam social platforms with your narrative.
Can you point to any examples of this? I don't think the official Remain campaign did anything of the sort. Insulting the people you are trying to convert is a poor strategy, which is why I don't believe they did it.
When you say "were called bigots, uneducated, stupid, racist, etc", what I think happened was that the Leave campaign alleged that that was what the Remainers thinking/saying and it gained traction.
Another argument would be that Vote Leave broke campaign spending rules. In countries with legally binding referenda, that would justify rerunning the referendum. But in the UK it was "only advisory".
Which is also why Republicans calling Democrats childish names such as "Dummy-crat" or saying "socialist" (or "commie") for all things to the left of their Overton Window doesn't convince any to their left to change their minds rightward.
I used to live in Cambridge; I knew only one person who was a long-time UKIP voter in EU elections, who was "delighted" by the result of the referendum.
Even though I'd already been openly discussing moving to Germany ahead of the referendum, and went on an InterRail trip immediately before it to find a place to move to in the event of Leave winning, he did not comprehend that my reaction to the result included cutting him out of my life entirely.
He wanted the Cambridge to shrink, I left. That's his face leopard.
(As for intelligence: he also sometimes boasted of being in the international maths olympiad, this was Cambridge after all).
Worse: many different and mutually incompatible fantasy futures, which they denied ahead of the referendum, and which after the referendum became a source of infighting that made all possible Brexits impossible to get past Westminster until Johnson came along and lied to everyone to get enough support to actually close a deal.
(The only time I can think of when digging a deeper hole got anywhere, even if the where was a… I guess in this metaphor: a disused basement where the stairs were missing?)
Judging by this thread, it's still not possible to have a discussion on this...
- we can have all the trade benefits without freedom of movement (specifically denied by EU at the time, didn't materialise)
- we will have 'more trade' afterwards (fails to understand how trade works)
- we won't have to follow EU rules (in reality, we can't really diverge that much from how the EU works without incurring penalties)
- we won't have to pay anything to them / we hold all the cards / ... (we did pay for our liabilities and we definitely didn't hold the cards)
- we can become much more left wing if we leave the neoliberal EU (fails to account for the fact our country isn't particularly left wing overall)
- politicians will have to take responsibility/can't blame the EU (brexiteers keep blaming the EU even now, BJ et.al. have faced minimal or no consequences for their actions)
- we can fish again (ignores relative importance of fishing vs the actually productive economy, disregards that EU is a big market for said fish)
What do you suggest we engage with?
But why? Why is it the job of the people who are on the side of established truth who have to understand the views of the fantasists? I saw more "disparagement" from the pro-Brexit crowd than the Remainers. Why isn't it their responsibility to understand the realist position?
We told them Brexit would be a disaster. We were told we were scaremongering. It went ahead anyway, and it turned out to be awful. It was a stupid decision, and it was terrible judgment.
Why can't we tell people that some proposals are stupid? And why can't we tell people after the fact that they made a stupid decision? How is it our fault that they make bad decisions?
Immigration is also a big factor in the Conservatives' defeat in the general election. People felt cheated as immigration hit a record high and voted Reform UK, which handed Labour a huge majority despite actually getting fewer votes than at the previous election.
So it's quite extraordinary to see the comments here with zero reflection on why all of this happened. This is the real, dangerous divide between the well-offs in and around London and the rest of the country.
I have read that the two main issues on voters' minds in this American Presidential election were immigration and the economy, so result is not very surprising.
"High" migration likewise had nothing much to do with EU membership, as the government demonstrated precisely by following Brexit with, as you say, record high immigration.
One of the other famous big concerns Leave campaigners had was the cost, which famously became the £350 million a week on the side of a bus. This number was even called out as a falsehood at the time, but it was believed by enough to make a difference.
Remainers were unable to convince the majority that the benefits of EU membership was worth the cost, financial or otherwise, regardless.
It is also patently false that immigration had nothing to do with EU membership. The surge of immigration from Eastern Europe was caused by EU membership (although initially the UK government could have imposed limits) and it also highlighted loss of sovereignty as there was nothing the government could do about it because of EU law.
Now, of course the government still controlled, and controls, immigration from outside the EU and they demonstrated that they were in fact in favour of high immigration despite what they said. This is a major cause of people voting for Reform UK instead of the Conservatives as already mentioned several times. That's why I have been saying that the result of this year's general election is a continuation of the issues at play since the Brexit referendum and even before that.
I am quite shocked by the obtuse reactions in this thread. This is still the very narrow-minded view that "we are correct they are wrong" that led to the Brexit referendum's result. Effectively, "we" are smart and correct and "they" are stupid and racist, without any attempts to try to understand the other side's point of view (which does not mean agreeing with it).
As an ironic side note, this is what "diversity" and "neurodiversity" in the workplace is all about: Bringing diverse points of view and listening to them instead of locking ourselves in our certitudes.
If you claim that a power granted by the member states themselves, who agree to it specifically as a mechanism to enable decision making, is a "loss" of sovereignty, then democracy — all forms of it, direct or representative — also meets this description.
> and it also highlighted loss of sovereignty as there was nothing the government could do about it because of EU law.
Except for all the ways they could.
In addition to "not actively campaign to be allowed to join the treaty in the first place" (which the UK did, FOM was part of the 1957 Treaty of Rome before the UK joined), "not actively campaign for the EU to get bigger" (which the UK did), "change the rules of the EU" (which the UK did), "not join the Schengen area" (the UK did not join Schengen), and "leave EU" (which the UK did), member states also have the power to specify the rules for anything longer than a typical tourist trip in most of the west would otherwise allow anyway.
See https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A... for the pre-UK state of this rule.
See Chapter III, Article 7, section 1 for what (I think) is the current state: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02...
This would have been a lot easier if the UK hadn't been horrified by the idea of national ID cards that the rest of the continent seems fine with.
What really stopped the UK government from doing anything much about migration — and the reason why they were really "high migration" — is the economic need for all the migrants to do all the work that the UK industries rely on but can't get locals to do for whatever reason.
This is specifically why the UK government did not impose limits to legal immigration routes and instead made empty slogans about stopping boats that didn't even constitute a rounding error compared to everything else.
> This is still the very narrow-minded view that "we are correct they are wrong" that led to the Brexit referendum's result.
I do not group all Leavers into one single category.
Unfortunately, my experience has been that the only thing Leavers have in common is the narrow-minded view that all other Leavers had the same reason for voting Leave as they themselves had. None I've encountered have been willing to engage with the observation that what they want isn't compatible with what other Leavers wanted, and when confronted with unambiguous evidence of this call each other names and denounce that alternative as "not true Brexit".
Some may call this "stupid", but not me. I think it is an unfortunate aspect of the human mind when it comes to politics, a place in which all teams are fallible and none are exempt.
Even at the time of the campaign, I was of the opinion that any who listened to the speeches by Daniel Hannan and was thereby convinced to vote Leave, was neither a fool nor a racist — he has a silver tongue, his words were not those of racism or malice.
On the other hand, those who saw Nigel Farage stand in front of his "Breaking Point" posters and thought "yes, this speaks to me"… well, one way in which I'd agree with UKIP MP Douglas Carswell is that he called the poster "morally indefensible": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Point_(UKIP_poster)
> Effectively, "we" are smart and correct and "they" are stupid and racist, without any attempts to try to understand the other side's point of view (which does not mean agreeing with it).
From my POV, that describes every Leaver I've ever tried to discuss this with, both before and after the referendum. There was one who said "Brexit will be fine because the EU will give us a good deal", and when I said "no", rather than try to engage or find out why I thought that, replied by shouting "that proves we should leave"; on another occasion, someone else present expressed — as a concern — the belief that Brexit would make Cambridge shrink, his reply was to shout "good"; and after the referendum, he didn't understand why I stopped talking to him and moved out of the country even though I'd already been openly talking of this before the referendum — he was a Cambridge graduate who several times boasted of being in the international maths olympiad, logic goes out of the window when politics gets into the human brain.
Those Leavers who continue to discuss Brexit seem unable to understand why, despite winning the referendum, they didn't get what they thought they were voting for — when those of us who voted Remain knew that what we voted against was in the same general space as the vague incoherent mess that actually happened.
I am willing to believe that those who thought they were getting low immigration would be upset when all the other considerations got in their way; just as those who were promised no change to trading conditions were upset to discover that the EU does in fact have an external border after all and despite claims to the contrary.
It is not "patently" false. That is an absolutist view of the type you are complaining about. UK law still had priority: demonstrated by the fact that the UK was able to withdraw from the agreement.
> This is still the very narrow-minded view that "we are correct they are wrong"
You seem outraged by this; why? Why shouldn't we think that we were correct and you were wrong? Presumably you thought you were right and we were wrong.
Anyway, the empirical evidence since suggests that we were correct and you were wrong. Most of the predictions made by Remainers turned out to be correct. Can you accept that?
> Effectively, "we" are smart and correct and "they" are stupid and racist
No one in this thread has claimed this. The official campaign never said this. You are attacking a strawman.
Above you said "It disparages those who voted for Brexit instead of trying to understand them". Why are you disparaging those who voted remain instead of trying to understand them?
It's not sufficient (or necessary) to be correct to win in a democracy, winning requires being convincing, which may be easier with the truth but is also much harder when insulting half the electorate.
Even when it's very tempting afterwards to say "we told you so".
As for how to be convincing… dunno. I'm much more comfortable with computers where I can google the errors.
I'm not sure this is correct. In both the Brexit campaign and the Trump election, the winning side spread insults freely, whilst meanwhile spinning a narrative that the other side were talking down to their supporters.
In both cases, the more aggressive and less truthful campaigns won, and the more "proper" campaigns that tried to reach out actually failed.
Being bolder seems to work better in the current political climate, not pussyfooting around being safe and trying not to insult anyone. I wonder if refusing to apologise and doubling down on the "garbage" comment would have worked better.
I'm not ignoring that Starmer got elected by keeping his mouth shut and his hands behind his back, but the Tories' smash-mouth politics did not win the day anyway. What I can see from where I am is that Brexit was a very special case and it's all gone back to normal now.
What happens is that Conservatives voters voted for someone else, mostly Reform UK. And the reasons have been the same as what's been festering since Brexit with the added factor that the Conservatives increased immigration to record level...
YMMV but I call a lead of 290 seats and 2,879,791 votes a landslide.
It was the Lib Dems that seem to have taken most of the Tories' voters: 72 seats (up 64) and 3,519,143 votes. The latter at least checks out. Reform was up 1 seat from 2019 for 5 seats total. Not quite a big splash then.
Labour also won big in Scotland against the SNP for the first time in years (but that was rather the fault of the SNP).
Data from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_el...
Labour got 9,708,716 votes in 2024 vs 10,269,051 in 2019. Starmer and Labour did not convince voters adn lost votes to the Greens.
What happened is that people did not vote for the Conservatives and instead voted Lib Dems and, especially, Reform UK, which got a massive 14% (3rd place and more than the Lib Dems). The Reform UK vote is because the Conservatives did not deliver on Brexit and even more importantly did the opposite of what they said on immigration, which reached record level.
The number of seats to Labour is a result of the above (Conservatives dropped so Labour candidate was elected) not because people voted Labour more than before. The surge is Reform UK.
So the same issues that have been at play in the Brexit referendum are still the key issues.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nglegege1o
Reform's seats came from the Tories, unsurprisingly, and like you say Reform won more of the popular vote than the Lib Dems (4,117,221 vs. 3,519,143; not a wide margin) but Reform also campaigned in many fewer constituencies where they didn't have to compete directly with the three largest parties (not to mention Lord Buckethead and the Monster Raving Loony party, their nemeses). So maybe they have lots of supporters in certain areas, but only in those certain areas.
Reform is not a serious political force in the UK. They only renamed themselves from The Brexit Party, but they remain a single-issue party that appeals to a tiny minority of voters. The majority of the electorate are much more concerned with real issues like the economy, the NHS, education, law and order, and the environment. Brexit wasn't even a particularly big issue in the last elections. Even the Lib Dems, who had campaigned for a second referendum in 2019, laid it to rest this time and focused on more recent issues like sewage spills in rivers etc.
Might I also hog the mic a little while longer to say that I, personally, am mostly socially conservative, and am absolutely appalled both at the Tories and Reform, who are nothing but right-wing populists and demagogues that do not care a jot about all the things that socially conservative voters care for: jobs, order, stability, lawfulness, the economy, family, etc. And let's not forget that it was Margaret Thatcher's Tories that got the UK into the EU, and did so because it was beneficial to the economy, trade, and the stability of international politics. Exciting the EU was exactly antithetical to conservative ideals: it was a radical act of self-mutilation.
Labour are now the conservative party, the party of business and fiscal responsibility (and sitting on your hands while you kick the can down the road) and that's why they took all the Tories' votes: because the socially conservative constituency got fed up with the Tories' antics and, the Brexit fever having passed, wanted to go back to order and stability.
In the 2024 UK general election, they got 14.3% of the vote. I don't think that's a "tiny minority". And if that's a "tiny minority", then the 12.2% of the vote Lib Dems got is an even tinier minority.
The problem that Reform has, is that 14.3% is spread too thin geographically. Reform got 5 MPs from 14.3%, Lib Dems got 72 MPs from 12.2% – because Lib Dem support is more concentrated in particular constituencies, mostly in southern England.
This is a side-effect of first-past-the-post. If the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum had succeeded, then Reform would have likely ended up with more seats in 2024; although even with alternate vote, the seats-per-vote advantage that Lib Dems have over Reform due to their greater geographic concentration would have still existed, albeit somewhat attenuated. A more fully proportional system, such as those used by the devolved legislatures of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, would have attenuated that advantage even further–although those systems are still region-based, so even they may not completely eliminate it.
I don't disagree. I argued that the Labour win was a landslide, not that the Lib Dems' result was one. Me and the OP were disagreeing about where the Tories' voters went: Reform, or Labour. I argued they mostly went to Labour and my reasoning is that Labour are now the party that best represents socially conservative voters.
I agree that FPTP is skewing results and Reform might have fared better in a more representative system. Then again, the Lib Dems may also have got more votes. There was a lot of discussion in the elections about "voting strategically" to oust the Tories and avoid splitting the "liberal" vote. Maybe with a more representative system that wouldn't be an issue anymore.
FPTP is an embarrassment certainly. I don't vote in the UK, I'm a bloody foreigner, but if the system was more balanced I might even consider becoming a citizen. It's stupid that I've lived in this country for so long and I don't get to say where it goes politically. Although that would require me to swear an oath of allegiance to the king and I'm a republican. It's a tough call.
There is no official definition, but generally (in a UK context) a "landslide" is a party winning a big House of Commons majority – like the Tories in 1983 and 1987, or Labour in 1997. And by that standard, 2024 was a landslide – Labour won almost as many seats as 1997, and beat both of Thatcher's records.
What I think what complicates things: both Thatcher's and Blair's landslides were big majorities backed by a big percentage of the vote (> 40%). And since the two things go together, even though quasi-officially it is about the first not the second, it is understandable how some people take the second to be part of the definition as well. For 1983, 1987, 1997, it doesn't make a difference. But then suddenly in 2024 it does – Starmer won a big number of seats, but only 33.7% of the vote – only slightly more than Corbyn's 32.1% in 2019, and actually in absolute terms over 500,000 fewer votes. This is because turnout dropped significantly in 2024 compared to 2019.
> Me and the OP were disagreeing about where the Tories' voters went: Reform, or Labour.
Given the drop in turnout, I think quite a few Tory voters just decided to stay home.
> I argued they mostly went to Labour and my reasoning is that Labour are now the party that best represents socially conservative voters.
That's not numerically possible – the Tory vote dropped by 19.9 percentage points, while Labour only gained by 1.6 points and Lib Dems by 0.6 points. A small minority of Tory voters switched to Labour, but any more than that and Labour would have got a bigger vote share than they actually did. The Tory voters must have gone somewhere else – and given Reform got 14% of the vote, it is obvious very many of them went to Reform.
I was under the impression that the Dems were doing more for the working class, and that Trump was alienating women.
I really do think this is the beginning of the end for the US. At least I have front row tickets to the show.
That has nothing to do with anything. Every single person voting on the economy for Trump, blaming Biden for inflation is an example of a lack of education. Just for one example.
There's a reason college educated people vote so differently to non college educated people on average.
The difference is one is backed by hard data.
Costed policies that are feasible and attainable in one-term? Boring
Promises of fantastic wealth and glory? Much more appealing
Same thing the Brexit campaign failed on.
Project 2025 also helped, since Democrats answered it with shock and horror instead of countering with their own improved version. Say what you will about the depravity contained within those pages, but Trump voters hold it up as "at least it's a plan" without having read it, much like their other beloved book, The Bible. Knowing that, it was quite easy for the Trump campaign to whip up support.
As much as I want to end with some pithy comment like "manipulation is a hell of drug," I can't. Half the country just got permission to put their ugly truths on display and they certainly did not disappoint. I have trouble laughing about that anymore.
Isn't it the Democrats who sling words like nazi, fascist, racist, deplorable, trash?
The rest of it is self evident, but I’m not going to be the one to say it out loud.
COVID stimulus and an economic slowdown from 2020 caused four years of inflation in the entire world, and people see the price of milk going up and punish the incumbent (not even the person who was in charge in 2020.
At which point, it doesn't matter how you campaign, or if the opposing candidate is actual Satan, nobody's going to vote for the incumbent.
It also doesn't help that the press normalized actual insanity that would not have been tolerated from anyone else, and collectively pretended that it's normal and reasonable behavior.
Any chance you know where to find some more?
It's a handout to anyone buying those services and a loss to anyone selling them (trade workers).
Companies can't "just hire" illegal immigrants in most states - the majority of the ones Trump won.
Trump is the incarnation of a thin-skinned bully, he allows himself the worst but will cry as loud as possible on the first sign of a backslash.
If people who voted for him are not stupid, they certainly act like it.
Being stupid is not a prerequisite to being apathetic.
> If people who voted for him are not stupid, they certainly act like it.
This attitude of "you must be stupid if you don't see things my way" I expect on Reddit, but am disappointed to see it here.
This attitude of putting words in people's mouths I expect on Reddit, but I am disappointed to see it here.
They said, "People who support Trump". They never said, "People who disagree with me". Those are your own words. And there's a great deal of difference between those two clauses.
I understand you want to shield yourself from criticism, by pretending you're merely in the "people who disagree with" camp and not in the "people who support Trump" camp. But trying to do that while putting words in someone's mouth lowers the quality of discourse here. And then to try claiming moral superiority by citing "This is HN, not reddit" is just ... transparently pointless.
Also, you ruin your own argument by proving your parent correct.
They are closely related and I don't see as much difference as you do but okay, they are different clauses. I also believe saying someone is stupid for supporting Trump is wrong. You can disagree with a person's vote, try to point out why you think they are wrong, just ignore them but calling someone stupid has no benefit except maybe it makes the insulter feel good about their own superiority.
> lowers the quality of discourse here.
but calling me and over half the country stupid adds to the quality of discourse?
> "This is HN, not reddit" is just ... transparently pointless.
HN has clear guidelines about this [0] and people here generally adhere to them. By saying this is HN, I'm appealing to the higher standard espoused in these guidelines. Do you think those guidelines are pointless?
> I understand you want to shield yourself from criticism, by pretending you're merely in the "people who disagree with" camp
You understand incorrectly. If you look at my recent comment history, it's pretty easy to see I'm Republican and voted for Trump.
> Also, you ruin your own argument by proving your parent correct.
I don't understand your logic here. How did I prove the parent correct? Seems like just another personal insult on your part.
I look forward to your responses to the above.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Be kind." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
They are nowhere close but of course you can't see that so okay.
> I also believe saying someone is stupid for supporting Trump is wrong.
Of course, Trump supporters are known for being poor employers of reason and introspection.
> try to point out why you think they are wrong
This list is so long that it's pointless to point this out in every conversation with a Trumper, but your parent did actually try.
> just ignore them
This is dangerous, to all humanity. At best, it's tolerance of the intolerant.
> but calling someone stupid has no benefit except maybe it makes the insulter feel good about their own superiority.
I strongly doubt your parent felt good about it. There's nothing good about calling a Trumper "stupid", because it does nothing to help the situation. Trumpers don't listen to reason; I'm sure your parent knows this. It's far more likely your parent spoke out of sheer frustration, which I fully understand, having had my own faith in humanity tested by this whole ordeal, and it hasn't even begun its "revenge run".
> but calling me and over half the country stupid adds to the quality of discourse?
1. Spoken by itself, probably not. But your parent didn't just call Trumpers stupid. They first explained their reasoning. Within a greater context where that's precisely the point being discussed: "How Trumpers are stupid."
2. More like "quarter of the country". Half your country didn't even vote.
> By saying this is HN, I'm appealing to the higher standard espoused in these guidelines.
If that's all you were doing, that'd be fine. But to do that while putting words in people's mouths? That's disingenuous, at best, and transparently so.
> Do you think those guidelines are pointless?
And there we go again with the putting words in people's mouths.
> it's pretty easy to see I'm Republican and voted for Trump.
I don't see how this, in any way whatsoever, proves I "understood incorrectly".
> How did I prove the parent correct?
I've already explained in this thread above. Twice. I don't see the point in trying a third time, especially when ... <see above>.
> Seems like just another personal insult on your part.
It wasn't. It was an appeal to do better, since, as you said, "This is HN". Maybe I understand why you feel that way, though. I am, after all, somebody that disagrees with you on sth, so of course I must be out to "get you". Rest assured, I am not out to "get you".
----
> [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Be kind." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Since you quoted this, let me leave you with one thing to ponder on: Just how spectacularly poorly your candidate (i.e., Trump) does on these guidelines.
>> I also believe saying someone is stupid for supporting Trump is wrong.
> Of course, Trump supporters are known for being poor employers of reason and introspection.
To clarify, I don't think that anyone should should call anyone else stupid for any reason. It's just ad hominem.
I'll address your characterization of Trumpers as being poor employers of reason and introspection below.
> that's precisely the point being discussed: "How Trumpers are stupid."
Again, I have a problem with the ad hominem. Why not "wrong" or "misguided"? Why take it to the personal insult level? You mention about the reasoning for using "stupid" is sheer frustration. You also mention maintaining the quality of discourse here. "stupid" does not do that. Maybe it helps you vent your frustration, but kicking a dog does that for some people and we can agree that being frustrated doesn't justify that.
It just serves to demonize and dehumanize people on the other side.
>> Do you think those guidelines are pointless?
> And there we go again with the putting words in people's mouths.
I didn't put words in anyone's mouth. I asked a question. And the reason I asked it is you don't seem to have a problem with calling a certain class of people stupid which clearly violates the guidelines. So it's reasonable to question if you value those guidelines.
>> it's pretty easy to see I'm Republican and voted for Trump.
I don't see how this, in any way whatsoever, proves I "understood incorrectly".
This is your understanding: "I understand you want to shield yourself from criticism, by pretending you're merely in the "people who disagree with" camp"
That is incorrect. I do not want to shield myself from criticism by pretending I'm merely in the "people who disagree with" camp. As seen in my past comments, I do not pretend I'm not a Republican/Trump supporter.
>> How did I prove the parent correct?
>I've already explained in this thread above. Twice. I don't see the point in trying a third time, especially when ... <see above>.
I ask for clarification of something you said and this is your response? I proved the parent correct about what? Where have you explained this twice? You don't have to explain it again. Just copy and paste it. Doesn't have to be both times. Just one is fine.
When someone doesn't understand something, it's not always their fault. Communication is a two way street. Sometimes it is the communicator that is unclear in their messaging.
Now to address your comment about Trumpers having poor reasoning and instropective abilities I'll choose a few hot button topics in this election cycle and go through my reasoning on them.
- Immigration and border security
On day one of the Biden/Harris administration, they reversed most of the Trump era border policies. This resulted in an unprecented level of illegal border crossings. Some of these that crossed went on to rape and kill American girls/women , take over whole apartment complexes and some are terrorist bent on US destruction [0]. Furthore, these illegals have cost US taxpayers untold millions to suppor them.
After three and half years, right before the next election cycle Biden finally reinstated Trump era border restrictions and the flow of illegals stemmed. And Harris who years before said building a wall was stupid, in a recent interview suddenly says she is open to bulding the wall.
My questions are why did Biden/Harris reverts Trump border policies in the first place only to reinstate them three and a half years later when Harris was up for election?
To me, it's just unreasonable to open a countries borders like that and basically ignore immigration laws. Why let millions of immigrates into the country illegally like that? It's akin to saying "I don't need walls or doors for my house. It's ok that anyone can come in as they please. That's totally ok for me and my family"
There are legal paths to enter the US and become a resident. Those need to be followed an enforced.
So, am I stupid and lack reasoning skills for believing the above?
- June 6th Capital insurrection.
It was an insurrection against the governemnt. All the protesters who stormed the capitol should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
The question is did Trump lead this insurrection? I don't think he directly lead it. That would require that he told them something to the effect "let's go to the capitol and take over". Did he cause it? I think there are valid arguments on both sides of that debate.
In any case, this was a really bad move by Trump and a huge blight on his record.
Was it enough to keep me from voting for him? Obviously not. To me, Trump is the lesser of two evils. I didn't vote for Trump in the primaries. I really wish he wouldn't have won so I could have a better choice.
But Harris's policies I'm deeply opposed to. In terms of character, I think she is fake and insincere flip flopper with no real convictions and thus can't give straightforward answers to questions and spews word salads instead. Do I like Trump's character? Mostly not. He is deeply flawed. There are some good qualities I see in him (that I know you'll disagree with me on.). He deeply wants to see the US succeed and thus has sincere passion and deep conviction. For example, he's the only candidate that will stand up to and call out China's trade bullshit, their unfair trade practices that have screwed over America for decades. The tariffs he threatens are for the purpose of forcing China to the negotiating table. The past decades of American presidents' hemming and hawing to China have done nothing to change their behavior.
So I choose based mostly on policy rather than character.
Since you mentioned introspection, I'll leave you this to reflect on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42062965
[0] https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-forum-online/counter-ter...
At the end of the day, "it's the economy, stupid".
What about the rest of the world who've also been experiencing the same?
It's a very shortsighted take, and we've seen the same in the UK where Liz Truss 6 weeks as PM has taken the blame for global inflation in the court of popular opinion
This is why we call Trump's voters "stupid", the US is still under Trump's tax plan until 1/2025. So if someone has an issue with taxes, it's not Biden's fault even though he is in office.
I know this and I'm not even American
Making it a left or right issue makes no sense given the content of my post was to point out the mismatch in arguments.
EDIT: This post is the same thing fwiw.
But it’s not like that is why someone votes for Trump, right? It’s maybe more of a way to disincentivize conversions back.
I… really wish there had been a primary though. Biden deserves to be hated for the rest of his life for this (along with all of his other decision making)
I can vaguely understand fixing a primary for H. Clinton, but for Biden? One of the things Biden ran on in 2020 was a vague indication that he would leave after one term.
How does the hatred for the Democrats get so big?
> but at the same time Trump says much worse things about women than Harris about men
One would think so, but Trump's talk about women is just how society in general talks about women. As sad as it is, women are used to that rhetoric.
> How does the hatred for the Democrats get so big?
Multiple high profile members of the Democratic Party actively demonize rural Americans and especially men.
1. Stop calling average people ignorant.
2. Average people are misogynistic.
Of course, for people who are directly targeted by the ignorance and misogyny, it's their right to directly call it out, but they might not call it out at all, because they would be targeted further.
Trump is just Trump. A rhetorically violent, deeply unpleasant convicted rapist, but not the vanguard of an explicitly misognist movement. At least not one thats culturally hegemonic. So while American progressives may label Trump voters sexist or racist, the overwhelming majority of them don't see themselves that way. Meanwhile, a highly vocal minority of progressives do actively demean men, while people, straight people etc, and have for a decade. They've enacted DEI practices, and scholarship and funding practices that exclude men from fair participation in the workforce, education and the arts. As efforts to correct historic imbalances in that participation. At the same time, they've ignored how male participation in higher education has dropped off, the epidemics of alienation and underemployment affecting men.
Edit: Just to clarify I'm addressing the question - not advocating Trump, or suggesting that life for men or white people or straight people is in fact materially worse. Just pointing out people strongly dislike being disliked, actively biased against and demeaned and this does in fact affect their voting preferences.
You may think you mean, or maybe you did not, the accurate description: adjudicated rapist. And that difference right there, between adjudicated and convicted, and all of the other ambient hoaxes, is in big part what the referendum yesterday was about.
Ask yourself how long it was between late 2017 and when you found out the "fine people" hoax was actually a hoax. Or if just now, whether you knew that even Snopes confirmed the hoax that Kamala wantonly repeated (as if it were true) in the debate is indeed a hoax.
Most normal people don't see the difference between adjudicated rapist and convicted rapist as an innocent mistake but as something that those who push such hoaxes -- rather than innocently parrot them out of ignorance -- should be put behind bars for in response to the damage they do this great union of states.
"I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping.
She wanted to get some furniture. I said, “I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.” I took her out furniture —
I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look...
I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything...
Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything."
- https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-tran...
Except for the hard material fact that he did not rape her.
I'm not uncomfortable lumping a lot of that together as 'medicine'. For instance, we know vaccination in general raises his ire, but he also seems to object to pasteurization. If he remains in a position to be able to ban that practice, it could be a significant driver of health-related issues. And I do think he's in a position to be able to ban or at least substantially punish the practice of pasteurization, vaccination, flouridation… it's unclear how much influence the man will have, but it could be a great deal.
you know that everyone is still getting Covid over and over and over again every year, right?
This one I know is a straight up lie, because I remember where it came from: Trump asked an expert if it was possible to use disinfectant inside the body, was immediately shut down with a simple "no", and dropped it. Audio of the conversation was leaked and immediately twisted into "drink bleach", ignoring everything else about the conversation.
Also UV light treatment actually exists, just not for this purpose. It's a completely normal thing to ask once you learn UV kills viruses.
America started when it rebelled against being ruled. I'd say that's not entirely off the table. First it has to become clear that we're getting ruled, not represented.
He is everything people claim and nothing at all. He says so much bullshit constantly that you have to just ignoring or discounting shit he says. So he reflects what you believe.
My perspective is European & Australian, so I wonder if that skews it.
The US left (federally, not talking Alabama dems here) is generally more left on immigration, abortion and LGBTQ+ and affirmative action type policies than Europe, broadly speaking. Drug policy is a wash IMO. There's a lot more variation in Europe because the EU doesn't arbitrate social issues the way the US federal government does.
This is what's crippling them. We initially built the social security net to counter this issue. Then we increased employee rights to maximum levels. I think one of either would be beneficial, but not both.
As an Alabama Dem, this is something that is just so disappointing to see when we're assumed to be not "generally more left"
There are so many here supporting and doing good, hard work with things like the Yellowhammer Fund, ¡HICA!, and Magic City Acceptance Center and Academy but we have to fight for any acknowledgement. We had more people vote for Kamala than several states but they amount to nothing in the public eye. It's so deflating and discouraging
It is not the best
"far right" and "far left" are terms for contextualizing a political stance, based on the world view and actions. It's doesn't matter where the majority of people stands, they can be all far right or far left or in the center, it wouldn't change the definitions.
If you think a party is ticking many boxes, you may label it as "far-right".
> nationalism, authoritarianism
Sure, you could say he supports this.
> anti-socialism
Not a fair right position. This I'd what anybody who is right of the center left position thinks.
> economic libertarianism
Trump doesn't support this. He wants all sorts of tariffs and the like.
> racial and gender hierarchies
I haven't seen any proof he supports such a thing.
> anti-establishment sentiments.
This is not a far right position. This is a populist position.
Protectionism also is a value associated with "far-right". It may sound like it conflicts with libertarianism but in my understanding that's applied nationally, while closing borders.
I won't argue on positions of a specific candidate or party.
> This is not a far right position. This is a populist position.
Populism also is often associated with far-right.
While it may be associated with the "far right", it is held by others as well. Many unions, in the past, supported protectionism for example.
Regardless, the argument was not about Trump holding protectionist views, but libertarian views which he clearly doesn't hold to.
> It may sound like it conflicts with libertarianism but in my understanding that's applied nationally, while closing borders.
Closing the borders has nothing to do with libertarian economics or protectionism.
If you go back 15 years ago plenty of people on the left supported restricting immigration. Bernie Sanders famously called open borders a Koch Brothers plan to get cheap labor and harm workers in the US.
> Populism also is often associated with far-right.
While most populist politicians, at the moment, are on the right, it is not a right wing position. Bernie Sanders is often referred to as a populist as well.
Regardless, it is not a far right position to be anti-establishment or whatever somebody defines populist as.
As with every definition there is a grey area and when a party is labelled as far-right it means that it ticks many boxes that put it in this category. Of course, people can disagree, argue on positions, that's politics.
> Closing the borders has nothing to do with libertarian economics or protectionism.
On that specific point, I was thinking about economical protectionism than physically closing border.
> populist [...] is not a right wing position.
True, it's usually associated with far-right or far-left rather than regular party.
Sorry if that feels like a strawman, but I find the idea of using popularity to determining what counts as "far" stupid and dangerous.
Digging into the page for radical conservatism, "Elements of ultraconservatism typically rely on cultural crisis; they frequently support anti-globalism – adopting stances of anti-immigration, nationalism, and sovereignty – use populism and political polarization, with in-group and out-group practices.[3][4][5][6] The primary economic ideology for most ultraconservatives is neoliberalism.[6] The use of conspiracy theories is also common amongst ultraconservatives.".
Trump is well-known for his populist, anti-globalist, anti-immigration, and pro-nationalist rhetoric. He has also promulgated conspiarcy theories such as the Obama birther conspiracy and claims of stolen elections.
As for authoritarian, Trump forms a textbook example of a personality cult. He frequently attacks existing institutions and an independent media, undermining trust in a free democratic process. He frequently issues positive messages about authoritarian dictators in other countries such as Bolsonaro, Orban and Putin.
>>Trump is well-known for his populist, anti-globalist, anti-immigration, and pro-nationalist rhetoric. He has also promulgated conspiarcy theories such as the Obama birther conspiracy and claims of stolen elections.
You can be patriotic and anti-immigration without being far right. I think the claims of a stolen election are yet to be properly investigated. I'd welcome a truly impartial look into all the covid postal vote shenanigans last time.
>>As for authoritarian, Trump forms a textbook example of a personality cult. He frequently attacks existing institutions and an independent media, undermining trust in a free democratic process. He frequently issues positive messages about authoritarian dictators in other countries such as Bolsonaro, Orban and Putin.
You can criticise institutions now? And I'm sure he'd be in favour of an indepenndent media if America had one.
Putin is a obviously a dictator. Bolsonaro and Orban not so much (especially Bolsonaro as he was, er, voted out which would seem to automatically disqualify him from being a dictator).
It's not just
"there's something wrong in our society"
it's
"there's an insidious dark force at work, it's brought us down from our glorious past, these groups of people are involved, violence against this threat is understandable, only a few men are strong and capable enough to lead us out of this...".
In 1930s Germany and Italy the "groups of people" were marxists, jews, gypsies, homosexuals and a few others. In modern Russia it's LGBT, central Asians, objectors to the war, and various religious groups like Jehovah's Witnesses. For Trump and a lot of Europe's right-wing it's LGBT, immigrants, intellectuals, and liberals (though he calls them communists).
"there's an insidious dark force at work, it's brought us down from our glorious past, these groups of people are involved, violence against this threat is understandable, only a few men are strong and capable enough to lead us out of this...".
For insidious dark forces, he alludes to the "deep state", talks about an "enemy from within", and uses phrases like "poisoning the blood of the nation".
For glorious past, there's the MAGA motto, and his narrative that political correctness and lefty lunatics have destroyed American exceptionalism.
For violence, he's repeatedly threatened violence against protestors to his rallies, defended or refused to condemn violence by his own supporters, and suggested that political opponents deserve to have violence inflicted on them.
For only a few men, his prodigious hyperbole about how he's the best at everything, and he literally describes himself as "I am your retribution" who will usher in a "new golden age". And again, he's generally praising of strongman authoritarians around the world
What about calling your political opponents "garbage" and "deplorables" and "fascists"?
>>For glorious past, there's the MAGA motto, and his narrative that political correctness and lefty lunatics have destroyed American exceptionalism.
Probably objectively correct.
>> For violence, he's repeatedly threatened violence against protestors to his rallies, defended or refused to condemn violence by his own supporters, and suggested that political opponents deserve to have violence inflicted on them.
Thank god the Democrats only have peaceful groups like Antifa and BLM. And it's not like Democrat supporters haven't tried to kill him twice. The Democrats are objectively the more violent party.
I condemn name-calling, but it is not the same as conjuring images of insidious dark forces.
> Thank god the Democrats only have peaceful groups like Antifa and BLM.
I condemn the violence of these groups. As do leading Democrats.
Not sure what you're trying to argue at this point. I've demonstrated a clear fascist narrative from Trump and all you've done is draw poorly conceived similarities.
It's telling that the only candidate to face assassination attempts was Republican.
If they’re asking for a definition, it’s likely because they already know it and just want you to fall into a “gotcha” they can then divert discussion toward in their favor. It’s cheap theatrics.
At a quick glance, I found 10 definitions of far right that differ slightly. An assumption of malice here fails. Remarkably so.
It's not pedantic to ask that your statements be taken clearly and in the right context.
It's worth noting as well that in the context of inclusion, pointing out pedantry at all is going to exclude a group in the "common" understanding of exclusion.
Most importantly, this person is trying to understand your perspective and instead of trying to sway their opinion, you criticize them. One thing that the "far right" has accomplished recently is an understanding that everyone is a person and worth respect and voice. Which is evidenced by the countless videos displaying such behaviour and the ubiquitous response of blessing attributed to people with such inquisition in comment sections everywhere.
In stark contrast is the term uneducated and it's supposed link to intelligence. Don't they teach logical fallacies in college anymore?
First of all I dislike Trump and for sure have liberal views in lot of aspects. And say even if I have malice intent and I am a hardcore Trump supporter, comments like yours wouldn't have changed my mind. Assuming you want to change people's side, it is not the reply that would change it.
Some definitions are not opinions.
The definition of "far right" is an opinion. Failing to define it in discourse will inevitably result in a lack of positive outcome.
If you think you’re exceptional, vote Gorgoiler ‘28!
Isn't that simply factual human nature? If someone is tall, attractive, physically fit, hardworking, and intelligent, isn't it meritocratic for that person to accrue overall greater benefits/utility to their societal contributions compared to someone who is ugly, unfit, lazy, and stupid?
I wouldn't categorize that position as "far right" at all. I think the position you are trying to express is that the ugly/unfit/lazy/stupid should not be punished or abused by the government/laws/society just for existing. I would be surprised if you walked into an average MAGA rally and found a plurality of people who disagree with that.
Were they conservative? No, they wanted to upend society and create one that is nothing like anything ever seen before. They were also anti-religion. In many ways, they were anti-tradition, and I wouldn't consider their obsession with bringing back dead traditions to be traditional.
Were they hateful, racist, etc.? Yes, up to you if that's considered 'right'.
Were they, like how American political parties are, friends of big business? Not really, they wanted to sponsor monopolies and whatnot but also wanted the businesses to have no influence over the state, rather the other way around, the state can force the big business to do what they want. As far as if it actually worked that way when they were in power, I'm not sure.
Sure I can: "mass deportation now"
They are not centrist by any stretch of the imagination.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Gender is a social construct, mostly determined by genes & genitalia. It's not quite enough to believe you're a woman, other people have to believe it too. Another issue at play is that there are far more "intersex" people (who have some characteristics of the opposite sex, sometimes to the point doctors don't quite know whether to list them as male or female), and from what I've heard trans people often (possibly generally) are "intersex" in a way that wasn't visible at birth. The idea of a female's brain in a male's body isn't that far fetched.
> They believe in censorship.
I believe this one is more popular in the far right (when in power) than in the far left (when in power)
> They believe in supporting and growing the military industrial complex.
Militarism sounds like it's more popular on the right. Though it can be more complicated: military backed imperialism can indeed support stuff like welfare at home.
---
Now the elephant in the room: last time I checked, democrats were firmly capitalists: they believe the means of production should be owned privately. Even if you exclude actual communism from acceptable discourse, they're fairly poor at public services and keeping inequality in check.
How could it possibly be a female brain if it's part of a male body?
You're a bit light on justifying the burden of proof, though.
So they would kinda feel feel far-rightish to us only because the democrats are more conservative than ours
Do you have any data (except for interpersonal psychology) on whether letting fascism slide or calling it out ultimately makes the situation worse? At what point do you call fascism fascism? When it's too late?
You call it fascism when it is fascism. Once it is openly fascist then it is probably too late to stop, but you don't call it fascism until it is fascism.
I fail to see how the Republican party is fascist. I think it's a term the Left uses to demonize their opposition. Ironically, that is kind of fascist-like.
> The term fascist has been used as a pejorative,[74] regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell noted in 1944 that the term had been used to denigrate diverse positions "in internal politics". Orwell said that while fascism is "a political and economic system" that was inconvenient to define, "as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'",[75] and in 1946 wrote that '"Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable."[76] Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales wrote in 2000 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times".[77]: 1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
I assume you have good reasons to believe Republicans are fascist. I'm simply asking you and any others who believe this to share your reasons. Is that not reasonable?
Like right now, by editing your comment you're desperately trying to pose there is no accepted definition of fascism. Dismissing definitions only fits the bill.
> you’d simply dismiss them
I'm a random internet stranger. How could you possibility know me so well? Again, it's just a blanket stereotyping and demonization of people who have different beliefs that you do. A mass ad hominem attack. That attitude is a root of many problems in the political arena. I expect that kind of rhetoric on Reddit, but am disappointed to encounter it here.
> Even if I listed all reasons
I'm a busy person and I assume you are too. Why don't you list one and we'll go from there?
In this discussion, we've already defined it? where? That's news to me that I can dismiss something that I wasn't aware of.
> Do you think you sound like a person that is welcoming criticism
I am very welcoming of criticism of my party and the one I voted for. Trump can be a bombastic jerk. I voted for him because his policies align more with my values than Harris'. He was the lesser (much lesser) of two evils. I didn't vote for him in the primaries and I wish he wouldn't have won them.
Anyway, you continue to make assumptions about me rather than discuss/debate the issue of why you think Trump is a fascist. It's not much of a discussion and so I'll opt out now. All the best to you.
We don't have to define it. That's the point. It's already been done for us.
It's the same with asking me to list reasons or sources that explain the republican parties fascist tendencies, while that's been done thousands of times through the course of their campaign. If you were truly curious as to why people might feel that way, you could have done so at any point during the last few months.
You did't accept the definition you bothered to look up and you didn't accept the valid concerns people had during the campaign.
The real reason you're walking away from this conversation is because you don't care if I am right.
You're not afraid of fascism, because you think you're in the right group.
If you replace nationalism with partisanship, in very many ways the modern left is far more closely aligned with the vile components of fascism than the republican party, or even Trump supporters. The left have done everything they can do vilify anyone who disagrees with their core beliefs, which they hold are a matter of morale superiority and to which, in their minds, no person of moral substance could ever find disagreeable.
By very definition, conservatives are conservative. When they disagree with someone, they continue to treat them respectfully and move on with their lives, comfortable in the reality that there exists people around them with very different beliefs than their own. The left, on the other hand, do no such thing and yet look in the mirror and convince themselves that they're the better people in all this.
Trump less won this election than the democrats did lose it by arrogantly putting up a candidate with strong ties to the current unpopular administration and whose other policies and attributes did not appeal to the swing voter.
And I'm factually correct when I say that Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous. He has motivated even a reasonable person like you to defend him vehemently. He made you part of his group, and by the looks of it you’re already starting to hate those who are not in it.
I have observed from the sidelines how both sides behave towards one another and while there are some extremists on the right whose behaviour is utterly shameful, I have noticed that a significant number of moderate people on the left have grown utterly intolerant of conservatives over the last decade and they'll vocalise their disgust and even go as far as lodging complaints with employers or writing negative reviews about businesses, outing and harassing people whose views they disagree with. While the extreme right tend towards violence, what those on the left do is equally disgusting, yet they do it with a false sense of righteousness.
I wouldn't call anyone stupid, but I will say this. I live in the south surrounded by evangelicals, and they talk about Trump like he's a religious figure. I've tried to have rational conversations with family members and it's like arguing about the existence of God. In their eyes Trump can literally do no wrong. Maybe that's not you, but some of your defenses here feel like that.
Can you give me some examples of this?
As someone else said who responded to you, they could list all the fascist statements Trump has made and you'll find reasons to dismiss them. Just like trying to convince a religious person that god does not exist.
Separating children from parents at the border, reverting hard fought women's right to their own body, that is the stirring of fascist behaviour.
That wasn't his main intention. It was to stop the flow of illegal immigration into the country. And after popular criticism, he reversed that policy and never enacted it again. That doesn't sound authoritarian/fascist to me. It sounds more like bending to the will of the people you govern.
> reverting hard fought women's right to their own body
And a large swath of the country believes abortion is murder. I guess for that, they are fascists in your eyes?
The term really has lost it's meaning and is just used by the Left to demonize the other side.
> The term fascist has been used as a pejorative,[74] regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell noted in 1944 that the term had been used to denigrate diverse positions "in internal politics". Orwell said that while fascism is "a political and economic system" that was inconvenient to define, "as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'",[75] and in 1946 wrote that '"Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable."[76] Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales wrote in 2000 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times".[77]: 1
Wouldn't a fascist government seek to highly control firearms take guns away from its citizens?
It's a fact that Trump shared and promoted these. It's a fact that they are conspiracy theories.
Secondly, conspiracy theories generally fly in the face of strong evidence to the contrary. But if you look at the Mueller report, it lists numerous links and collusions between the Trump campaign and Russian government. There were actual criminal offenses. There just wasn't quite enough to prove wilful criminality.
Thirdly, unless I'm mistaken, the Dems did not continue to promote claims of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia after the report was accepted.
The counter-argument is that a culture of violent police suppression is just modern America, and it’s not fair to tar one particular party with that particular brush.
This has happened at Harris rallies as well.
I do commonly see “fascist” used to describe things in similar ways where the person seems to be expressing a general disdain for something. They do successfully convey some meaning but it’s very non-specific. Just food for thought for readers who want their opinions heard more than they want to hem and haw over the specific meanings of words.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/24/trump-fascis...
1. Rhetoric of an "enemy within". Trump has already made it clear that he intends to use the US military to "clean out" our country.
2. Supreme consolidation of power. Trump plans to re-enact Schedule F. Tens of thousands of federal workers will be fired, and their replacements will be required to vocalize their devotion to Trump. The bureau meritocracy system, which has been in place since the 1800s, will be removed completely. In its place, a system of political loyalty.
3. Supreme avoidance of the law. Trump is completely immune to any criminal prosecution while president, and he has made it clear he plans to use this newfound power "very aggressively".
4. Desecration of education. Within the first 100 days, the department of education will be dissolved. States will pivot to ahistorical pro-conservative education, if they provide any public education at all.
If they were fascist wouldn't they be doing the opposite? I thought a fascist government would not allow or want the average citizens to own firearms.
This is just 1 example that pops into my mind. I can think of other examples too where the republican policies seem to be the direct opposite of what I read that a fascist government would want.
(I'm not saying that the republican party is fascist, just that there's nothing in their gun policy that would be inconsistent with a wannabe fascist party.)
They claim "harm reduction" but that's not how just not voting works, 95% is still a super majority and anything you "win" is just tokenism at the end of the day.
Am I crazy to think that?
The voters made their choice clear, and those of us most impacted by GOP authoritarian policies now get to spend the next four years (at least) trying to make sure we survive attacks against us while also maybe still salvaging this grand democratic experiment.
So no, you can take that “find common ground” and shove it. We adhered to decorum for decades, even as the GOP marched ever further right and ignored, plowed through, or destroyed any and every uncrossable line or improper decorum in their path. You don’t get to try and apologize on behalf of an electorate that willfully has chosen violence, nor should we (those affected by said violence) have to tolerate their excuses.
They don't believe in climate change, want zero controls on guns, are generally anti-immigrant - even the legal immigrants are lied about e.g. Haitians in Springfield, don't believe women should have certain rights concerning their own healthcare, want to keep cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, etc.
They are impenetrable. Yes they'd claim I'm unwilling to compromise but we're talking about different starting points - I have to get them to accept certain actual real-world events and facts as true before starting a meaningful conversation.
I don’t believe (1). The other two would mean our kids’ life expectancies just halved.
- Gutting the health care industry? That's not necessarily a bad thing. Wasteful health care administration (passing the buck) was something like 30% of health care costs pre-ACA, and health care is now 17.3% of GDP. Shedding 1/3 of health care costs would bring our health care expenses to the same ratio of GDP as the UK. Of course it would also cause an unemployment crisis...
One example of gutting the industry (announced today): ban fluoridated water.
Banning fluoridated water is a weird idea. I will have to look into the costs and benefits.
> Nineteen of those studies were considered to be high quality; of these, 18 reported an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children. The 18 studies, which include 3 prospective cohort studies and 15 cross-sectional studies, were conducted in 5 different countries. Forty-six of the 53 low-quality studies in children also found evidence of an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children.
> https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/publications/monographs/mgraph08
They're estimating a 3 to 5 point IQ drop due to fluorinated water in childhood. On that basis I would have to support switching to free mouthwash.
I'd be willing to bet that the amount of conservatives that fit your description are not enough to win an election. That description is only a subset of conservatives in my experience of being a conservative myself and living around many of them.
Who's in charge now are not republicans. Now it's just far right believing in genius and ability of their cartoonish leader.
Non-american here, but I feel pretty much the same way. I also do niche research in computer science. People working in the supermarket, people driving trains and busses, medicine workers, construction workers, they all do work that is vastly more important to society than mine. A single educator in my child's kindergarten most likely does work that is orders of magnitude more important to society than mine is. Maybe this attitude comes from the fact that both of my parents never set a foot into higher education, but it is something I feel very strongly, and which is quite humbling.
I remember my father predicting in the early 2000s that the academic elite was increasingly crippling the country by adding more and more non-pragmatic rules in seek of some idealistic utopia, and that they would lose the support of the masses pretty soon. As a young teenager, I did not believe him, and in my arrogance of youth, I also dismissed it as the ramblings of an uneducated worker. But sure enough, most of the things he feared back then turned out to come true.
Today, for sure. I think it's far more nuanced in the long term. Most of these jobs would be non-existent without the researchers of yesterday.
Of course, if you disregard today completely for building the tomorrow, a lot of people who don't get access to wealth today will be pissed. Which is very roughly what's happening in the USA. "What we have now is perfect, and can sustain forever, stop with the progressive BS", chant the conservatives.
It's a hard balance. Dems messed it up, Reps will mess it up further, I bet.
I'm just observing from an another continent.
The research of yesterday was on another level than most of what is done today. Not to say that it's worthless, pursuit of knowledge is always worth it.
In what ways? The impact? That can't be proven until "tomorrow" comes, no?
Nobody is calling anyone stupid just because of the lack of education.
However the lack of education makes people gullible and easy to manipulate. From bleach as a Covid remedy to marginal tax as a grave danger to working people - you don't have to go far for examples. And when someone does believe this sort of blatant bullshit, then, yeah, they don't come across as particularly bright individuals.
> However the lack of education makes people gullible and easy to manipulate. From bleach as a Covid remedy...
You may not realize you said it, but you said it.
- Trump floated bleach as a covid remedy
- Bleach as a covid remedy is obviously stupid (we should both be agreeing on this one)
- Trump supporters support such statements from trump
- But pointing that out is "calling them stupid" and thus we shouldn't do it?
I'm genuinely curious about this because it makes up so many discussions with trump supporters in a nut shell. I don't want to condescend to them, but I also shouldn't be pointing out things that genuinely are stupid about trump, because doing so would offend them too? What should I do, just pretend all the dumb things Trump does (and that his supporters support him for) don't exist? Just so I can find common ground? (I mean, strictly speaking this is exactly what I do in polite company with trump supporters. I just pretend all the really dumb shit doesn't exist and just talk to them about policy and stuff, and in the end I end up finding that we agree on 90% of stuff and we go on our way. And they continue to support trump for reasons I don't understand.)
> Trump supporters support such statements from trump
Did you ever meet a Trump supporter who used bleach? Did you ever meet a Trump supporter who thinks bleach for covid is a good idea?
If you're being honest with yourself, can you even imagine a middle-aged man drinking bleach to get rid of covid?
almost everyone I know voted for Trump, I know a lot of people, none of them ever drank bleach (as I'm writing this, I remembered I know someone who drank bleach as a little kid and had to go to the hospital, my point stands though)
Lots of them did.
https://www.poison.med.wayne.edu/updates-content/kstytapp2qf...
But my larger point is that his supporters support such statements. Not that they’re stupid enough to inject bleach (although that did happen.) It’s more that, when bringing up that he even said shit like that, trump supporters get offended that you’re condescending to them. Like, how dare you bring up that thing he actually said.
And when I say they support statements like that, it’s because they bend over backwards to find ways to convince themselves that he’s somehow not a lunatic for saying it, trying to find ways of charitably interpreting his drivel. That’s what “support such statements” means.
> they bend over backwards to find ways to convince themselves that he’s somehow not a lunatic for saying it
look, you've probably never listened to more than 5 unfiltered minutes of him speaking [0]. His supporters know he's not a lunatic, we've heard him talk for almost 10 years. Imagine a friend of yours saying something like what he said, actually imagine a normal friend of yours saying it. You wouldn't all of the sudden think he's a lunatic. Your 1st assumption would be "maybe they discussed something to do with one of the chemicals in one type of disinfectant possibly having another use" if that's a little crazy, maybe he's tired or joking or something.
Point is, in Bayesian terms, it really depends on your priors.
[0] I thought of an interesting exercise: If you commit to listening to his interview on Rogan, I'll listen to an episode of your choice that you think will enlighten me
I have all the god damned time. He was president for 4 years! I had to! (At least as someone who tried to follow the news then, it was unavoidable.) Most recent time I listened to him for an extended period was during the debates, where I watched the whole thing uninterrupted. We can get into the whole eating dogs thing but I'm sure you're tired of it by now.
> Imagine a friend of yours saying something like what he said
I would think they're pretty dumb, but I'd brush it off and still be friends with them.
But here's the thing: my friends aren't president of the united states. I believe we should hold him to a higher standard, especially in the beginning of a pandemic when misinformation was rampant and it was very important we didn't hear nonsense like this from our president. The whole "people say shit like that all the time" trope is the exact problem I have with trump and his supporters. I don't want our president to have the intelligence level of a typical "friend" who thinks putting bleach in your body might be a good way to fight an infection.
> If you commit to listening to his interview on Rogan
Hard fucking pass.
This premise isn't even true. Trump did NOT float this idea.
This is something Democrats believe though. Which says a lot more about Democrats than it does about Trump supporters.
As someone replied to you: No Trump supporters actually believe in bleach as a remedy, but tons of Democrats do. What does that tell you about their respective intelligence or education?
Here is the exact quote:
> Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me
So we go back to my point. Am I supposed to just pretend he doesn’t say shit like this, so that I avoid offending trump supporters?
And when he says "disinfectant" he means that literally as some kind of disinfecting medication. The next sentence mentioning "medical doctors" should have clued you into that.
So, now that you know that, what's wrong with what he said? (Oh, I'm well aware that the media rapidly decided disinfectant meant bleach, and then went on a rampage about that, but that's not what he said, and also not what he meant.)
Which is kind of the point isn't it? You are accusing Trump supporters of lack of knowledge but the shoe is actually on the other foot. The entire outrage was literally an invention of his opponents.
Which is also why Republicans laugh at liberals who complain about this stuff, because unlike the liberals, they heard what he actually said, and not some fictional version.
I’m not accusing trump supporters of being stupid this, I’m accusing them of supporting what he says even though he’s obviously off his rocker.
He’s talking about putting disinfectants inside your body. He’s not using some code word for medicine. He’s talking about how fast disinfectants kill Covid outside the body, and that we should try putting them inside the body.
At this point I’m done with this entire thread, dealing with his apologists is going to give me an aneurysm. I weep for our country.
Is English not your first language? Those words aren't that hard to understand.
> He’s talking about how fast disinfectants kill Covid outside the body, and that we should try putting them inside the body.
So you're fine twisting his words to mean something else, and then accusing others of doing it?
Do you really not realize you have just then, taken his words, re-interperted them, then got mad about a fictional interpretation?
How do you not realize that everything you said about other applies FAR FAR more to you?
> dealing with his apologists is going to give me an aneurysm
Understanding spoken English makes me an apologist?
> I weep for our country.
We all do, but for very different reasons. Liberals lost the election because they can't seem to stop demonizing the other side, and people are sick of it. Perhaps take a lesson from that.
Let's dig up more of the quote, hopefully I won't pass out with rage having to type this shit:
> THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you're totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that too. It sounds interesting.
> ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN: We'll get to the right folks who could.
> THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.
He was JUST TALKING about how ultraviolet light would be great to get inside your body. If you'd like, we can talk about how FUCKING STUPID THAT IS on the face of it. Let's inject UV light into your veins somehow, sounds great.
Then he talks about "a disinfectant".
Now, your interpretation of "a disinfectant" is that he's using some strange coded word for plain old medication. After he was just talking about ultraviolet light.
So your contention is that RIGHT AFTER talking about ultravilot light being put inside your body to cure covid, he's now using "a disinfectant" to mean "a vaccine we haven't yet discovered" or some codeword for "medicine"??? How would that even make sense in this context?
He's talking about bleach. Nobody uses "disinfectant" to mean fucking anything else than "a thing you put on surfaces to kill microbes", like bleach, peroxide, etc etc etc.
YOU are the one that is twisting words to find a charitable interpretation of "disinfectant" to mean anything other than EXACTLY WHAT HE MEANT, which is some fucking bonkers tirade about how "if we can kill covid cells outside the body with things like ultraviolet light and disinfectants, then we should try doing that inside the body!" He didn't suddenly switch topics to talk about medicine.
Now let's ask snopes here. They have a big article debunking the idea that the president told people to inject bleach, so here's their opinion: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-inject-bleach-covid-...
> At no point in the media briefing did the then-president recommend that people inject bleach or other disinfectants into their bodies. He merely asked experts whether disinfectants could be injected to tackle COVID-19; a stance he later rowed back on when pressed by a journalist.
Right! He didn't say you should inject bleach, he merely opined that maybe we can inject disinfectants into people to tackle covid.
And you'll also notice that I DIDN'T SAY that he TOLD people to inject bleach. Only that he FLOATED the idea, which is EXACTLY what he did, if you take the common, everybody-in-the-english-speaking-world interpretation of "disinfectant" to mean "products that kill microbes that you absolutely should not ingest", with bleach being a perfect example.
Let's look what wikipedia says about a disinfectant, shall we?
> A disinfectant is a chemical substance or compound used to inactivate or destroy microorganisms on inert surfaces.[1] Disinfection does not necessarily kill all microorganisms, especially resistant bacterial spores; it is less effective than sterilization, which is an extreme physical or chemical process that kills all types of life.[1] Disinfectants are generally distinguished from other antimicrobial agents such as antibiotics, which destroy microorganisms within the body, and antiseptics, which destroy microorganisms on living tissue.
- Disinfectant is something you use on surfaces
- Antibiotics are things you ingest
- Antiseptics are something you use on living tissue
So you'd agree that trump meant "We should try using things we normally use on surfaces, and see what happens if we inject it"? It's just the word "bleach" you're hung up on?
Ok, then fine. Trump didn't float bleach as a covid remedy. He floated "disinfectants you'd normally use on surfaces, but injected into your body" as a covid remedy. I get it now!
> Liberals lost the election because they can't seem to stop demonizing the other side, and people are sick of it. Perhaps take a lesson from that
"You see if you were just nice to the terrorists they wouldn't have blown up the building. Perhaps take a lesson from that. We should be nicer to terrorists so they don't kill us."
Yeah no, fuck you.
If not that, then what were you trying to say?
These are morons you read about in your news bubble. The average American is not like them.
I can find you dozens of examples right now, in the press, from today. That the entire election is the fault of uneducated people.
Not "uneducated", but expressly "stupid".
He didn't.
Seems to me you need to look in a mirror.
In the interest of full disclosure I am totally guessing that neither did anything to materially improve the lives and fortunes of working-class Americans and neither Donald Trump will, nor would Kamala Harris. Working people in the US, as in the rest of the world seem to me to be shafted for good, by all sorts of economic forces that they have no control over. I'm speaking in this as a current academic but one-time unskilled, immigrant worker.
It used to be that you could feed yourself and your family with "the sweat of your brow". Not any more. Who is working to change that?
Uneducated working class folks compete with illegal immigrants for jobs and cheap housing. During his presidency illegal immigration was lower and wages rose for the working class and housing costs were relatively stable. He’s also positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate, and crime tends to impact the working class much more than the middle/upper classes.
Mostly folks who voted for him voted on the premise that their experience of the economy was better when he was president rather than on the basis of individual policies.
Is that true? Legal immigration was lower especially during the lockdown (for obvious reasons). But the number of deportations of illegal immigrants barely changed, e.g. https://www.cato.org/blog/president-trump-reduced-legal-immi...
> wages rose for the working class
That happened. And it happened even faster under Biden.
> He’s also positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate
And yet the murder rate rose to the highest level since 1997.
> their experience of the economy was better when he was president
I feel like it might be more accurate to say "perception" than "experience".
Trump’s first term and Obama’s second term were fairly steady, then you see a massive bump under Biden.
Under later Trump and Biden’s current policy, you are released into Mexico.
Objectively, they are stupid, even the ones who went to college.
I don't see any policy there, just platitudes.
Trump's plan for grocery prices is to put massive tariffs on grocery imports and to deport millions of workers. There is no one with a functioning logic cortex who doesn't see the problem with this plan. But at least they can rest comfortably knowing that the Musks, Sacks and Bezos' of the world will get a killer tax break for their next yacht.
American elections are the guy in the big suburban house complaining that filling up his F350 costs a little more than it did during COVID shutdowns and thinking that somehow the guy floating insane plans is going to fix it. It's bizarre.
Except the one metric that really counts: People can't afford their basic needs.
> So they voted for "their own economic interests" by voting in a guy with plans that every economist says
You mean leftside selected economists with their own agenda.
> will be absolutely disastrous and will not only massively spike unemployment, it will lead to far greater prices for American consumers.
He had the lowest unemployment numbers in decades.
Wage growth has far exceeded inflation in the United States. Americans as a whole have never, in history, been wealthier or consumed as much. This is one of those fun "you don't know what you've got until it's gone" things where people bought into a political narrative to such a degree that in their world-leading affluence they truly think they are hard done by and wronged. I sadly feel that a lot of Americans are going to learn that there is a long, long way to fall.
>You mean leftside selected economists with their own agenda.
If you really look at everything like this, that's incredibly sad and self-deluding. Trump's economic plans are scattered spitballing that sound like something the most ignorant person just randomly contrives. There is literally nothing Trump has proposed that would in any way improve the US economy or reduce prices of anything. But they absolutely would do the opposite. No one, ever, has convincingly described how Trump is going to improve the economy. It's just random score-settling and self-enriching nonsense.
>He had the lowest unemployment numbers in decades.
In Trump's first term he was constrained from doing much of anything, and actually accomplished shockingly little policy, just coasting on Obama's policies. In this term he will have zero checks. He can actually do the crazy nonsense he has proposed, and destroy the country.
There are two possible paths ahead for the United States-
-economic calamity with zero upside where people learn that tariffs aren't some magic thing that other countries pay. Where inflation truly starts going wild again, while federal services collapse and the oligarchs reap. Musk, Bezos and crew will never have it better. Many Americans will have it much worse.
-...or..., and what Trump voters repeatedly reveal they are assuming in voting for him, he just lied about everything he says he's going to do to get a vote and actually won't do anything much at all beyond some corruption and self-serving.
Either is pretty terrible. But here we are.
Having said that, it's hard as an outsider to look at the things Trump is campaigning on and not see that as not just calling "non-educated" people stupid, but he is literally relying upon it. Either his voters are extremely ill-educated, or they simply don't believe a word he says and actually make his lying a feature of his candidacy. Either aren't great.
When just about every economist says that the US economy -- quite literally the best economy on the planet -- is going to implode under the policies Trump has stated (even just the tariff proposal, not even getting into the crackpot "abolish the IRS and write on a piece of paper that crypto wipes out the debt", or Elon magically cutting 2/3rds of the federal budget, etc.), for people to then vote for Trump to "fix" the economy is not educated. Being isolationist in one of the greatest eras of peace in human history will not bring peace to Earth, it's literally guaranteed to bring war that will end up on your doorstep, etc. Nuclear non-proliferation dies with this election, and there are a lot of powers that existed under the US umbrella that are going to fire up a nuclear program, covertly or not.
I fear that many Americans just have no idea how much they have to lose. There is a sense of comfort and complacency to assume that this is the baseline. But it isn't. It can get much, much worse, very quickly.
I doubt it. Think about how connected the world is, you can't even apply for jobs without the internet.
Both jobs are equally important. The main difference is that you can get started doing construction without many pre-qualifications, while a construction worker may take a year or more to get the basics of computer engineering down.
I do not trust political sciences or humanities at all. There is little to no valid method to most things they publish. And I'm not alone in that opinion in my circle.
The U.S. is far more right wing than people thought. That Trump got a majority of the vote is a huge win for him. No one can claim his win is because of a backward electoral system and not because he is popular. This is huge. Democrats will be dead for 2 years minimum. Trump will be able to enact whatever legislation he wants to.
He is the President we deserve. The DNC needs to be abolished. Democrats had the opportunity to reform the system. It’s been over 100 years since the number of Representatives has been updated. They could have imposed election reform. They could have gotten rid of archaic Senate rules like filibuster.
When? How? Any change like that in the last few decades would be very hard, and probably before that as well.
I don't disagree with you, I've argued "fixing the system should be #1 priority" for years, but even if the Democratic party wanted to, I don't see how they could have done so.
I don’t think number of representatives matters as it’s mostly representative of population. If the ratios are the same then I don’t think 435 vs 4035 matters.
You are wrong on this. You should look up Reapportionment Acts. The number of Representatives does matter in an electoral system and for other reasons. A Representative from California represents far more people than one from North Dakota. This is a major power imbalance in both electoral matters and in matters of federal legislation.
The number of Representatives hasn’t been updated in a 100 years.
No, the size of the House is determined by Congress; a century ago they decided to cap it at the current number, and never increase it since then, regardless of population increase.
> I don’t think number of representatives matters as it’s mostly representative of population
That's not the case, though. A quick look at constituents per representative across states is all it takes to see how stark that is.
It's extra important because the number of electoral votes each state gets is dependent upon their number of representatives.
As much as I'd like to think the waning days of the 2022 Congress were wasted, I don't think this would have been feasible.
Manchin and Sinema refused to get rid of the filibuster. And with that in place, nothing else that you mention was possible.
> The U.S. is far more right wing than people thought.
Yup. In 2016 we thought Trump was an aberration, a temporary cultish fad. In 2020 we felt justified because he lost, but we ignored how barely he lost. And now, knowing everything about Trump there is to know, we've elected him again, and we can't even say he lost the popular vote this time. The GOP took the Senate, and may even keep hold of the House for at least the next two years. Thomas and Alito will likely retire from SCOTUS, and Trump will appoint young, carefully-chosen, extreme right-wing justices. The makeup of the court will be hard-right-majority for the rest of my life. I'm sure he'll also appoint more hard-right judges to the federal judiciary in record numbers.
This is who we are, and it's time we start accepting that. Dem leadership needs to internalize that and drastically change their strategy. I'm not sure
https://checkyourfact.com/2024/11/04/fact-check-did-trump-re...
People love to hear Trump saying he will drain the swamp.
In my ideal world, a govt. rep would reach out or knock, even with a warrant, to do an animal wellness check and remove the animal in case of abuse and to cite the owner and specify the correct forms needed to keep the squirrel.
Whether democrats finally learn that lesson is another thing. I am not optimistic on that.
The Democratic campaign did no such thing. Can you point to any examples? As far as I can see they went to great lengths to avoid saying anything like that.
As far as I can tell there was far more venom from the Republicans. Maybe the lesson is that a winning strategy is to be more insulting.
Anyway, you're moving the goalposts. The allegation was "calling half the country racist sexist fascist inbred stupid genocidal monsters".
While unacceptable by presidential standards, it's extremely tame compared to the things Trump regularly says about groups of people (we could even just limit that to the things he says about liberals or Democrats), and the vocal support he receives from his supporters for these statements. The fact that this got so much attention is evidence that "double standard" would be an understatement.
Can you quote what Obama said that seems relevant to my post? I doubt he outright insulted anyone.
> And what a surprise that they went hard for Trump instead
According to an exit poll, Black voters voted 86% Democrat this year, compared to 87% at the 2020 election.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
They don't (in general). Some of them over-apply those words. Some of them apply them to an over-broad category ("conservatives" or whatever). Some of them apply some of those words to some Trump supporters, which is not even the same thing as Trump voters, Republicans, or conservatives. And of that sub-sub-subset, sometimes the harsh words are even understandable, considering the hideous, immoral things they are being applied in response to.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters are much harsher with their words, and use much broader strokes when applying them.
I.e. it's the opposite. One of the defining characteristic (as opposed to simply a tendency) of the speaking style of Trump supporters is mockery and provocation and insulting and name-calling and threatening. They don't all do it, but it's an undeniable part of their ideology.
But calling Puerto Rico a pile of trash is okay?
Trump himself said Harris should be shot with 9 guns.
Somehow they still get elected.
Next time, run a 6’2” white guy with good hair.
shrugs
Hispanics and Blacks are evil I guess?
Turnout matters. This was a must win and they bet wrong.
Sorry if that hurts your feelings.
I say this every election when democrats play the "but we won the popular vote" card as well - that wasn't the game being played, so it doesn't really mean that much.
Now you can question 2nd order effects, but that’s not a message that’s easy to communicate through media.
Is the EU vote in Brussels passed by countries or by individual citizens?
As I recall the current electoral system was set up to weight the votes of states that were members of the union .. if the US has moved to a single unified country of individuals then it might be time to reset the rules (the US founders would be in favour if I read their comments on evolving systems correctly).
Perhaps 'dated' is a better description than 'broken'.
If you mean "state" in the sense of "nation-state", then no, the US is not a democratic union of 50 states. It's a federal republic. While each state does have its own identity, government, and laws, the US federal government has much more power over US states than the EU has over member countries.
> the current electoral system was set up to weight the votes of states that were members of the union
The current electoral system was set up to appease the southern slave-owning states who would have had little representation if the straight popular vote was used.
> Perhaps 'dated' is a better description than 'broken'.
Potato, potahto. Distinction without a difference, in this case.
Trump's legacy already speaks for itself.
As far as Europe and other overseas countries are concerned, Trump's most remarkable accomplishment was quite some time ago when he was President the first time.
He made unprecedented Presidential history already, and for the rest of his life (as well as the lives of millions of other senior citizens) he can bask in the degree of admiration that he brought to such an esteemed executive office.
He clinched it like no other in over 75 years of very strong & respectable leadership, recognized worldwide which really means something to international partners of all kinds.
He made sure that President Barack Obama will go down in history as the final US President to effectively be the "leader of the free world", in a long line of illustrious Republicans & Democrats who may one day regain such a level of respect again.
Only not possible in the lifetimes of millions of people around the world, for whom it's just a little too late now. Biden couldn't recover that mantle in only 4 years unless he was a miracle worker of some kind, that's how elusive it really was.
Completely eluded Trump, and once again the traditional American kind of world-class leadership on an international stage fades further into the past, with no recovery on the horizon any time soon.
This is something that nobody can deny.
It’s amazing to me that this can stand and efforts to change never seem to get very far.
Look at this [1] - Oprah warning women that if they don't vote they may lose their ability to vote. This is ridiculous. Trump is not a saint and January 6th was a dark moment but they (the Big Tech, the media, the celebrities) blown the negative image of Trump out of proportion and are making stuff up. Whether you like him or not he is the candidate of the other party. There is no democracy without the other party. The reality is that the megaphones have been cornered by a single side and are used in the most unfair way with additions of fake news and negative coloring about Trump and the "Far Right". Elon Musk saved the day by buying Twitter. It's the last social media platform where Republicans and their supporters could have any presence.
There were plenty of reasons to not vote for Kamala. Perhaps the biggest ones are her views that align with communism. [2] And by the way, Merry Christmas! [3]
[1] https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1853659788678156648
Seen a good few Trumpers complaining about the label "far right". If you don't like the label that's on you, it's like an orange complaining about being called an orange, it's a fact.
What am I supposed to think when I see a campaign ad like this? [1]
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/04/politics/video/will-ferre...
The parent pointed out that Trump promised the same thing again - so not a dark moment, but a dark pattern. Very dark. There's not much darker than overturning the rule of law and creating civil unrest.
>"Democrats are the only moral choice"
I agree with you that Democrats are not somehow unusually moral, but I don't think this is the lie you are portraying it as (or exaggeration? It's unclear what your criticism is exactly). Plenty of people have been given plenty of concrete examples indicating that the Trump camp contains a significant portion of people who espouse unusually immoral ideologies. Maybe they're wrong, but they don't have to do mental gymnastics to arrive at that conclusion in an intellectually honest manner. And, as you rightly point out, there are effectively only two parties.
>I would repeat the second paragraph
Regarding that, then:
>if [women] don't vote they may lose their ability to vote. This is ridiculous.
I've heard Trump supporters say they think women shouldn't vote dozens of times - on the social media platforms you claim are (or were at the time) lacking conservative voices. The notion isn't ridiculous. It's unlikely. But when it comes to threats to the most foundational rights, "unlikely" isn't good enough for the voter's mind.
>Whether you like him or not he is the candidate of the other party. There is no democracy without the other party.
Democrats largely don't take this stance beyond petty disrespect like "not my president" and demanding recounts in very close regions. Trump supporters, on the other hand, explicitly do take this stance when the other candidate wins, as you, again, have already admitted.
>Elon Musk saved the day by buying Twitter
Twitter moderation under Musk is at least as right-leaning as it was left-leaning prior. That is to say, somewhat. What Musk did do was declare the word "cis" a slur, broadly. A word I used to describe myself and my wife in another comment, because it was relevant and correct (the usual comparisons are the words "Jew" or "gay").
Republicans haven't been anywhere near absent from social platforms for 15 years. Underrepresented, maybe. However, social platforms bring out the ever-living pettiness of politics on both sides, and the conservative flavor of pettiness is naturally more likely to break even the most politically-neutral moderation rules (or be "shouted down", by whatever definition you want for that) on social media platforms, because it is more anti-social than the liberal flavor of pettiness.
Please explain how Project 2025 (written by the Heritage Foundation etc etc, not big tech / the media) is not a threat to democracy, specifically its sections on consolidating power in a single person (= autocracy) and dismantling various federal systems of checks and balances in favor of loyalist political appointees.
> It's the last social media platform where Republicans and their supporters could have any presence.
Truth Social was built specifically as a safe space for Republicans and their views. Musk did not make Twitter a bastion of free speech, not when using words that personally offend him get you banned.
I have never heard of it. A niche social media site built specifically for expressing right-wing political views could never compete with Facebook, Instagram, Reddit.
I absolutely sympathize with individual reasons to vote Trump and don't automatically look down on Trump voters (immigration, for example). But, Trump himself and explicit "Trump supporters" (i.e. people who make it clear they support his general identity - negativity and all) 95% of the time don't leave any room for sympathy when I encounter them, online or in person, and they are extremely common. What the average liberal is shown (and I assume you care about the average person in each camp, since lauding the common man is a prominent value) is an unheard-of-in-their-lifetimes amount of verbal encouragement (with varying degrees of explicitness) for hatred of others, violence against others, imprisonment of others, and disrespecting of the law/constitution in the name of those things. It's not comparable with any past Democratic candidate (or Republican, for that matter).
On the personal scale, my wife and I don't express anything close to extremist positions, or any cheerleader-type love for Democrats, or any name-calling of conservatives, and yet we are called every slur that's popular with Trump supporters. And we're white, cis Americans. My wife, because she's so friendly when strangers talk to her, has been stalked by one Trump supporter and had another call her a slut (to another Trump supporter, not to her face). She's terrified of these people now. It's insane that they even state out loud their support for Trump in the short time we encounter them.
You can't expect humans presented with that to think, when that candidate wins, "Wow, I guess political issues X, Y, and Z are really important to those guys. Maybe I was too harsh on them." They're going to think, "Wow, those guys really are leaning in a fascist-y direction and have a big problem with evil people in their ranks. I'm scared for my country, community, and family." I don't think that's an extreme or unnecessarily provocative thing to admit.
You can't pretend that we we haven't been forced into the political eye over past several years. The winning party has been extremely loud and extremely clear about their plans for us. I don't buy the ignorance argument anymore, not after three election cycles of this. If you voted for them, then you're okay with more of us dying in exchange for whatever you think you're getting out of the deal.
(Using the nonspecific "you" here—of course I don't know how the person I'm replying to voted.)
I have a couple acquaintances that are trans and they seem like normal happy people that aren't overtly oppressed. I'm under the impression that the state of trans rights is more or less equivalent to black rights, is that not the case?
I don't think we should try to draw any conclusions about the mental state or hopes and fears about people who we consider acquaintances. We just don't know them well enough, and they don't know us well enough to open up about the hard stuff.
It's very difficult to not see the right's treatment of trans individuals as a slow genocide. Not only do they offer them no protections, but they also take healthcare rights away. But worst of all, they demonize them as monsters and sic their followers on them. The GOP doesn't actually need to kill trans people, it just needs to convince people to kill trans people. So far, that has been incredibly effective.
With Biden getting 80M+ votes in 2020, where did those millions of voters go? Harris was supposed to be Biden++
Yet, reading through these comments, it seems alive and well even after an astounding rebuke. Why? I despise our two-party system, but I'm actually quite happy to see one particular party rebuked this time around for this abhorrent behavior that should have no place in civil discourse. It's sad that HN can't rise above it.
And for clarity, yes, both sides participate in this charade of incivilities, but I am simply expressing my own opinion as an independent in 2024 that it overwhelmingly came from one side towards _me_ in this election cycle.
IMO in all actuality the best course of action is somewhere in the middle.
people in the middle get caught in the crossfire of harsh rhetoric. and it is hard to blame people for this, an eye for an eye is so easy and tempting.
I've had right wingers criticize me with patronizing "anti-commie" rhetoric, but the worst has been shaming (yes actual shaming and exclusion) from my peers because i (mostly) agree with them in a contrarian way that they dont like or attempt to understand.
i don't really interact with many right wingers day to day, so this difference might just be a result of that bias.
I'm curious if this kind of thing happens to right wingers as well, or if there is less such "friendly-fire" on the right.
P.S I'm European.
It appears to be the plight of critical thinkers in this culture. You are not allowed to have a complex set of beliefs that may cross both sides of the culture war.
As a sidenote I realize Biden made that garbage comment which came across to me as a misconstrued sentence that is common with Biden's speech impediment. But even if not, Trump has said a lot of terrible things about left leaning people like myself. Is your standard as equivically disdainful of Trump's comments, and if not, why not?
I guess I just find it wild you're appealing to civil discourse when the winner of this election does very little civil discourse, by his own admission.
- Group "watercooler" discussions at work where people parrot vilifying language that targets groups I identify with (I do work at a _very_ left-leaning workplace)
- Community events that I have participated in, where people were not necessarily attacking me personally, but were hurling insults at our group
- The media. This one is fairly self-documenting.
As I mentioned in another reply, since I fall in the middle, I often get negative rhetoric from both sides. But only one has stooped to the levels of vitriol that have often left me shocked (for example, that I should forcibly have my genitals removed so as to prevent procreation).
like how he said he wishes he had Hitler's generals so he could just have democrats or others who disagree with him executed
> And for clarity, yes, both sides participate in this charade of incivilities
Although I'm unaware of him asking for Hitler's generals so he could execute democrats, but I'm also not interested in participating in this back-and-forth exchange, as I dislike both administrations.
> He's looking for obedience. This is the thing that shocks him about American generals and continues to shock him, is that they swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president. That's what he's looking for, personal loyalty. And we know that from many other discussions we have heard around him.
My original comment was simply a personal observation that, in this election season, I received far more abuse from one side over the other, and that I was sad to see this same disdain continue here in HN. You may have had a completely different experience, and that's perfectly OK, but I'm honestly confused at the goal with you questioning me about a comment Trump made.
> just curious if you think that the rhetoric from trump and his followers is not only hurtful, but also incredibly violent.
It was *exactly* at this moment that the old tactics resurfaced.
Instead of just saying "Yes, you're right", a counterfact was brought up to refute OP's original premise. This tactic laid bare how such a conversation like this would end up: With either side just saying "but X said this!", whilst no common ground is established.
chicagobuss was not seeking to establish common ground, instead the goal was to construct a fight & win it.
-----
> We’re so close to understanding each other here. People have validated your experience, and then said hey, we feel it too. Yet when they try to have the same conversation and seek validation of their own experience, you decide that’s the time to shut the conversation down.
Because there was no attempt in a genuine exploration of the original premise.
The *moment* that aliasxneo tried to break down where the insults came from, instead of examining why the sources were engaging in such rhetoric, chicagobuss barged in with a "but X said this!", and proceeded to engage in a fight instead of an examination of the original premise.
The original premise still remains unexamined: Why these circles felt that they could engage in the same tactics as who they hate & not feel repercussions from doing so.
I added that sentence with the express purpose of acknowledging both sides have participated in harsh rhetoric, but that for me as an independent, it came far more from one side than the other.
I was getting dragged into an argument I wasn't interested in pursuing since I had already addressed this perspective (and even explicitly re-quoted it). The commenter's insistence on continuing is what perplexed me, and I don't think my follow-up inquiry was shutting down the conversation.
Thanks for reiterating that clarification, it kinda got lost on me in the chain of replies. FWIW, I agree with you about the state of discourse today and also feel the heat from both sides (check my comment history to see where I’m coming from) although I’ve been spared any direct vilification of that sort, but I’ve definitely felt my radar spike when listening to nearby conversation in past workspaces.
My best guess is that someone sees the worst rhetoric from “the other side” somewhere on social media and imputes that onto everyone they perceive as being on that side. Then they break after being exposed to too much of it, and lash back out with something equally reprehensible. Then someone on the other side sees that. Repeat ad nauseum…
I’m sorry to hear anyone would seriously suggest forced castration on you, that is just absurdly despicable. I don’t know how this country can rebound from this. Not even one but both or all “sides” have to be vulnerable with the others to apologize and commit to behaving more respectfully. It sounds comical to even suggest that is possible given the litany of things I’ve seen and heard over the last 30 years.
I’m wracking my brain to figure out how I can personally make a difference. Because what Democrats and liberals and those on the far left are doing ain’t working. I say that as a Democratic party voter, albeit one that has to hold their nose too often. Do Republicans have to hold their nose when they vote for Trump, or are they actually voting with joy? If so, color me envious.
Most of my disgust is reserved for the spirit that produces this vitriol we see all over the political landscape. Or, using Dawkins' language (yes, a genuine Christian independent quoting Richard Dawkins), this meme that is infecting the culture at large. It's a plague and I'm always saddened when I see it rear its head, especially here on HN.
I'm not smart enough to have it all figured out, but I've found the most meaningful work I've been able to do is in small communities where face-to-face is the priority. It's why I really prize community work. We're all here, from different backgrounds, working entirely for free, but for a cause we all deeply care about. I've had some amazing conversations during these times.
Anyways, I appreciate your genuine response. I can tell you care deeply, and I encourage you not to lose hope.
I would be happy for someone to provide more evidence, as I gave up after 10-15 minutes.
Clinton: "Basket of deplorables".
Biden: "Garbage".
HN, all over this thread: "How could people be so stupid?"
In the Democratic Party, there's a long, deep thread of contempt for everyone who doesn't agree. They're supposed to be the party that represents the little guy, but if you're a little guy who thinks abortion is morally wrong, or who doesn't think gay marriage is a good idea, or who doesn't think trans women should be in womens' sports or womens' restrooms, then they don't represent you, and they aren't going to. Instead, they view you as a moral leper, whose only proper action is to repent, and whose culture should be completely eradicated.
If you're on the receiving end of that kind of attitude, it's a fairly normal response to flip them the bird and vote for the other guy.
To all the people who are saying, "how could they be so stupid?", I say: "How could you be so stupid? What did you think was going to happen?"
If you want to win elections, start by not holding in contempt the people you claim to represent. Stop telling them what they're supposed to think, and what they're supposed to value, and what they're supposed to believe. Instead, find out what they think and value and believe, and then represent that.
Right leaning supporters online love to throw around contemptuous terms like groomer, pedophile, cuck, soyboy etc
But to me, the difference is this: Vance said "miserable childless cat ladies" about people who were Harris supporters. They already weren't going to vote for Trump. But the Democrats are pointing contempt at people that have, historically, been the Democrats' core constituency.
Vance is alienating Harris voters, Democrats are alienating their own voters. In that way, it's different. It's not morally different - contempt is contempt - but it's practically different.
Honestly, is this because of his speech impediment or because Biden is just really old and unable to function anywhere close to 100%?
I mention this because another angle of "talked down to" is a sense that the Democrats have gaslit the country on a number of issues, most clearly on Biden's age.
We now know that Biden has declined cognitively since becoming President. We now know that his inner circle and the media around him engaged in small "cover up" to hide his decline. One element of this "cover up" was explaining his behavior as a result of his speech impediment. Of course, the debate spoke for itself and the whole thing came crashing down.
I imagine today these would be far more of a deciding power than troops.
In terms of warships, the CSA did capture and convert existing Union ships in Norfolk, Virginia (despite the Union's efforts to scuttle them as they withdrew). A good number of ironclads were also constructed or purchased from England. With the remaining being commissioned and put into operations by the CSA itself during the war. Interestingly, this also included some very early submarines, which is I think the first time they were used in warfare.
That said, the CSA was never able to effectively break the Union's naval blockades, and battles by the opposing armies were far more decisive in the war's outcome. Particularly in the strategically decisive Eastern Theater of the war.
So what happens if he goes so far that the United States loses or jeopardizes its global dominance? The same states that voted heavily for him would be the first impacted, with massive job losses and higher costs. Coastal states and cities wouldn't be too far behind, with higher costs tempered somewhat by proximity to logistics hubs, and unemployment would be more limited due to the higher concentration of jobs. That is, until our economic dominance falters, at which point our heavily-built-up services industry is likely to fracture and collapse in on itself under the weight of competition from countries like India and China.
All of which is to say that, yes, it's a potential outcome that the United States does dissolve in some fashion, as some states seek to preserve their power and economic control even as the Federal Government loses its mind.
Now then, do I personally think this is the outcome? No, not really. We lack debt to spend frivolously on deficit financing, so there goes that easy out. The stock market is not the economy, and workers will quickly realize that when stocks skyrocket and they're all laid off 2008-style, which would be bad for those with the most to gain (billionaires and Private Equity). I still think there's enough backstops in place to prevent runaway collapse and dissolution...
...although the biggest one of all is a divided Congress. If the GOP gets a trifecta (Executive, both Legislative chambers, and SCOTUS), then there's nothing stopping the full suite of plans from being implemented post-haste, at which point the music very suddenly stops and everyone realizes how screwed we are. Our prior backstops, our allied countries, cannot be depended upon with a President that is vocally supportive of Russia and while they're dealing with their own populism issues.
All in all, my read is that while things are about to get really bad, they're not likely to be maximum bad, if that makes sense. The current world order has always been fragile post-Cold War, and this might be the time for a grand realignment. It'd be a shame to lose our dominance, but no empire lasts forever.
But Americans knew this because of Jan 6, so it's what we deserve I guess.
With now full control of the government, it is trivial for him to have the supreme court overturn the 22nd amendment and rig a third election. Absolutely trivial.
Or maybe it'll be a regular, peaceful transition of power in 4 years. But I absolutely wouldn't bet on that.
That being said, I can’t say how outside forces could shape things in unexpected ways. A proper WW3 with China and Russia could devastate enough of the world that countries with large immigrant populations end up the new superpowers, isolated from global conflicts and with the population for large projects, quickly. Or it might not. There’s so many potential branches when the status quo fails or is destroyed, that our only reliable sources of data come from those who lived it before us - lived through WW1 and WW2, who witnessed the Holocaust, who resisted fascism and totalitarianism from within and without.
I hope this is a crisis we manage to navigate largely peacefully, educating our masses about a better future together and form a new, achievable American Dream for them to chase. I want us to stop debating ideology in echo chambers, and instead put in the hard work of teaching, and guiding, and helping our fellow man. Pull the socialists, and the communists, and the modern economic theorists, and all the “fringe” groups out of their fortresses and into the streets, exchanging ideas with one another and formulating a real path forward that recognizes we will all have to compromise something to achieve our goal of a better, brighter, more sustainable future together.
It is true that the Supreme Court has wide latitude in interpreting the Constitution. But I don't see the Court interpreting "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice" in any other way than what the plain text says.
> But I don't see the Court interpreting "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice" in any other way
Simple… He wont be elected.
He’ll be appointed. Or some other word. Or elections will be suspended due to some “national emergency” and so “we’ll just continue with who we have right now in the interim”. This is not uncommon when democracies fall to authoritarianism.
The Republicans, and their courts and judges, have already amply demonstrated how disingenuous they’re willing to be.
The 14th amendment disqualifies people who have “previously taken an oath to support the Constitution.”
The Republican position is that Trump swore an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution, but the word “support” was not in there so it doesn’t apply.
Some may say “no, to secede you need approval and they will say no!”. Okay, but in this scenario why would states with the GDP the rest of the union relies on just ask nicely?
A Trump government threatened individual liberties everywhere and he’s vindictive enough to concentrate on blue states. Check the news today about Newsom’s special session. Plans already under way.
No we don't need to change the system on the basis that it leads to outcomes you want.
I definitely agree with that view. But maybe we could/should change the system on the basis that "the majority does not agree that the system is working".
While measuring that is hard since you would always tend to find that the system is working if it favours the candidate you like; there still is a significant number of people both left and right leaning that agree that the bi partisan winner-takes all voting system is fundamentally broken.
If only for the fact that a president can ben elected by winning less voices than his opponent, thereby showing that some votes are worth more than others.
It's doomed via repeated iterations to fall prey to variations of Hotelling's law - the evolving of two parties seeking to 'capture' the First Past the Post votes of greatest majority while also directly representing the least (non representive two party politics).
This wasn't as the US founders intended, many expressed an extreme distaste for party politics and envisioned a congress with factions in proportion to the views of the greater population that bargained and dealed within themselves to find comprimises acceptable to most via robust debate.
Instead the US has landed in a wasteland of little to no choice for the public at large.
It's a poor system after 400 years of growth, stagnation wasn't seen by the founders as the way of the future, rather expressly as the hallmark of doom and eventual depotism (to Benjiman Franklin at least who was quite explicit on this).
In my experience, a new language takes ~2 years for reasonable acquisition, and a new culture ~5; I don't know about you all, but I'd guess the chances that the US will ameliorate its basic political systems in the next 5 years range between fat, slim, and none.
The least we can ask of elected politicians is they make some effort toward keeping their campaign promises.
Rounding up looks like around 145 million people voted in this election, that's less than half the population of the united states.
Do you have any evidence to support the idea that the current system reflects the "position of the majority"?
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/how-well-the...
Sadly, it's looking like the republicans campaign to shoot it down succeeded because it would have threatened their grip on the state by allowing democrats and independents to temper their candidates to more moderate picks
What happened to "our democracy"? In a democracy the majority wins.
We had two horrible choices.
EDIT: If you're going to downvote me I expect at least some explanation of how she is uneducated, unqualified, or not articulate. I have yet to see any, from anyone, which unfortunately leaves me no choice but to make unfavorable assumptions.
If your opinion is not fueled by racism or sexism, that should be extraordinarily easy to prove, and you should be motivated to do so.
Secondly, I can match your examples 1000 to 1 of times she was very well-spoken. One example, one in which she does not stutter or mispronounce any words, means nothing. I know you know it means nothing. She has spoken so, so, so many times throughout her career.
As far as word salads go, Kamala side salad doesn't compare to Trump's Seinfeld "Big Salad".
This is just one of dozens of examples that have convinced me personally that she's legitimately not the brightest lightbulb out there:
There are some issues where they haven't switched (eg. abortion)
They will most likely break up Google and Meta for "pushing the woke agenda" but are smart enough to hide behind Lina Khan's anti-US-big-tech arguments that has populist support on both wings of the political spectrum.
Vance is Thiels man. And Theil wants to be a Supreme Court Judge.
Don't think they'll actually break up either of them in that case though; more likely use them as a boogeyman to endlessly dispute with so they appear anti-big-tech whilst doing everything possible to boost share prices of the same and similar companies.
They are pro-Israel and anti-Palestine.
They are pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine.
Expect the money to stop flowing to Ukraine, and to keep going to Israel, and try to divine a logic for that.
Many of the republicans I know sit in a gray area in between, they definitely don't want us involved but they also don't have a strong opinion on the wars either way and see them as someone else's fight. That definitely isn't the main narrative I see in the media, but I personally know very few republicans who care strongly about one side of either war.
That view is a bit like a libertarian anti-war view in my opinion. Its antiwar without attempting to get involved in anyone else's business.
It’s always “your hypocrisy is worse than my hypocrisy” because even if they admit the hypocrisy exists (not a given) they just chalk it up to “both sides.“ We’ve seen this song and dance for a decade straight.
Maybe you just don't know enough Trump voters?
repubs aren't pro russia. they are just anti-getting-involved in there.
They sure are for the right price.
This only matter if we think that the Republican party still exists, and was not silently replaced by other party carrying its blood stained skin. Is GOP still alive? Is a serious question.
I have a lot of doubts about the real independence of republicans in this situation. The man at charge is obviously pro Russia and the republicans can't do a s*t about this. They will be replaced one by one. Anything that would try will be pushed out of the road.
I heard Mitch McConnell called a RINO a few weeks ago. That says it all.
1) Cult to the leader, Image printed on coins, posters, everywhere on TV and media. Fanatism
2) Religion serves the King. Divine intervention to justify power take. "God choose me in a divine mission to fix this mess" is a central part of the speech in every new monarch crowning. Trump is yet talking about that.
3) Exceptionalism and isolationalism, we are the best country and is cold and rainy out of my frontiers. Frontiers are very important for Kings as symbolic element of protection.
4) Extravagant behavior. Trump did all sort of outrageous things that would put anybody else in the jail, but got unscathed all the time. All kings do this. This is made to reinforce the idea of a special "superhuman" status.
4) Laws. This special status imply also that the law does not apply to the King and people will be carefully taught about that.
5) Killing competitors to the crown ("Hang Mike Pence" was metaphorical, but also works in a symbolic plane).
6) Wicht hunt behavior. As the King can't do wrong, scapegoats are required, normally on minorities.
7) Useful idiots. Extensive use of expendable pawns that are promised to enter the court, became famous, gain influence etc if they do a favor for the King. Those promises will never deliver.
8) Sucession. I would bet that the next elections will not have Trump as a frontman but a son of Trump will be the sure and only candidate. Every step will be taken to assure that not other has an opportunity inside the party. There will be a strong temptation and a lot of space to cheat in elections also.
9) And a component that is not still here, but I expect to see in the future is to disarm people that could pose a treat, weapon control but only for a part of the population. All Kings do this.
Of course, it took what, 70, 80 years of US influence to weaken the European armies to the point where we're highly reliant on them for defense, deterrence, tech and material. The Crimea invasion should've been the catalyst for the massively increased spending and prioritization of the military in Europe, not the 2022 escalation. I hope for Ukraine's sake that Europe has been able to catch up and restart production of equipment and that they can supply it asap, because after Ukraine it'll be Moldavia and Georgia, which already have pro-russian separatist movements / areas. Poland has invested a ton in updating their military at least.
I hope the US doesn't have veto powers to stop article 5 from being enacted if it does come to that.
They can't and they won't.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-weapons-shells-european-unio...
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-ukraine-military-aid-2026/a-69...
Sending more munitions to Ukraine means it takes the Russian military longer to overcome the Ukrainian army by force of arms. The unstated aspect that is often glossed over is that this requires more and more Ukrainian men to be forced against their will to die for the territorial integrity of the country (because in 2024 the Ukrainian military is fueled overwhelming by conscription, not by volunteers). It's bizarre to me that is considered a "pro-Ukrainian" take. It's like egging on Paraguay during the War of the Triple Alliance to keep fighting, no matter if ~70% of your male population dies in the process. Just don't surrender!
Americans and Western Europeans cheer for Ukrainian sovereignty, but seem disinterested in Ukrainian lives. I think the bulk of Ukrainian men would rather trade the Blue&Yellow for the Russian tri-color, and keep their balls/legs/arms attached.
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/39622
https://www.ft.com/content/b9396112-585a-4f7e-9628-13d500c99...
No. We don't want to be world police. We want to make money and grow our families.
Israel's diplomatic position would be much weaker if they didn't believe that the US would keep supporting them no matter what they do.
Why do you feel that Israel's diplomatic position needs to be weaker?
And how would the Palestinians' diplomatic position be, without the support of Iran, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Turkey, Lebanon, Libya, Tunis, and the USSR and now Russia?
Gee I wonder why. Every single US senator takes AIPAC lobby money.
Most are anti palestine because Hamas is a terrorist. Sorry I won’t support terrorism and support what Israel is doing.
I support Ukraine because I know what Russia needs Ukraine for.
Do I want to see people shooting? No because I’ve been to war and seen how ugly it is. Sometimes you have to defend yourself though.
I still voted for Trump.
This just means you support State Terrorism instead of non-state terrorism.
> Sometimes you have to defend yourself though.
Unless you're Palestinian. In which case defending yourself isn't authorized. Just ask the West Bank residents being regularly killed by armed illegal settlers pre-October 7th how laying down their arms has worked out for them.
I'm suggesting murdering people at a music festival occupies the same space, morally, as bombing entire families with aviation ordnance. One of them is painted as wrong, and the other isn't, because state terrorism is tacitly approved in the Western mainstream information space....depending on the perpetrators. When Hamas (or Russia) does it, it's "kidnapping", when Israel does it, they are "detaining suspects". From August 2023 (before the Hamas attack) AP News was reporting Israel had 1,200 detainees without charges. Why aren't they called hostages? ( https://apnews.com/article/israel-detention-jails-palestinia... )
The two regions are both enclaves of Palestine, engaged in a joint struggle for emancipation. There were 100+ Palestinians killed in the West Bank in 2022: ( https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63073541 ) and 200+ killed in 2023 before the October 7th attack ( https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/08/1139922 ). Clearly disarmament and NOT being ruled by Hamas is not working for the West Bank Palestinians. I'm sure if you asked any of the various Palestinian militant groups, yes they are engaged in a joint defense of their people. After all, the primary purpose of the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation was to try to capture enough Israelis to force a prisoner exchange and get their own people back (similar to snatching Gilad Shalit and trading just him for 1,000 Palestinians). They suffered from "catastrophic success" mixed with undisciplined follow-on echelons (Palestinian Islamic Jihad as well as others) who inflicted far more civilian damage than just a cross-border snatch & grab....and they are definitely paying for it in blood now.
Then I'll address that. You are again, 100% correct. Bombing entire families with aviation ordnance would be abhorrent.
When the Gazans set out to attack a music festival, they did so with the explicit intention to murder civilians. When Israel drops a JDAM on a civilian home in Gaza, one of two things happen: Either the target is a high-ranking militant, and unfortunately the civilians he lives with (like everybody else, they have families) are collateral damage. Or, the target is military infrastructure in those civilian homes, and the home gets warnings to evacuate before the bombs fall.
Let's be clear: Israel has been willing to cause far more collateral damage since the 7th of October last year than beforehand. Every Israeli I know mourns the civilians killed as a result. I am certain that there exist Israelis who celebrate Gazan civilian deaths, I see them online. But nobody that I've ever met - and I served in a combat unit here - has ever felt that way.
If you really feel that bombing entire families is wrong, you should know that a rocket from Gaza fell not far from my apartment in November 2012. We had just a broken window, but other neighbours had far more damage and one was critically injured. The rocket fell where one of my daughters was playing just as the sirens rang - that siren saved her life and others.
This is a dishonest take. The innocent civilians now being bombed didn't do this. That you try to commingle them into Hamas' actions tells a lot about you.
22,000 bombs dropped in 6 weeks: https://truthout.org/articles/israel-used-22000-u-s-provided...
How many thousands of "high ranking" militants were there that had to be killed while with their families? Was no pattern of life analysis done to enable killing them outside of their homes? Let's just say 10,000 bombs were dropped on these high-ranking guys. That leaves the balance of ordnance of ~12,000 targets. So you are telling me Israel had TIMELY and ACCURATE intelligence on the locations of ~12,000 pieces of military infrastructure in Gaza....but couldn't anticipate that Hamas's attack plans were serious? That you know the location of damn near every RPG under some guy's floorboards....but couldn't rapidly locate and recover your abducted citizens in the same battlespace? I've seen the Joint Prioritized Target List for the Korean Peninsula and even though North Korea has been digging underground facilities since 1953, I don't think that List has ~12,000 targets on it, and North Korea has 330 times the land area of Gaza. And we KNOW that the targeting process isn't accurate and timely, because we get incidents like this: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c985y78d0g1o
Anyone who has planned aviation support and executed a targeting lifecycle can tell that this doesn't pass the sniff test.
> I am certain that there exist Israelis who celebrate Gazan civilian deaths, I see them online. But nobody that I've ever met - and I served in a combat unit here - has ever felt that way.
I served in a National Guard infantry battalion before I commissioned, and we definitely had a few sociopaths in our company. How does nobody in the IDF know anyone malevolent, yet we get a constant stream of self-incriminating IDF war crimes on social media?
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/i-killed-him-with-four-bu...
> If you really feel that bombing entire families is wrong, you should know that a rocket from Gaza fell not far from my apartment in November 2012. We had just a broken window, but other neighbours had far more damage and one was critically injured.
Do you feel that your neighbor was "just collateral damage"? Probably not, right? It's such a dehumanizing euphemism.
General terror bombardment of residential areas is morally wrong and even militarily stupid in my opinion. It's wrong when Hamas and Hezbollah do it, and it's wrong when the IDF does it. Whether that is Greater Israel or Greater Palestine, neither will accomplish their objective by blindly chucking ordnance at people's houses.
You can't possibly believe this when there are numerous confirmed reports of entire families being massacred with 0 hostages taken. If your purpose was really to take hostages; those could have been easy bargain chips; instead they raped them, murdered them and paraded their bodies in front of cheerful crowds.
If the central point of the operation was to grab hostages; their whereabouts and well being (or at least survival) would have been central to the whole ordeal; instead the were disseminated with little to no proof of life. It doesn't even appear that the Hamas leadership knew what to do with them, or even had them accounted for and located.
The goal of the attacks was to inflict a major blow to the Israeli government by forcing a strong military response that would delay the normalisation of the relations between Israel and other arab states. To do so Hamas was wiling to sacrifice civilian blood which is exactly what is happening now. They placed their hideouts in schools hospitals, and NGO headquarters to maximise the political cost of any military operation. Hostages were "nice to have" as they were supposed to further increase the pressure on the Israeli government by people who would be pushing for their return.
They did not anticipate how far BiBi was willing to go and they are definitely paying for it in blood now.
But this war specifically, not the conflict in general, was very clearly launched by Hamas.
Your heart is in the right place. But you've been manipulated.
No they weren't. Absorbing bombs when you have a missile defense system that ensures zero to tens of casualties, then responding with the same bombs when you know they will cause hundreds to thousands of casualties is doing exactly what I said. No one lied to me. I saw the facts and saw my money being sent to people who think this is okay, and like every other sane American, I said it should stop, and soon it will.
All of this was a decade ago, back when Israelis used to set up lawn chairs on hills overlooking Gaza and cheer as bombs dropped. Tell me how this was a lie too:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer...
Look, all this aside, you're probably a nice guy. You're probably worried for your family.i get that. I've been there. But 20 years and trillions of dollars spent on wars that did nothing to secure us, nothing to change the region, taught me that fighting back isn't always the path to success. You have to fight right, and you have to fight smart too. The US had a ton of goodwill from the world after 9/11 and squandered it so bad that Trump, who has now been elected resoundingly twice as a Republican, said on stage, in front of tons of Republicans that Republican President Bush was one of the worst presidents and his wars were disastrous mistakes and we should have never gone. Cheney, who architected those wars, and his family, are now global pariahs basically. Lashing out and wasting money and causing more problems and expecting a wallet refill? I saw that for 2 decades, and I'm done with it here, and I'm done with paying for it somewhere else too
It's not realistic at all though. No country with the means to respond militarily would decline to do so. And no army in the world has ever disengaged from a conflict once casualties became asymmetric. If the allies did that in WW2, Europe would look very different today.
The most one can reasonably expect is general adherence to international laws, which includes the principle of proportionality. Even that occasionally becomes impractical, for example since Hezbollah disregarded UNSC 1701 and noone enforced it against them, it's not realistic to expect Israel to strictly comply with it.
None of this is true. The UK did exactly this in Ireland during the IRA insurgency.
Interesting that you end your comment with flimsy justification for targeting and killing UN workers and peacekeepers, which Israel is now doing.
You basically ignored most of my comment. I never said anything about morally right, I argued from the realism of the past 20 years of counterterrorism. It leads me to think you're not responding in good faith. Like I said earlier, I have seen and am no longer willing to support wasting billions of dollars on ignoring the root of terrorism, ignoring the diplomatic means which worked with other terrorist groups (IRA, Taliban, ANC, Irgun, etc.) Maybe one day you will too
I never said anything about UN peacekeepers, don't put words in my mouth.
Are you deliberately trying to conflate conflict with war to push an agenda?
But the judges he appoints do. And if his first term is repeated, he'll again just appoint the far-right judges that republicans hand to him.
You're right, some things will be left up to states and I think we'll see more state divisions and self-sorting of people among states.
On abortion, it will be interesting to watch republicans fight over trying to push a nationwide ban. Trump is savvy and powerful enough to squash that, probably.
Trump did in fact enable the judges who changed the law on abortion.
The best explanation I heard recently was that Trump in 2016 made a play to pull working class Americans into the Republican party. The party basically clinched its teeth and looked the other way, knowing that they either accept the voters or risk a real problem. Since then the Republican party has largely embraced the working class while the Democratic party continues to favor more and more towards the rich voters and massive corporations, finishing off the full party flip.
Insane to say this when Trump and Republicans want to lower taxes for the rich and even suggest "abolishing the IRS".
Until the programs and benefits that the working class relies on are cut because "who's gonna pay for it?!" And "we've gotta reduce the deficit!". Then the working class will be directly and painfully effected because they are the ones that need tax credits and Healthcare options and foodstamps and support! Who's gonna pay for it? The people that already have enough! I understand the human urge to hold on to everything you have. But when did we stop caring about contributing to a functioning society?
> I understand the human urge to hold on to everything you have. But when did we stop caring about contributing to a functioning society?
I'd ask when we decided that a functioning society was only possible with a powerful government collecting and redistributing wealth. Neither are required in my opinion, though we likely couldn't be as centralized as we are today without large governments and taxes.
You probably think the working class is just stupid.
I think the working class is way smarter than you think. If you genuinely explore that possibility you will understand clearly why Trump won.
Or, people have fallen for a demagogue selling them a cheap lie (it's not corporate America keeping you in low paying jobs despite massive productivity and profitability, it's those damn immigrants stealing your jobs!).
It's simply not true and we can go through every line item and add nuance.
> Trump going to bat for unions
Union jobs have been exported to other countries
> we'll see minimum wage increases
No taxes on tips
> maternal leave
Higher child tax credit, and generally pro-family
These things are not as simple as you make it to be. Maybe you disagree with Trump voters, but that does not make them stupid and gullible.
You mean like the one that democrats proposed and republicans in the senate killed?
You need to reduce the need for tax money, not increase the amount paid.
So I don't want to immediately just dismiss the idea that Republicans are the party of "blue collar workers", and if they really can bring manufacturing back, they'll be heroes, but I'm curious how patient the base will be for it. If they really do cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, there will be big time economic losers. It seems like a geo-economic realignment to bring back manufacturing could take more than four years, and it seems hard to believe there won't be economic costs. will they be patient? Will that geo-economic realignment even help the current generation, and can they stay in power long enough to fulfill it?
We'll see if Republicans in control are anti-war, anti-elite, pro free speech, pro-working class, anti-large-corps, etc.
I know where I'd place my bets on policies.
I was surprised to see Trump not entertain much war during his last term but I don't agree. Both parties equally entertain war and I fear any Republican anti-war this time will be pro-Russia and further destabilize the world.
> Working class party
I think the voters see it that way and it's a real win for Republicans since they're the opposite and get away with it for who knows what reason
> Pro free speech
I've absolutely no idea how you came to this conclusion
> Skeptical of large corps
I'd love for that to be true but I bet they'll be just fine with any large corp that helps them remain in control.
And yes, the entire topic of religion has not only remained the same but perhaps gotten worse.
Trump is emphatically anti-war and he's dragging the Republican party kicking and screaming to that position. Just look at his relatively low-war presidency and his rhetoric on war throughout the years.
> I've absolutely no idea how you came to this conclusion
Free speech? The Dems are calling left and right for censorship. The only person that has stopped it is Elon Musk, now a vital facet of the Trump coalition. I have no idea how you can make the case the Dems are the free speech party.
> I'd love for that to be true but I bet they'll be just fine with any large corp that helps them remain in control.
Again, this is something that the MAGA types are dragging the Republicans kicking and screaming. MAGA abhors big pharma, whereas Dems trust it. Was the opposite in 2008 or even 2012.
We like to discuss Trump so much, but a lot of this shift is actually the Dems moving their positions too.
trump is so anti-war he increased troop presence in the middle east while biden pulled out of afghanistan
Gonna need a citation for that one.
> while biden pulled out of afghanistan
That's ridiculous. By the time Biden came into office, the pull-out had been long decided. If anything, Biden inherited a messy situation because Trump had rushed the exit too much.
Granted, there is a good chance that she would be fired either way if Harris had won.
The Democrats think that by going harder right, the Republicans would stop calling them Communist.
They don't realize the accusations are pulled out of thin air to begin with. The Democrats pushing harder right won't quiet the right wing bullshit machine.
Is that why there were all the college protests? I had no idea college kids did it hoping that the right would stop calling the left communists.
Oh, wait, that __isn't__ why they did it.
They sent armed people in to round them up and destroy things.
The kids were protesting the Democrats because the Democrats have become the right wing party for those who dislike Trump. Foreign policy, economic policy, immigration, it's all right wing
Multiple people in this very thread are claiming the Republicans have more left policies on these issue.
Harris is a prosecutor cop. She also wanted to round up immigrants and toss them in camps: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-immigration-borde...
How is that left wing unless you're definition of left wing is "not Republican"?
The politician closest to the traditional values of the left wing is ironically Trump.
That's a made up story by right wing podcasters who sell boner pills.
For instance, here's the schedule for a socialist bookstore in LA https://allpowerbooks.org/ ... There's Zero idpol. Here's the books they're highlighting, https://allpowerbooks.org/collections/books here's a publisher https://www.versobooks.com/ scroll and read the titles.
Here's the upcoming schedule for DSA, https://dsa-la.org/calendar/list/ again zero. Nothing here https://jacobin.com/ either.
Then there's anarchist groups like the ones that try to prevent drug overdose https://www.ieharmreduction.org/ or feed the homeless. Here scroll through the Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/lafnb they give no shits about idpol.
It's manufactured presentation by right wing media celebs - a projection of their characters like Milo Yinnapolis, Andy Ngo and Oli London onto what they imagine the left is doing.
The right is full of loud bombastic personalities like Alex Jones, Nick Fuentes, Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, Mike Cernovich, Baked Alaska, Cat Turd, Libs of Tiktok and all the plastic surgery ladened evangelical TV pastors dripping in make-up. It's just psychological projection.
Proceeds to quote wacko communist politics.
When I say traditional left, I don't mean far, academic, elitist left. I'm talking union, FDR, JFK, LBJ, Bernie Sanders types. Not academics who write books about the role of Cuban women in the Communist revolution.
You hilariously proved exactly my point.
Alright. We're using different dictionaries.
Sometimes Democrats are like "but I'm a woman" because their policies are otherwise indistinguishable from the Republican, ok sure. Democrats are just Republicans that wave a pride flag. If that's the claim than agreed.
The two of you maybe, not the OP and most of the rest of the world.
I know people who think this. I have them in my family. Doesn't mean it's correct
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/media/trump-strip-tv-station-...
The US government is under no obligation to CBS to give them airwaves to propagandize fake news.
Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, which pushed Iran to redevelop its nuclear program. Anti-war what?
Trump signed the abraham accords with Saudi/Israeli appeasement, which Israeli intelligence notes pushed Hamas to attack on oct 7 and launch this war. Anti-war what?
Trump withheld military aid from the Ukraine until Zelensky provided dirt on Joe Biden, which was critical for Ukraine's defense against Russia's aggression in Eastern Ukraine, leaving Ukraine weaker and invaded in full two years later, anti-war what?
Trump has threatened to jail his opponents and go after the press, free speech what?
Republicans have banned books, want to ban teachers and fire massive amounts of civil servants, free speech what?
Elitist party, Trump is literally a billionaire who is supported by other billionaires, some of whom he will put in his cabinet. His biggest two policy positions are tax cuts for big corps (elitist) and deportations of the lowest class of people in the US. But Dems are elitist?
I don't think there is much that they've switched on actually in the last election, other than Republicans convincing the working class that they're their party, something republicans have done on and off for many decades.
Simple facts: Trump had way less war than now. Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen. Dick Cheney supporting the Dems is a simple way to look at it.
Free speech: Random local Republicans have proposed all sorts of things, but Trump's circle is more pro free speech than the Dems right now. And Republicans as a party have stated free speech as a policy position. Whereas Dems state they want to "combat misinformation". They do not advocate free speech. There's even a clip circulating today where "The View" hosts call for cracking down on "misinformation"
Trump has literally been brought to a courthouse and had his mugshot taken and you're talking about "jailing opponents"?
Your arguments basically boil down to: "Trump bad, half country stupid" which is absolutely elitist.
If you cite Yemen without understanding that the civil war started in 2014, and the cease-fire started in 2022 under Biden, as a reason for why Biden is pro-war, then I don't know how to have a conversation with you.
If you think the guy who literally says journalists are the enemy of the people, the enemy within, and that that national guard or the military can resolve it, that he wouldn't mind if journalists get shot, that he'd take away broadcasting licenses, that he'll throw journalists in jail, that he'd bring the independent FCC under white house control, ban books, teachers and civil servants if they don't align with his views, is a guy who made free speech a genuine policy position, then I don't know how to have a conversation with you.
If I give counterpoints to your arguments and you paraphrase that by me saying 'trump bad, half country stupid', which I've not said, and then go on to classify that as elitist when the ENTIRE cabinet is envisaged to be (billionaire) elites with two major policy proposals benefitting elites and deporting the opposite of elites, then I don't know how to have a conversation with you.
So I won't.
That’s about as accurate as saying that I ”had“ less war on my previous job. As it turns out, though, the world doesn’t revolve around me, and neither around the US president. Other actors exist, and they make their own decisions.
I don’t know how to take your rambling around free speech seriously. Do you really argue that we should treat „alternative facts“ as valuable free speech? That we should support people actively deceiving others? Maybe, just maybe, when free speech collides with basic democratic resilience, democracy itself ought to win out?
> Trump has literally been brought to a courthouse and had his mugshot taken and you're talking about "jailing opponents"?
For an actual crime he committed. As it is supposed to be. Yet, he pushed for legislation to ensure he’s literally above the law.
lol, yes you are as important as the US president.
> maybe, when free speech collides with basic democratic resilience, democracy itself ought to win out?
Exhibit A of how libs now are against free speech^
> For an actual crime he committed
For "mislabeling campaign funds", something the DNC and Clinton was fined for doing but never criminally prosecuted. It's simply because people don't like Trump the actual thing he did doesn't matter.
That’s besides the point. The recent wars didn’t start because Trump wasn’t president, and that wouldn’t have prevented them.
> Exhibit A of how libs now are against free speech^
That… doesn’t relate to what I said. Well. I don’t think I want to continue this discussion.
Also, thinking that Republicans aren't just as, if not more, bought by the military industry complex is just sticking your head in the sand. The GOP is more adamant about funding Israel than Dems are
There was no party switch. Both parties love the money flow that wards create.
Trump is not a party; he's the only one against the wars.
Also, pro war party is a weird thing to say. Repubs in 2000 wanted to be the aggressors. Defense to Ukraine has thus far been pretty bi-partisan.
She was "gifted" the nomination, vs being selected in the primary. I think the populace responded in turn: This wasn't their candidate. Compare this to the Obama vs Clinton selection, which I actually believe the populace would have supported either.
btw: I'm not sure I'd compare this to the 2020 primaries as 2020 was a special year, and I don't think really any of the candidates really resonated with the voters, Biden just "wasn't Trump".
I was opposed to Biden dropping out because skipping the primary means you go into the general election without the real pulse of the voters in your party.
I think Democrats in general are putting far too much weight on survey based polls, and not enough on ballet box polls.
I wouldn't even rule out 2020 like you're doing - I think Biden is actually a very compelling candidate for a lot of folks that don't get much mention in typical democratic discussion circles. Religious, relatively socially conservative but economically left (traditional union left, not neo-liberal), white, male.
While people complained about it not being Sanders online - Sanders and Biden were fairly similar platforms in a lot of respects, with the difference being that corporate money was less hostile to Biden - and it's telling that they were the only two to take any significant percentage of the primary vote (no other candidate broke 3mm votes)
---
Basically - I think there's a solid chance that despite the polling news around the first debate, Biden might have actually performed more strongly on election night.
As an extra note - As someone who was initially very critical of Biden... I have a lurking suspicion that he's going to be considered an excellent president in a historical context because he managed to invest heavily in infrastructure.
I am waiting for the final tally to understand how the Dems lost 15M votes from one election to the other.
It would be interesting to hear from someone more familiar with the inner workings of the democratic party why this is. I.e., if it's a cultural issue in the party, if it's economical, or if my view on this is completely off.
Dems will continue to make the mistake of coasting deeper into the right wing, picking up 0 voters in doing so (why would I vote for a "tough on immigration" candidate when I can vote for the one who gleefully promises to deport all the browns?), meanwhile disenfranchising any left wing voters left in the USA and creating no new left wing voter bloc by presenting a coherent alternative to the reactionaries.
The same mistake is being made by neo liberal parties across the world.
I'm always surprised by how bipolar US politics is. There's no place for nuance or third options, it's always one or second extreme. In this case, to answer your question, maybe you want to limit an influx of new people into your country (for ideological, or economical, or whatever reasons) but don't want a full on ethnic cleansing. That's OK, people don't have to only hold extreme opinions.
As this election shows, then, you would vote for Trump, who is "better on immigration." You would tell yourself, as many Trump supporters demonstrate in interviews, that "he wouldn't actually do that."
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/inside-trumps-plan-mass-dep...
Can I ask - let's say before 2028 the democrat party gets tea partied and gets a genuine fascist candidate. What would that candidate say? What would their policies be? Can you do the same thought experiment for the Republican party? Or do you, unfairly, believe it's simply impossible for one, or the other, party to become genuinely fascistic? Perhaps you even believe fascism was permanently defeated when Mussolini was hanged? I would admire such an optimistic view!
Just in case you're genuinely curious why people say these things, it's not like we're all just making it up. Trump's rhetoric simply, to one who studies history, sounds very similar to Hitler's. It doesn't mean he's as bad as Hitler, it just means he talks like Hitler talked.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-a...
As for hitlerian policy, there is simply no way to deport the millions he has promised to deport that doesn't involve roundups, trains, and concentration camps. It's a physical impossibility to achieve otherwise. Do you disagree? Will he not follow through on his campaign promise to deport every undocumented immigrant?
Not really, I don’t even give it that energy anymore.
I just move on to the next lunatic overreacting and stomping their feet.
The majority of Americans are tired of “everyone I don’t like is a fascist”. You have four years to learn that I guess.
Don’t be a clown and then come to me about “good faith”.
Of the two of us which is more obviously unserious about our positions? Which is more able to speak clearly about them?
If you can't comprehend political analysis, why pretend to understand it? Just say you like the guy and if that makes you a fascist then you like fascism. It seems like you have a vague notion of what facism means and that it's bad - but the same people that you're calling a clown, a child, a lunatic, are the people that define words like "fascism" and imply it's bad. Why listen to us in one case and not the other?
Those are words Trump has used. He said the eating pets thing during the debate.
It's not exaggerated. These are literally things he has said, word for word, over and over.
That's what Trump's circle wants, though. They want to deport 25M immigrants. Generously, the number of people here illegally is only half that. They don't care if people here legally get caught up in it and deported as well.
Deporting even a couple million people will require mass raids, round-ups, and the construction of concentration camps. It is physically impossible to deport that many people quickly or quietly or efficiently.
They're afraid of losing the white majority, plain and simple. The sad thing is so many non-white people don't see this and voted for him.
Which is why they forced an unpopular, unelected candidate? I don't see it.
That said, the Republicans would have the same problem if Trump dropped out or if that bullet didn't miss.
And maybe you’ve forgotten how the RNC rules were changed to support their candidate?
Well these rules surely benefitted them.
Refusing to see one self as part of the problem, fundamentally.
The party has evolved an idea that you can do away with those kind of dirty political shenanigans, and construct a rational fact-based proof that will leave voters no choice but to support you, and I think that pretty clearly doesn't work.
Also if they're having their way, they will break the current system; Trump has said people would never need to vote again if he wins, and Project 2025 aims to give much more power to the president (autocracy): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
And if the Project 2025 plan works as they planned it, that's the truth. America will become a single party state and that won't change without a civil war.
They will stack the courts and every appointable position with pro-Trump (not Republican) people who will make sure every election goes their way in the future.
I personally can't see any other way out unless Team Donald messes up badly enough to make their own people shun them.
!RemindMe in four years
Trump's story is pretty ridiculous, there's no way that his plans on how to fix the economy or the border or the whole department of efficiency thing work anywhere close to as well as he says. Regardless, his demographic believes it.
Kamala's story was a lot weaker, involved a ton of hard truths and concessions about things that people in her base care about such as Gaza. Additionally her story on the border was mostly the same thing as Trump's. If you like the border story, why not go for the guy pushing it harder?
Obama had a pretty good story in 2008 (the whole hope thing). Dems need to get back to that.
The fact remains that more Americans vote Democratic than vote Republican, those votes are just badly distributed for the EC system.
So you're asking the wrong questions.
What about the democrats ideology is unpopular? Because that is what people are voting on, not strategy.
As opposed to "we need to help everyone, especially highly victimized groups". And then people infight over which groups require more attention vs everyone else.
It's same for both sides. Pro-life stance cost them a lot of votes and could easily cost them election.
There is not the same opportunity to exploit human weaknesses for Gain.
That’s the issue. When Dems control the amygdala they might have a shot.
Presidents can't in reality take all that much credit or blame for the economy. A lot of it is out of their hands, and many economic shifts take longer than a presidential term to play out. But of course presidents will try, and succeed, because most people don't understand this.
On top of that, the GOP complains about how much money Biden "printed" during the pandemic, but Trump did his fair share of that in the first year of it as well. They just make dishonest arguments.
I really don't know how you counter this.
The opinion makers know if it wasn't this close there'd be visible backlash.
If you think Trump, Vance, Vivek, Tulsi, RFK and the just the same but newer versions of Trump, Cheney, Rove, McConnell, Romney, McCain…
Well… I guess we have four more years to see about that.
Time will tell if the US really is the greatest democracy and can withstand a wannabe dictator, or if he really can subvert it all. It’s going to be a wild four years, and I fear more wall building.
He's not that powerful
Unless you think Robert Mugabe was democratic?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-fbi-finds-scant-e...
I think citation needed here that FBI or any law enforcement agency for that matter is anti-trump.
If anything given their deep racial history not that long ago, I would characterize them as very pro trump.
Also, whistleblowers within the FBI have come forward in recent years to:
• Accuse Timothy Thibault of running cover on Hunter Biden's laptop.
• Accuse the FBI of manipulating case files to inflate the domestic threat perception towards conservatives.
• Accuse leaders within the FBI of "weaponizing" the agency against conservatives.
• Complain about retaliation when raising concerns about these and other instances of bias and misconduct.
Isn't this common knowledge?
I think a lot of people give Trump benefit of doubt when he says these things, but he literally said them.
Aside from Trump not many people deny Biden won 2020. How would Biden have become president?
The "you won't have to vote again" was clearly him saying that he didn't care if the people vote again, because it won't benefit him.
He didn't say that he'd be pleased if the press was murdered, in those words. Though I agree that what he said was awful.
This is the thing about Trump. He says things that are dumb or incendiary, then his opponents make it sound 100x. Then people who aren't terminally online see it and think, "is that all there is?" and it makes them think that he's not that bad, ignoring the actual bad things he's saying.
I agree that he says incendiary things, but he is also a poor communicator and so he says provocative things that are left ambiguous.
"I love you Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote,".
What does he mean by "have it fixed"? Have the elections fixed? It's hard to imagine what else he can fix so that people won't have to vote anymore.
“I have this piece of glass here,” Trump said. “But all we have really over here is the fake news, right? And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much,” Trump said. “I don’t mind. I don’t mind.”
Yes, he didn't literally say "pleased" he said "I don't mind". Barely a difference when discussing the finer points of whether someone should murder the press.
The rhetoric and lies you've repeatedly said about Trump is exactly the reason your party was so soundly rejected in the landslide electoral college, the popular vote, the senate, and the house. Your lies and hoaxes don't work anymore.
“The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” reads the report. “None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.” ... lying about having evidence of voter fraud to the public, repeatedly, then inviting supporters to the ellipse with "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!", telling the crowd that they need to "fight like hell" otherwise they were "not going to have a country anymore" (yes, the refrain of his apologists is that he also the word peacefully, but that was an outlier in the hours of speeches given that day), and inviting the crowd to march to the capitol with him (though he stayed at the White House), followed by a complete dereliction of duty to intervene, and more tellingly, instead calling senators. There's a lot more.
"I love you Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote,". Like many things he says, he is really unclear on exactly what he means, but he did literally say "you don't have to vote again".
“I have this piece of glass here,” Trump said. “But all we have really over here is the fake news, right? And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much,” Trump said. “I don’t mind. I don’t mind.”
"60 Minutes should be immediately taken off the air [for] election interference. CBS should lose its license. This is the biggest scandal in broadcast history,”
Every executive order can get erased wholesale by the next President, and Trump only has 4 years.
We’ll live.
He’s gonna do his tit for tat because he’s a simple man, not a great one, and certainly not an epic dictator.
I’m not defending him, I just think the grand dictator spin has always been nutty.
“
Not saying that this won't stop MAGA from trying - but at least there's a cultural element to this, that will stop the American people from just folding over and accepting dictatorship.
It’s interesting tradeoff that should in theory protect from tyranny.
It’s interesting what would happen in Russia if majority of population had guns.
It's a crazy read
Sounds like clickbait was already alive and well in the 1940's.
and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administred for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
The US voting scheme is far from being the most democratic.
It's always been a kind of mix between an oligarchy and democracy, just look at the 2 party voting system, extreme wealth required to candidate and the lobbies expenditures.
That's very close to the antiquity democracy, they just need to remove woman right to vote (next one after abortion).
At least with trump we will have a good laugh once again.
I would say it's the greatest based on how long it has endured for and the impact it has had on the world.
There's a check list of similar statements he's on record making.
"Among all U.S. adults, 43% say they trust Fox News for political and election news"
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/04/08/five-fact...
And the other thing to listen to what his primary voters - conservative evangelical Christians were saying they want for years. It is literally ridiculous how these people are saying exactly what they want, then they literally do what they said they will do, again and again. But somehow, I am supposed to assume they don't mean it, this time for a change.
Please stop commenting "Where?", "What?", "How?" to everyone in the comments here. They do not add any value to the conversation.
Everything from quoting Mein Kampf to praising Hitler's generals to using Nazi rhetoric has been done in the last few months.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-im... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/27/trump-madiso...
But I've come to believe that folks like you will continue to make excuses no matter how low he stoops.
"and again, voters are not stupid." Isn't it?
According to Snopes[0] he claims he was urging Christians specifically (who don't usually vote in high numbers) to vote "just this time", then they wouldn't have to vote anymore for four more years, or something (which they wouldn't anyway...)
He was definitely addressing Christians (he repeats it several times) but at the end of the video he says "[...] we'll have it fixed so good you're not gonna have to vote", which does sound a bit suspect to me, even in context and taking into account the fact that he's often loose with his choice of words and phrasing.
The absolutely true fact is that that statement had nothing, even so much as a hint of a dog whistle, to do with that you’re saying. Like not even a shred.
He was speaking to a populace that doesn’t typically vote. So he’s saying that they can just vote this one election, because it’s important for them to for their own good. Then, he’s saying “just this once” because, again, they typically don’t vote. And again - after that he says “I’ll fix it so good you won’t have to again” - this is in reference to him fixing the government so well that they won’t need to vote again since it will be so well-functioning.
By the way, this was my take originally, on first listen. It was reinforced further my listening to it again. It’s completely clearly the true take, and I think if you have trouble accepting that it’s because you’re disturbingly mislead by bias, probably not your own fault entirely, but undeniably so.
By stabilized we mean it is not possible to ensure rights for women through election process? Because that is what "good government" per Chrisitians is. How is that not autocracy? Christians do not want improvements as in "better democracy". They want improvements as in "closer to theocracy".
Which is actual political goal of radical evangelical christians, if you actually read what they write and listen what they say. It is not about them being allowed to be lazy, it is about them successfully creating religious state.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/10/fac...
So yes, that one. Did you actually read your link? Or did you get duped by the headline?
> Based on our research, the claim that President Trump fired the "entire" pandemic response team is PARTLY FALSE. The Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense was disbanded under Trump's then-national security adviser John Bolton. But Trump didn't fire its members. Some resigned, and others moved to different units on the National Security Council.
‘Impeachment’ in Parliament systems only works when MPs are willing to think for themselves.
Not automatically. A minority government of course more at risk of losing the confidence of parliament but it's also a powerful incentive for such a government that want to survive to use cooperation and compromise with the opposition.
Just a bit nervous for Ukraine... I wish Europe could step up on that front but we just don't have the capacity for it. Which is entirely our own fault, Trump is right to call us out on our reliance on the US. It's our continent we should be the one spearheading this.
Hopefully that will change in the near future. But that doesn't help Ukraine now.
The democrats need to do some serious introspection on their policies and priorities. And perhaps just return to running a white male as candidate...
Oh well at least it's a very clear victory, so no weeks or months of anxiety over the results.
Though I am nervous. I think Trump could still do us a lot of harm.
Iraq, war on oil. Isreal funded by US arms
Russia owns Trump and Russia wants the EU dead.
By no means should the EU get cosy with the US.
Why shouldn't the US get cosy with the EU?
Provide a way where security of both Europe and Russia can be provided for and peace will quickly follow.
In soviet Russua, Russia is the one constantly being invaded.
Every rational actor (including Putin) knows that not a single NATO country is interested in invading Russia. He might have been worried about a democratic uprising in his country like Ukraine in 2014, but given how much an autocracy Russia has become, that's pretty unlikely now.
Provide a way where security of both Europe and Russia can be provided for and peace will quickly follow.
It's very clear that Putin wants to annex countries that he considers Russia's property (mostly former Soviet states). He has wars in Ukraine, Chechnya, and Georgia to back it.
Putin's word in a peace treaty will be worth as much as him saying that he wouldn't invade Ukraine up till the invasion. Nada. The only thing that will work is military deterrence.
Nothing more than fantasy that justifies the warhawk stance among liberals. It is completely disconnected from reality. What Russia wants is safety from NATO. NATO in Ukraine would have been a strategic noose from which Russia would never escape. Ukrainian neutrality lead to peace. Ukraine with NATO aspirations lead to this war. The simplest answer is the right one in this case.
At any rate, it has been a severe miscalculation on Putin's part. He thought they could take Ukraine in days and the aggression led Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
It turns out that bad people do speak the truth sometimes, at least when the truth is in their corner:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1ghs32...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Nevermind the Jeffrey Sachs interview that no one has time to watch. His take has been debunked elsewhere. What matters here is your own reasoning here, which is incredibly specious. If you can't see the obvious flaw in the argument that you laid down, then I don't know what to tell you.
BTW, here's another helpful suggestion: If you're on your favorite website some day, looking for answers to what's going in the world, and you see the top-posted comment for some article or interview that you thought really rocked is some obviously useless, snarky drivel like the following (taken from the Reddit link you posted):
Putin just woke up one day, stumbled his toe or something, and decided to invade Ukraine.
Like, are you completely ignorant of the history of US initiated regime change around the world?
I know all about it, and can probably cite dozens of instances off the top of my head. But none of that history translates to evidence that US-initiated regime change actually happened in a given country X, in year Y. It's just innuendo, nothing more.
Criticisms of Sachs's take are easy to find, and quite devastating. Whether you care to look into the matter is up to you.
>Criticisms of Sachs's take are easy to find, and quite devastating. Whether you care to look into the matter is up to you.
If you didn't want a substantive engagement on these points, why did you bother to reply? Just to promote the sanctioned opinion on Ukraine? Don't you think there's enough of that on social media?
My own strategy is to completely ignore what the "sanctioned opinion" (whatever that means) on a given topic is, and to work the factual chronology and reasonably verifiable reporting or statements best as I can. That, and whenever possible, to talk with people who were on the ground or reasonably close to it at the time. Or who are at least from the region, seem knowledgeable, and definitely are not assholes or otherwise have some major axe to grind.
I also try to ignore nearly all social media, to whatever extent possible.
But hey, that's just me. You do you. I wouldn't say I didn't want a substantive engagement, but it's getting late, and I think we've both said enough. We just disagree. We didn't start this war, and in the broader picture, I suspect we're probably more or less on the same basic side of the basic moral issues.
So if you like we can leave it that.
Great. I take a similar approach.
It's unfortunate you felt the need to begin the conversation with snark and irrelevant verbiage. But I can understand being jaded from wasting time engaging with people who aren't interested in substantively examining an issue.
Despite the missed opportunity, I am interested in engaging with what you consider a solid rebuttal to Sachs' points mentioned in the linked video. Feel free to offer a resource if you have one handy. I won't respond to it with a rebuttal or anything along those lines. It's purely for my own edification.
I'll see if I can get back to you at another date. Until then, you may find this article interesting:
https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/44/1/7/12232/How-to-Enla...
You may also want to take a closer look at this guy, on whose program Sachs chose to appear multiple times in 2022 -- noted for among other things calling for Kyiv to be "destroyed", and Kharkiv to be "wiped off the face of the earth":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Solovyov_(TV_presente...
This little snippet will give you a further sense of his vibe:
https://x.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1594915216026112000
And if you like, you can just let that vibe ... sink in for a bit.
Russian conquest wars in the last 30 years: Chechnya 1994–1996 and 1999–2009, Georgia 2008 (Abkhazia and South Ossetia) & Ukraine (2014 - today).
> Ukrainian neutrality lead to peace.
When Russians invaded Donbas in 2014, Ukraine actually had a non-aligned, neutral status. It only invited the Russians as they perceived it as weakness. Ukriaine's effort to join NATO was in hope of gaining a defense umbrella.
>When Russians invaded Donbas in 2014, Ukraine actually had a non-aligned, neutral status.
They had a non-aligned status up until the moment their elected government was overthrown. At that point Ukraine's status is undefined. How was the government overthrown you ask? A US regime change operation: https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1ghs32...
Government was overthrown in February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament renounced Ukraine's non-aligned status in December 2014 while Russia annexed Crimea in February/March 2014 and attacked Donbas in April 2014 - all while while Ukraine was still neutral and non-aligned.
> US regime change operation
I haven't seen any actual proof for that, only speculation like what you are linking to.
LE:
And you'd need some strong proof considering that everything that happened afterwards completely vindicated Ukrainian people's fear of Russia and their desire to get closer to the West.
As someone who lives in Eastern Europe and who also lived through a bloody revolution to get out from under the Russian boot - let me tell you: we don't need external influences to desire to live in peace and freedom, to pursue our happiness and prosperity. We are just like you, people of the West, in that regard. We don't want to live under Russian occupation any more than you do and we are willing to pay the blood price for the privilege.
>I haven't seen any actual proof for that, only speculation like what you are linking to.
Yes, it turns out sometimes you need to make inferences and compare historical events and M-Os to get a clear picture of what happened out of the public eye. The fact that some people can't even entertain the notion that the US had a hand in Ukraine's revolution just underscores your psychological need to feel like moral heroes while calling for escalation in the war. But there is enough circumstantial evidence (like the Nuland intercept) that paints a very clear picture to those who aren't taken in by motivated reasoning.
Hell, when they started the war, it was supposedly about "demilitarization". By now they have officially annexed four more regions of Ukraine (well, the parts they control) in addition to Crimea, two of which wasn't even occupied until 2022.
Yet, somehow, it's Russia that keeps invading neighboring countries. Who then scramble to join NATO because they don't want to be next.
Have y'all considered that maybe if you tried not constantly trying to rebuild your empire on the backs of your neighbors by invading and occupying their territory, you would actually have that regional stability and peace that you claim to seek? Regardless of who is and isn't in NATO even?
And even more precisely: it's a claim that absolutely no one makes.
So you're gaslighting yourself, in effect.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/albright-says-russia-h...
This is just one example of many if you Google. And don't bother trying to parse words to claim this isn't really an example of claiming NATO expansion is benign to Russia's security, it'll just confirm you are engaging in bad-faith.
Especially when we look at the broader context of what Albright was trying to say in that situation.
And don't bother trying ...
Keep it civil, please.
Edit: Lol didn't recognize your username. If you didn't begin your engagements on such an adversarial footing, you might get more constructive replies.
And that's your mistake. The statements are clearly quite different. In exactly the same way that the statement:
The tumor is benign
The tumor is irrelevant
Nothing of the sort is happening here.
You were provided with a necessary correction, in the hope that it would be helpful to you.
"So you're gaslighting yourself, in effect."
Come now, those are very much adversarial.
Regarding the main point of contention: Russia complains about NATO expansion raising security concerns and the response from NATO/US representatives is "NATO is defensive pact", "Russia has nothing to fear from NATO", "This is a new NATO... Its enemy is not Russia", and so on. This list could go on and on. But the denial of NATO presenting a security concern to Russia is just an assertion that NATO is benign to Russia's security. In other words, NATO expansion is irrelevant to Russian security. These terms all mean the same thing in the context of whether NATO and NATO expansion is a security threat to Russia.
Seriously, this is all just the basic meaning of words. If it's not obvious to you, then I don't know what to tell you. Perhaps consult ChatGPT.
The first statement (the one that began the engagement) obviously was not.
And ironically -- your misinterpretation of that statement (as adversarial when it clearly wasn't) is exactly what I was referring to in the second statement. By which was meant, in somewhat longer form: "It seems you're going out of your way to read adversarial intent when there simply isn't any in there."
The only time someone says "absolutely no one thinks/says/does X" is when they are politely accusing someone of lying or bullshitting. So yes, very much adversarial. This should all just be so obvious.
>The tumor is benign
You left off the contextualizing clause which just changes the meaning of the sentence. "The tumor is benign/irrelevant to your continued ability to play the piano" has the same meaning with either phrasing.
No, they're saying they have reason to believe your characterization is inaccurate. And it's not in the least adversarial to do so. It's a normal and healthy part of everyday discourse, actually.
You should welcome it.
"Of course NATO enlargement was something of an annoyance to Russia. Specifically it can be taken as a signal that NATO might confront Russia's own moves for influence in say, the Balkans, North Africa or the Middle East -- places that, last we checked, are not Russia. It may even choose to involve itself in direct conflict with Russia's allies, such as Serbia, for good reasons or bad. One could also argue that it threatens Russia's 'brand' and prestige in softer ways; and one could even argue that the very existence of NATO is kind of an insult to Russia."
"But every rational actor knows that NATO was never going to actually attack Russia, itself, without cause. Or even threaten to do so. Certainly not in the sense of an all-out, tanks-across-the-steppes assault, or a pre-emptive nuclear strike that Russia pretends to believe is the ultimate goal of its expansion."
"Nor is there any long-range plan in the works to station forces of any kind on Russia's borders that could potentially threaten or signal the capability for such an invasion, in for extortion purposes (in essence), as Russia's current regime also pretends to believe. You simply will not find a shred of evidence for any line of thinking in support of such a plan."
"All that pretense is just that -- pretense and propaganda. It's just a foil that its various incarnations of its regime have used, over decade, first to justify its continued occupation of the Warsaw Pact countries, and now, to distract from its actual reasons for its invading Ukraine (and manacing other countries). And to get its people to sign up for the endless meat-grinder war it managed to create for them there, once its delusional expectations of a quick, decisive victory evaporated on first contact with reality."
So if people say things like "NATO's expansion is benign to Russia's security concerns", that's the framing in which that sentiment is most likely meant. They may be oversimplifying slightly, but not by much.
So if i'm following you correctly, Russia's nuclear arsenal wasn't enough to provide security. Only thing we haven't tried for more security is to have every European nation be in control of their own nuclear arsenal?
Its a bold claim, but by golly you've snorted enough foreign-sourced talking points that you might actually be right!
I can't fathom where you got that from.
> Iraq, war on oil. Isreal funded by US arms
All true, and the EU complicit in all of those. Maybe not by choice (see remark about sovereignty at the end), but complicit nonetheless. You also forgot Syria, Yemen, Yugoslavia and probably a few others as well.
> Russia owns Trump and Russia wants the EU dead.
Sorry, but this is not Reddit.
> By no means should the EU get cosy with the US.
The EU has no choice other than be "cosy" with the US. It's called Pax Americana.
In simple terms, the deal is this and always has been this since WW2 ended: the EU has traded political sovereignty for security, to and from the US.
What's Reddit to do with anything? Trump is a failed businessman.
His business have failed and Russia bought him out. This was evident back in 2008 and it's evident now and ever since the 80's.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helpe...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_projects_of_Donald_...
Russia wants Trump as his backhand man and that's what they got. America wants freedom yet at the same time they're happy to accept brokerage from a man who dreams of an neo-USSR.
> I can't fathom where you got that from.
world peace was a rush mix of words. What I mean at least they held stability of the world stage.
> EU is complicit
I'm not saying the EU is a saint. The EU has an agenda and evils of its own. But as a figurehead and representation of many countries up on the world stage it held a positive power.
Countries could count on the nation for relief unlike any other.
We had Brexit, a catastrophe in itself. And with that we've sold ourselves to the US for "alliance" means; meaning that we will be dragged through everything the US wants.
When we were tied to the EU, at least we had a some sort solidarity.
Also to call the current German government "stable" is... a choice.
Just hours after I wrote this, the German government basically imploded.
We're trending very far to the right as a whole, with the edges getting bigger and more extreme by the year.
The AfD is currently polling at about 18% of the vote. Alarming, yes, but nobody wants to work with them. The next government will likely be CDU led, with either the SPD or the Greens as a junior partner.
But if the US is no longer committed to their world order, I can see the return of a more selfish Europe. One that is willing to work with both the US and BRICS and does not automatically favor either.
I don't see this happening unfortunately. The much more likely scenario is that the US diplomacy in EU will adopt a partisan stance, favoring far-right parties. Anyone who has followed far-right EU movements in the last two decades can't seriously believe that US conservatives talking about isolationism means they will stop pushing their views in Europe.
They literally have. France's RN officially stopped collaborating with the German AfD over the latter being too "extreme". Now they sit in different fractions of the EU parliament.
On the other hand, I've seen US-influenced and Russia-influenced movements happily cooperate for years now. There's been some tensions over which side to support when the war in Ukraine broke out, but so far it hasn't prevented these same groups clashing on this specific issue to cooperate on other issues.
The question is how much of his leaving-NATO rhetoric was sincere, and how much of it was empty threats to try to get other NATO countries to devote more money toward defense.
> The democrats need to do some serious introspection on their policies and priorities. And perhaps just return to running a white male as candidate...
Considering that one of the main points of Trump's campaign was a swift end to Ukraine's war, and considering the large vote margin by which he won, I believe the lesson the democrats should learn is that most USAers don't want the USA to be involved in foreign wars.
By definition the democratic party should be able to read the population, right?
In the 2016 elections, they literally went to court to argue that they are a private company and their internal processes (eg. the primaries) don't need to be democratic.
Also keep in mind that Europe now supports Ukraine by setting up arms production within Ukraine, which gives more weapons per dollar spent than donating weapons made in USA or Europe.
That said, while European military spending has improved a lot since the invasion, there’s still a bit further to go and it’s not such a bad thing if Europe is forced to become more self-reliant militarily.
Will be very short sighted for USA though. They benefit on so many levels from Europe being so dependent on USA.
This is the part that I don't get with the USA's recent obsessions with isolationism. One of the reasons the US is so rich is because it is a world power with a lot of loyal allies. We align a lot of our policies with the US when we are asked (see blocking ASML exports to China).
If the US is not willing to step up for its allies [1], it becomes a regional power, and the loss of influence will result in worse economical outcomes.
China is happy to fill the void.
[1] Also don't forget that (most) allies stepped up when the US asked (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.), even when much of their population thought it was not the best idea.
This isn’t why people aren’t voting dem. Did you forgot that Obama was elected? People don’t want to vote dem because Dems have moved significantly to the left and are supporting crazy policies.
Obama was charismatic and his platform of hope and change was powerful, but it did hinge on the GOP being absolutely unelectable. Kamala Harris may have won this year if Trump had won in 2020, although it’s easy to imagine the Dems squandering that as well, by explicitly running on not-being-the-other-guy, which Obama didn’t do.
I'm really tired of American being the center of everything, especially after this fiasco. It would be nice if it was a more progressive country for a change.
By progressive I mean, a country who believes in climate change, renewables and nuclear and women's reproductive rights.
We keep hearing statistics showing that the economy is doing well, but I have yet to meet anyone who feels like they’re actually better off.
I’m not saying that the stats are wrong, but when it comes to politics, you can’t address economic anxiety by just pointing to statistics and saying, ‘Look, the numbers say everything is fine.’
Yes, this is
> 99% perception
The DNC made some blunders. Leaving aside covid spending, they screwed up reverting Trump's border policy and waited too long to fix it. Harris was weak on messaging and came up with the Housing plan too late, didn't champion the CHIPS act enough. Also, the newscycle was constantly showing the US spending large sums both domestically and abroad which had an impact on inflation. And of course there's all the other culture-war/DEI stuff that isn't strictly within the purview of the feds but feeds into resentment.
Hi! I’m doing better than ever before. It’s hard to attribute that to a political cause, however. I expect to be doing even better in 4 years, regardless of who’s in office.
That doesn't mean I don't notice my grocery bill is three times what it was in 2019 after being pretty much the same from 2009 till then.
It's kind of annoying having people tell me this doesn't impact me. I'm literally spending more money for the same thing and my salary hasn't tripled in the last 5 years - my shares though. Which is kind of the point.
But, I also don't think you're lying. I think you honestly believe your grocery bill tripled, and I think a lot of people have a similar internal impression about how bad inflation got. It's not useful for me (or, for politicians) to try and argue it logically. No one can check your receipts from 2019 and 2024 and say, look, things aren't actually that bad. Dems needed to kind of take it at face value and come up with a solution to something that people feel is real, and they just did not do that.
Editing to add: I might as well add the lowest effort source to the ~25% number, which comes from using the search feature of ChatGPT (sorry). https://chatgpt.com/share/672b7e09-4b58-800e-a3df-58f38c33bc...
Unable to give US equivalents but I think the price increases were pretty significant on the lower end and less so the higher you go up.
Until a few years ago it was possible to get instant ramen noodles for ~15p, you could get 6 eggs for like 80p, baked beans for 20p, etc. All of these things and similar spiked massively very very quickly. There was also a kind of double inflation where a lot of the value offerings seemed to disappear from shelves for an extended period (e.g. I remember a patch of several months where those instant ramen noodles weren't stocked in any supermarket near me at all while the 90p branded version was).
They've actually gone back down somewhat since but what you're looking at is people barely scraping by seeing drastic increases in their grocery bills.
Similar issues occurred with energy costs in the last few years; along with the rates going up the companies drastically bumped up the standing charge so even if you almost cut out all usage entirely you still could wind up seeing an increase.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/Food/price-inflation/2019-to-2...
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/price-of-food
It's closer to 28%. I wrote the initial post from my memory of the stat, which is why I approximated it.
Similarly cucumbers I'd buy at 0.99; now I get them at 1.99 . Those are the ones I personally remember best.
Over that time period in Canada, I've also seen a 2 to 3 times increase in the unit price of many other basic grocery items, including dried pasta, rice, bread, canned goods, bags of frozen vegetables (peas, corn), meat, and so on.
The government-reported inflation numbers are well below what I've experienced and what many people in Canada I've talked to have told me they're experiencing.
In my experience prices are wildly different between grocers for some items.
I shop at whole foods quite a bit for staples. I have grocery receipts from 2019 on the Amazon app so it lets me easily see the difference. Organic canned beans delivered for $.99, now $1.3. Lentils, pasta, etc look about the same. This correlates with the CPI and grocery price numbers I've seen.
2-3x sounds like you are getting robbed. I don't know if it's a locality issue which I mentioned above.. but yeah I haven't seen anything like that in Chicagoland.
Actually I wonder if that might account for the discrepancy a lot of people feel between perceived rise and the rise shown in the data. What if the cheapest things have seen a disproportionately large increase, I wonder? That would be hidden when the data averages everything together. But only certain parts of the population, likely those who would feel the impact the most, would notice the increase discrepancy from the reported numbers.
Whole foods gets a bad rap for price, but their 365 brand is pretty solid price for non organic goods. E.g. canned beans are $0.10 higher than the store brand of the 'cheap store'. Even things like chips are a good buy at WF. Amazon just has that supply chain advantage I guess.
You definitely have to be mindful where, and how, you shop if you care about price and quality. It's why I mentioned in one of my other comments that basically food deserts are where I'd expect to see these issues. This would align well with the rural vote. A lot of people don't have a choice, where as I have over a dozen.
So yeah I have no doubts the degree varies across certain regions, but that's kind of always expected. In rural areas you'll have higher purchasing power for land but typically less wages and higher price of goods, with lower taxes on those goods.
So much the worse for you.
I have a feeling that increases like you describe are likely due to lack of competition and much exaggeration. When I lived in rural area my closest grocery was over 30 min away. Where I live now there's probably 50 within 30 minutes.
Middle class was probably hit the worst, but there's no way it's 3 times. Meanwhile American's are spending more on eating out then on groceries.
It's mostly overblown in my opinion. Voters just aren't always that rational.
Basically, too little too late. They fucked up that, and fucked up on the border, when there was no excuse to fuck up. I believe the Harris' policies would have been better for the economy than tariffs and deportations, but it's a moot point in voters' minds.
Her housing credit suggestion a) was less than the amount the median home price increased by under Biden, and b) would have only served to increase the price of housing further by increasing the supply of money available, exactly the same thing ZIRP did.
Tax incentives for builders that build starter homes sold to first-time buyers
An expansion of a tax incentive for building affordable rental housing.
A new $40 billion innovation fund to spur innovative housing construction.
To repurpose some federal land for affordable housing.
To remove tax benefits for investors who buy large numbers of single-family rental homes.
as per - https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/harris-has-the-right-idea-on-h...
… that people didn’t believe.
She ran for her first 50 days claiming Bidenomics was working. That term was so stupid I thought it was a joke that conservatives made up. Surely they weren’t trying to say the economy was good right?
Well, no surprises on my end last night.
The result is that, instead of taking a big blow early in his presidency, leaving us currently in the recovery period, Biden disrupted every "attempt" by the market to correct. This allowed for common economic metrics to read as healthy, even while the portions of the economy that most effect the average American were distorted.
Money Supply: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS
Consumer Inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSA
Even worse, my Kombucha went from $3->$4.
But, GP's example vibes with pretty much all food prices I've seen. McDonalds went from 2 for $3 to $3 each. It's really kind of surprising. Easy to avoid all this junk food, but price increases are very substantial.
Here's the CPI numbers for food [0] where we saw increases from 261 to 332. 27%
This is what I thought, too. So it will be their fault when they suddenly find out that not only prices didn't go down, but everything is a way expensive than before! And as a bonus, their rights were stripped away. From that PoV, liberals are in much better position now than those who votes for trump. at least they don't have any illusions on what's coming next.
Now there are tens of thousands of highly educated credible economists with enormous amounts of good data in the US. It'd be for them, trivially easy, to constantly hit news headlines with a couple of papers substantiating why certain official inflation statistics are wrong and actual inflation is much higher, and we're all actually much worse off than before.
But there is no such widespread consensus economic research being published, I wonder why. I guess the quarter million people in the US who graduated with an economics degree in the past decade are all corrupt, as are all the institutions who report on inflation, captured somehow by Joe Biden... /s
So improving the economy can't address economic anxiety? That's a pretty grim picture of human nature.
For what it's worth, I feel better off than 4 years ago. My investments are up ~20%, which is a lot considered it's all diversified funds.
These people give absolutely 0 shits about the stock market being up and the economy being considered fine.
We on HN are sheltered and generally have decent jobs which do allow us to have investments and thus don't see the impact as much as those who don't see the bullish line of the stockmarket driving their portfolios up.
A much better view IMO would be median real wage growth vs inflation because that's how people mostly interact with the economy, simple day to day purchases of food, shelter, and fuel/power.
Looking at the prices of bread, eggs, meat, car price and rent/mortgage interest from another country, it's a lot of burden. Meat shoots up really a lot in Costco, and mortgage payment went up 50% as well.
Talking about the cars, the exactly same car was 30K when I bought it 4.5 years ago, and now it is 45K+ (Same model different year). It's hard to explain the differences by "the advancement of technology". And not to say that back then I got a 0% interest rate and nowadays it's at least 5% or 6%.
IMO, for ordinary people, this hike of interests does nothing to prevent real inflation that they care about, but simply increasing everything.
I visited the States in 2019 (Boston), and then didn't until last week (NYC).
The level of inflation in the US for everyday things between that time seemed insanely high compared to anything I'd seen in Europe. How anyone couldn't look at the price of rent and food and whatever and think "5 years ago I was paying a lot less" and have that not feed massively into their decision making process at the (private) ballot box is beyond me.
Add in a terrible candidate who nervous laughed nonstop, did almost nothing but attack the other side, and here we are.
I can't tell which person you're talking about.
Watch the Joe Rogan Trump interview. He laughs plenty.
You were mistaken stage-Trump for the person-Trump. Stage Trump is a certain character, 3 hour interview Trump is the real guy.
Meanwhile rents went up 60%.
- Will I still have a job in 6 months? If I lose my job, can I get by?
- Can I continue to afford groceries, rent, utilities at the current pace of inflation?
- If I have a major health problem, will I be ok?
During an election, you can either harness the fear voters have around these issues and turn them into hateful energy against the other side (Trump tactic) or you can calm people's nerves by acknowledging the problems and providing a path to deal with them (Obama tactic). Obama was able to confidently appeal to voters on these issues and he brought them to the fore-front throughout his campaign. Obama was charismatic as well, so when he talked about these issues, you got the sense that he could competently provide that protection. He was reassuring.
I voted for Kamala, but I didn't want to. She possessed none of those positive qualities. She didn't instill confidence. Her voice and demeanor made her sound annoyed. Her fake smile made me cringe. I wanted an authentic candidate that could make me feel safe. She was not it.
Lastly, those primary issues were shrouded by gender politics. I would like transgender people to feel safe and have access to resources they need. I would like women to have access to abortion when it's necessary. These are not things to run a campaign off of though. EVERYONE feels the pain of a bad economy; that should've been the primary focus all along and we needed a STRONG candidate to really drive a strategy for addressing it. I just don't think Kamala was able to make any headway in that respect and I think that's why she ultimately lost.
Donald Trump had 74 million votes in 2020. As of right now, he's nearly at 72 million. To me that says he hasn't necessarily gained new followers. That's a good sign. It seems the Dems have lost millions however. That's a very bad sign. It's pretty clear then that Kamala did not represent what voters really cared about during this election cycle.
Rightly or wrongly, economic sentiment indicators are all in the dumpster and historically incumbent party loses in that scenario. We've had the best covid recovery, lowest inflation and lowest unemployment in the developed world but that doesn't matter to the average voter.
Biden probably would have done worse (look at approval rating & imagine another debate). Open primary might have helped, or not, total gamble. Probably less than 25% of this is attributable to Harris or her campaign.
If there was a dem mistake it was in picking her as VP in 2020 to lock up a demographic they already would win. From there it made her the presumed successor to an elderly president who was assumed to not really run for a second term.
The politics around gender (and however many there's supposed to be) makes people lose their frame of reference also IMO. For some, the world is changing too quick, or their neighbourhood is changing too quick.
Older generations who've witnessed the change perhaps see it most, as perhaps younger white men who have had the blowback of historical racism, misogyny and generally assumed to be the most privileged, though many (the majority) are not. I hear that the Trump campaign focused on them who generally do not vote.
I hope the USA moves on and accepts the result. In the end people vote with their desires, sometimes illogical but ultimately their desires are their motivations. The USA is also a good age now, as I was reminded by a Canadian taxi driver while living in Canada, regardless of what foreigners nebs think about US politics, better a world with the USA in it than without (though I'm probably biased as a Westerner).
Perhaps to an extent it's hard to keep an identity, like national pride or what a country stands for when things move so quickly.
Personally I thought Harris was a shoo in, but the people have spoken.
Insert caveat about big tech algos persuading people.
Clicked on this thread for insightful discussion/debate, I’m just reading people talk about how trump was not a good candidate, and how kamala campaigned incorrectly and so on so forth
As a Brit looking in from the outside, it’s hard for me to understand how choices have been made in this election, but if I were to attempt a charitable take, did Trump win because he tunes in to some sort of low level anger/resentment/frustration felt by a chunk of the population?
Whereas the Democrats, more polished perhaps as they are, have failed to make that connection sufficiently?
And that connection - or whatever it is that the population picks up on from Trump, outweighs the “obvious flaws” that his detractors may point towards?
Ie they don’t vote for him because of his hyperbole and “questionable” behaviour, they vote for him in spite of that - for other reasons.
I can see the Democrats didn’t help matters by pushing Biden to run when he clearly shouldn’t have, though perhaps it was the lesser of two evils at the time (from their point of view) given his proven record of being able to actually beat Trump.
Happy to be corrected if this is a bad or naive analysis!!
Maybe 10% of voters have opinions on policy, platforms, parties.
The remainder vote based on identity and some vibes. Their ability to link politicians with their actual policies is worse than a coin toss.
Democracy for Realists [2016] https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsi...
Us political hobbyists second guessing campaign strategies and decisions is mostly pointless.
Because final results more or less match the generic ballot. True, in close contests, there's some roshambo over individual states (cuz electoral college). Which is how Trump won 2016.
What happened with Harris v Trump? GOP party (self) identification is up (3% since 2020). Harris didn't pull Biden numbers. Pretty simple.
The real (campaign) questions, IMHO are:
Determine if Dem turnout (GOTV) in 2020 was the anomaly and 2024 is the actual norm.
Understand Latinos flipping from Dem to GOP.
Can a Democrat be the first (elected) female POTUS?
Now that Democrats are the minority party for the foreseeable future, what's the plan?
People (and pundits) wrote such BS for 2016-2020, as they were witnessing the second coming of Hitler. In the end it was just another term.
Meanwhile, the people who wrote similar things about Bush (which was a much more dystopian and bigger impact period, when citizens rights were being overturned though schemes like the Patriot Act, torture/waterboarding and such were cynically advocated and excused, and wars targeting millions and profiting few were kickstarted), now party with the Cheneys and approvingly check out photos of Bush and Obama hanging out...
We could show you literal proof of Maga people asking "when do we get to use the guns"[1] and you will find some bizarre excuse.
[1] https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/...
I guess that's not "literal proof", some loonie asking bullshit is...
>hundrends of thousands of social media posts about beating up Republicans and straight advocating murder
Regurgitating the same clip a million times doesn't make that a million incidents.
>not to mention a couple of actual assasination attempts of an ex-President presidential candidate.
Pure bullshit unless you're going to dig up Lincoln being assassinated.
At least you could stop lying and stop victim blame and for once take some responsibility and accountability, instead you just cope by both siding it.
>On June 14, 2017, a mass shooting occurred during a practice session for the annual Congressional Baseball Game
>Hodgkinson was a left-wing activist with a record of domestic violence from Belleville, Illinois,[11][12] while Scalise was a Republican Party member of Congress. The Virginia Attorney General concluded Hodgkinson's attack was "an act of terrorism ... fueled by rage against Republican legislators."
Dems needed to recognize that most people are self-interested and will become more so as hardships increase, and hardships have definitely increased since 2020.
And minority groups yelling in fear online need to recognize that showing interest in the average working American doesn't mean you want to jail or kill those minority groups.
So sorry if you think Republicans want to jail and kill you, but the reality is people are suffering and they chose the party that was showing the most interest in the average working American. I am pretty confident 90% of Trump voters would swap him for Vance or any other more cogent human who was championing workers rights.
>Dems needed to recognize that most people are self-interested and will become more so as hardships increase, and hardships have definitely increased since 2020.
Their perceived hardship perhaps, inflation, unemployment has gone down and even wages have gone up since 2020.
>And minority groups yelling in fear online need to recognize that showing interest in the average working American doesn't mean you want to jail or kill those minority groups.
I have no clue what this "minority" is? Democrats? Because I can tell you already it ain't them who is saying that maga cultists wants to kill Democrats, it's literally the maga cultists themselves[1].
>So sorry if you think Republicans want to jail and kill you, but the reality is people are suffering and they chose the party that was showing the most interest in the average working American. I am pretty confident 90% of Trump voters would swap him for Vance or any other more cogent human who was championing workers rights.
It's not a matter of think, it's a matter of actual probability being higher than a fever dream.
If you genuinely believe one should vote for a person that is going to try to make themselves a damn king/dictator, then I want you to also say that you think it was fine for the Germans to vote in Hitler because they unlike Americans had actual real economic problems (2700% inflation compared to 2.4%, 24% unemployment vs 4.1%).
[1]https://eu.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2...
Those last two inflammatory conjectures in your comment are simply not true. It sure takes putting your head deep in the sand or doing a bunch of mental backflips to arrive at that conclusion. Just look at the blood that came out of Trump’s ear to easily refute that point as well as the second assassination attempt. The left was supposed to realize at those moments to tone down the rhetoric. But there’s a bunch of globalists that just want to see America burn.
I’m in the middle of it all. Not right or left. No party affiliation and I have more left leaning views than right views. I simply try to pick the best candidate each election, irrespective of the party. These parties have changed so much that they’re unrecognizable from what they used to be.
I recognize that the left is so terrified of someone shaking up their world view with the real truth that they lash out like a venomous snake afraid of the truth and god forbid actually seeing the other perspective. That pushes all of the moderates to the right side. The moderates and the independents decide all of the elections. Probably because we’re able to see through the smoke & mirrors and see the truth.
The truth is you care more about not getting cancelled or hurt than you care about the country or the results of the election and for that reason, you’ll only make a good decision at the polls about half of the time. Like a broken clock that’s correct twice a day and incorrect all of the rest of the time.
I’ll leave you with one main view, and if you forget everything else and remember this one thing, maybe you’ll have a chance at being a part of both parties one day. The right-leaning party of 2024, the big tent party, today, is just the party of the people that want the ability to perhaps have a family in the future — or already has a family. Period. Full stop. They perceive the self-loathing left as actively assaulting their work to put food on the table, keep a roof over their head, and give their kid an actual chance in this world to possibly eventually have a kid of his or her own. Stop vilifying those people. They feel bad for the left for being deeply brainwashed and mentally-manipulated by powers stronger than them.
Why are all of the latest policies globalists first and Americans last?
Why are all of the companies instituting mass layoffs?
Should all of America have as much crime as Oakland, Chicago, New York City, L.A., and Portland?
How come today, the left is the party of war and the right the party of peace? The left identifies with the Bushs and Cheneys while the right identifies with the Kennedys.
Why didn’t we cut funding for further gain of function research after COVID-19 after it escaped the formerly BSL2 lab at the wuhan institute of Virology?
What all was in The Twitter Files?
What is the Deep State and why do we still have one?
Who was a threat to democracy? (in the Republic)? Do you remember participating in any primary election?
Should America continue having large amounts of illegal immigration or should there be more legal immigration? We all know how Miami and Texas voted.
How come Detroit Michigan still has lead in their water and there are superfund sites all over America still? The only environmental policy the left today embraced is global warming.
How come the only freedoms being advocated for are the freedoms to turn gay, become trans, and then preorder your suicide pod from the next Dr. Kevorkian! But at least you can abort your kid and not need an ID when you vote! Lol I’m pro-choice but can you see how the masses would find these solutions to their problems… distasteful?
Are you really improving women’s lives by becoming the party of Islam? Or is that talk about women just propaganda and lip service?
Are pro-Palestine flags virtue signaling or do they advocate Hitler-level genocide as their supporters chant “from the river to the sea” as they aim to wipe an entire group people off the map?
Out of all of the things the left-leaning NPR can talk about, why did they give an “From to the river to the sea” advocate the microphone? Is NPR where we want our tax dollars to continue going to?
Nowadays, the left in government gets called bad names, a vampire squid that sucks the democratic republic’s treasury bone dry. Other times, a death cult.
There’s a reason the right is always more welcoming of the left than the left is of the right.
There is a reason the right, this election cycle, was willing to have those open debates and go on the most podcasts & talk shows and have the tough discussions. The campaign strategy of the Trump & Vance campaign was to go on so many podcasts that they were uncensorable by the legacy media. As we all know, their campaign strategy worked and people were able to hear both sides. A campaign running on emotions like “Joy” vs. a better economy that benefits all.
If you want to learn more, don’t debate me. Listen to an episode of Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, or David Sacks instead.
In typical fashion victim blame those with concerns and never take on responsibility.
>Those last two inflammatory conjectures in your comment are simply not true. It sure takes putting your head deep in the sand or doing a bunch of mental backflips to arrive at that conclusion. Just look at the blood that came out of Trump’s ear to easily refute that point as well as the second assassination attempt. The left was supposed to realize at those moments to tone down the rhetoric. But there’s a bunch of globalists that just want to see America burn.
Of course it's inflammatory to you, you would rather rant about my comment than actually engage with it in good faith.
Funny thing is both assassins was Republican voters, so much for the left boogieman.
>I’m in the middle of it all. Not right or left. No party affiliation and I have more left leaning views than right views. I simply try to pick the best candidate each election, irrespective of the party. These parties have changed so much that they’re unrecognizable from what they used to be.
It's always so interesting that so called "centrist" has to go out loudly proclaiming they are centrists, and yet every time they turns out not to be centrist what so ever.
But yes I agree, republicans have lost all principles they once had and now even the conservatism that has been plaguing it is on the chopping block.
>I recognize that the left is so terrified of someone shaking up their world view with the real truth that they lash out like a venomous snake afraid of the truth and god forbid actually seeing the other perspective. That pushes all of the moderates to the right side. The moderates and the independents decide all of the elections. Probably because we’re able to see through the smoke & mirrors and see the truth.
You can recognize things and yet you cannot recognize "left's" concern, a real centrist would be able to understand the plight of both sides and yet here you are unable to do so.
>The truth is you care more about not getting cancelled or hurt than you care about the country or the results of the election and for that reason, you’ll only make a good decision at the polls about half of the time. Like a broken clock that’s correct twice a day and incorrect all of the rest of the time.
I care about my country something in this rant you haven't shown a single bit off, only that your emotions and feelings to be validated as you've said 0 principled ideas and instead things like "we know the TRUTH! I know what you feel and thus you are wrong!", you've probably done more straw men of me than the mental Olympics would allow for.
>I’ll leave you with one main view, and if you forget everything else and remember this one thing, maybe you’ll have a chance at being a part of both parties one day. The right-leaning party of 2024, the big tent party, today, is just the party of the people that want the ability to perhaps have a family in the future — or already has a family. Period. Full stop. They perceive the self-loathing left as actively assaulting their work to put food on the table, keep a roof over their head, and give their kid an actual chance in this world to possibly eventually have a kid of his or her own. Stop vilifying those people. They feel bad for the left for being deeply brainwashed and mentally-manipulated by powers stronger than them.
Republicans have been destroyed by the conservatives who now in turned have been destroyed by the maga cult, if you call that a big tent then I guess we could say that a clitoris is a big penis.
Republicans feeling bad? where was the "feeling bad" when they mocked Nancy Pelosi's husband being almost murdered by a crazed maga cultist?
Or how about when on a Trump rally just before election they said that everyone in the democratic party are degenerates every single one of them, what a wonderful compassion these republicans have.
And Republicans want to you have families? Sure if you don't need IFV, if you're not gay or trans.
>Why are all of the latest policies globalists first and Americans last?
I don't care about conspiracies like """globalists""", I care about my country, charlatans and demagagues are far greater threat than your perceived reality of "globalists".
>Why are all of the companies instituting mass layoffs?
For different reasons, one of the big one being automation.
>Should all of America have as much crime as Oakland, Chicago, New York City, L.A., and Portland?
Right, you know that's not true? If we go by violent crime by capita it's all republican in the top 10:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Only exception being California because of robbery, which surprise, surprise is because criminals around the country aren't stupid and will go where-ever the most rich people per capita live, aka. places you bought up.
>How come today, the left is the party of war and the right the party of peace? >The left identifies with the Bushs and Cheneys while the right identifies with >the Kennedys.
Oh cool, tell me which war is USA in right now? How many troops have we deployed to said place?
The left is very much anti-war, they've been echoing every single talking point your side has done, it's the centrists are the ones who have said they want to support Ukraine in it's defense of the invading Russia.
>Why didn’t we cut funding for further gain of function research after COVID-19 >after it escaped the formerly BSL2 lab at the wuhan institute of Virology?
We never funded said laboratory and the lab leak theory has still not been proven.
>What all was in The Twitter Files?
Smoking weed and eating mcDonald's special: Nothingburger
>What is the Deep State and why do we still have one?
Government workers, so that our country can function.
>Who was a threat to democracy? (in the Republic)? Do you remember >participating in any primary election?
Republicans storming Jan 6, 2020.
No please refresh me, what were I doing during the primaries?
>Should America continue having large amounts of illegal immigration or should there be more legal immigration? We all know how Miami and Texas voted.
Well how sad then that Trump ordered the republicans to kill that bipartisan most extreme bill to date, that would have tried to be the beginning of the long array of fixes needed to secure the border.
>How come Detroit Michigan still has lead in their water and there are superfund sites all over America still? The only environmental policy the left today embraced is global warming.
Because it's still reeling from the rust belt collapse? There's tons of conservationist and environmental policy but maybe my man/woman, maybe just maybeit's because global warming is an existential threat to us all.
>How come the only freedoms being advocated for are the freedoms to turn gay, become trans, and then preorder your suicide pod from the next Dr. Kevorkian! But at least you can abort your kid and not need an ID when you vote! Lol I’m pro-choice but can you see how the masses would find these solutions to their problems… distasteful?
So we shouldn't have the freedom to choose these things or what's the point here? I think the only retarded policy democrats have regarding trans-issues is trans athletes.
>Are you really improving women’s lives by becoming the party of Islam? Or is that talk about women just propaganda and lip service?
Lol, by that metric the Republicans IS the party of Islam with wanting to:
* Ban abortion
* Ban LGBT people
* Limit women's rights such as voting
* Teaming up with Muslims to enact these policy changes
etc. etc.
Are pro-Palestine flags virtue signaling or do they advocate Hitler-level genocide as their supporters chant “from the river to the sea” as they aim to wipe an entire group people off the map?
I don't support Palestine, beyond that they should work together with Israel as it is in Bosnia.
>Out of all of the things the left-leaning NPR can talk about, why did they give an “From to the river to the sea” advocate the microphone? Is NPR where we want our tax dollars to continue going to?
Left-leaning in what way is publicly funded NPR left-leaning? Because they invited on 1 person who has crazy views? You should check into C-SPAN then.
But again how very centrist of you, judging others.
>There’s a reason the right is always more welcoming of the left than the left is of the right.
>There is a reason the right, this election cycle, was willing to have those open debates and go on the most podcasts & talk shows and have the tough discussions. The campaign strategy of the Trump & Vance campaign was to go on so many podcasts that they were uncensorable by the legacy media. As we all know, their campaign strategy worked and people were able to hear both sides. A campaign running on emotions like “Joy” vs. a better economy that benefits all.
Democrats have had their head in the sand when it comes to new media, that's about it, just like Republicans used to have their heads in the sand about cable TV being important.
>If you want to learn more, don’t debate me. Listen to an episode of Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, or David Sacks instead.
I'll do whatever I want, and I sure as hell will not be listening to charlatans as you suggest.
If you want to read about real conservatives here's a few names:
* Emmanuel Mounier
* Heinrich Pesch
* Wilhelm Röpke
* Hilaire Belloc
Or if you prefer to read:
https://www.amazon.com/-/en/Carlo-Invernizzi-Accetti/dp/1108...
In the following 40,000 characters, I respond to every one your responses. At one point I even move back closer to the center again as you bring up a good consideration. Since it’s long, I had to divide it up into 3 or more replies to post it.
>In typical fashion victim blame those with concerns and never take on responsibility.
Bring up your chief concerns and let’s address them head on.
I also want to get to know the basics of I’m talking to a little better. It’s not safe to assume on the internet that most people are in the USA or are from the USA. Many have outside interests that trump domestic interests.
>But there’s a bunch of globalists that just want to see America burn. >Of course it's inflammatory to you, you would rather rant about my comment than actually engage with it in good faith.
I doubt this is your chief concern but I’ll address it for you directly anyways. Most people don’t consider political drama to be a chief concern but I’ll address it anyways. I’ve never once heard of Republicans calling the democrats degenerate, but I’m sure it’s possible to get at least one person on either side to say anything. As a whole or from the people in power that can make the top-down decisions, that isn’t truthful. What is true is that Biden called all Americans on the right “Garbage” after a roast comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at the MSG NY Rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. TBH, it probably looked like that for a bit of time after so many large hurricanes reduced it this season but it wasn’t a good remark and he probably picked them to roast because they can’t vote. But it did show their commitment to free speech by having a gay man from Austin TX, where almost everyone is a democrat, who wouldn’t say who he was voting for when surrounded by MAGA supporters, which means he probably is a democrat, is quite a brave commitment to free speech. Either that, or the flop served well to take heat off of 20 or so others who weren’t comedians and were expressing real views. Anyways, it was far surpassed by the Biden comment though.
> “really hate men" in what way do the democrats hate men. First of all some do; some don’t. Some hate themselves. Some hate others. Some don’t have a hateful bone in their body. There’s no blanket statement to be made. However there are some contemporary feminists who are really just man-haters who are quite loud and have been doing a large part of the speaking for the Democratic Party. The party thought it could win by pitting women vs men and winning on various identities while the right wanted to win with ideologies. Identities aren’t safe to debate or campaign on and not a debate I like having because effectively no one can change their identity so it ends in war or civil war. The contemporary feminists who hate all men, is simply not the kinds of people I want directing the party. Feminism accomplished everything it set out to achieve. Women can vote, drive, work, fight, and will win in most lawsuits against men. They’re outpacing men in early education and late education. They have lower suicide rates, and in the largest cities are beginning to outpace men. Men want to have a Father’s Day where the United Nations isn’t tweeting about how important mother’s are on the same day. Yes mother’s are important and Mother’s Day is important, but let men have their one day a year and women get theirs too. Equality for men and women.
I don’t think a president being a man or being a woman is a good reason to vote for one or the other. Saying all men suck so I want a female president, is… do I really have to point out the obvious flaws in that? There’s so much more that should go into the decision that that shouldn’t even be part of the decision tree.
What contemporary feminism really is, is successfully convincing all of your fellow women to exit the dating pool, so that you have less female competition and get to have all of the good men to yourself. Many women don’t realize this but are also not surprised by the cattyness and not-uncommon back-stabbing. Men more often just say it as it is.
Some globalists love this because they don’t want to see Americans having families and birthing a little baby carbon breathers anyways. If it was really about carbon, they would’ve banned all private jet travel yesterday.
Some self-loathing 40yr old childless cat ladies love this because it massages the part of their brain that seeks validation for past decisions. There’s nothing wrong with a decision to not have a family, but there’s an old saying that “Lord, if you can’t make me skinny then make all of my friends fat.” Some people get duped into thinking that others are acting in their own best interest, when in fact many time’s it’s not. I’m simply advocating for healthy skepticism with many of these -isms. Nearly all -isms are BS. Just like racism isn’t something people should support either.
Next, I know you may make an outdated comment on racism but the MAGA big tent party won and *Trump won the African-Americans vote by the highest percentage that any Republican has won in USA history before — even against a candidate who proclaimed to be black, adopted a black accent at her rally’s, and chose to start her campaign by going on Charlamagne tha God’s show and spend their campaign dollars on having Megan Thee Stallion twerk on the DNC stage.
The party that said we care so much about the black vote that you don’t have to have an ID when you vote because apparently they proclaim voter id laws are racist. Not only is it patronizing but it shows they’re so out of touch that it makes you wonder if they’ve ever met an African American person before — let alone anyone on the right side in-person ever since work from home began after Covid. Voter ID laws simply keep the same person from voting twice or more under various names. California even went as far as banning poll workers for asking voters for a ID when voting. But it can be hard to see if all you watch is far-left media stations like MSNBC, ABC and CNN or anything out of the UK or Canada where citizens do not have and cannot exercise freedom of speech. Freedom of speech: use it or lose it. One day, you just might need it!!
Back on topic, MAGA won on ideological discussions instead of race-baiting, gender-baiting, or shoving identity politics down our throats which the media apparently wanted. They tried divide and conquer Americans but the American people clearly wanted a return to a meritocracy, a return to normalcy, a return to joint prosperity, and a better future & economy for all genders and races. The way for us to sail happily through the next 4 years is to turn off the media for 4 years, including to some degree HN, while they try to sow headlines that make it sound like the sky is falling and they claim there’s widespread chaos descending everywhere again when really there’s not.
On a personal note, it’s quite a nice feeling to be optimistic about the future and hopeful about our government for once in our lifetime. The debt was growing at an unsustainable rate and interest on our debt had become higher than our entire defence budget. Lina Khan, Janet Yellen, Gary Gensler, Alejandro Mayorkas, Mike Pompeo (the wolf in sheep’s clothing), and others all needed to be fired yesterday and it sure didn’t look like the current administration, sleepwalking through the cockpit, was headed to fire any of them. That’s probably my chief issue.
>Funny thing is both assassins was Republican voters, so much for the left boogieman.
were but I won’t be pedantic. We’re all human and we all make typos. The Pennsylvania assassin, Crooks, switched to be a registered Republican for this election so that he could vote for someone other than trump in the primaries and participate. The democrats did not hold a primary election in most states and in his state, the only way one could participate in the Democratic process of elections was to join the republican ticket. Obviously he wanted to participate in politics. It’s ironic that he decided to attempt to deprive everyone else of their right to participate in a democratic republic via their right to vote. Crooks Facebook wall was covered in solidly left-leaning, Democrat content and all of his political donations were to Democrat candidates. All of his actions were that of Democrat. It’s free to switch parties but it’s not free to donate money.
Routh, who has a mountainous criminal record, frequently posted about politics and exclusively donated to Democratic candidates and causes dating back to 2019. He was woefully uninformed about the russia Ukrainian war which is a war we never should’ve found ourselves in through our woefully negligent foreign policy. If we produced our oil in Alaska or Texas/Oklahoma instead of buying it from Iran and the gas station of Europe, Russia, they wouldn’t have had the money to wage war.
Our current administration has a policy of sending missiles, bombs, and bullets instead of just simply talking with the other side. Most bad relationships are caused by bad communication and the same applies to foreign policy. According to Tucker Carlson whom was the first and only American to actually interview Vladimir Putin in quite a long time showed us many things in his interview including how threatening it was to continue raising talks to include Ukraine in NATO, tariff their natural gas pipelines, and other things most people were simply unaware of.
Routh sadly didn’t know the details or intricacies about a war that should’ve never happened in the first place. He should’ve been put in an army and sent to Ukraine because he wanted to die for a cause. I have an uncommon view which is that we should’ve sent soldiers to Ukraine (who volunteered to go like him as that was his primary advocacy) instead of just money, weapons, and perhaps paid mercenaries. But that’s mostly due to my financial concern over the debt our country is in. On a lesser note, all of the man haters in our country can see what happens when there’s suddenly supply shortages for men and they realize they’ve been taking men for granted. Post WW2 was pretty prosperous for America and all genders should feel appreciated. But we can’t afford much and I can sure see why that didn’t happen though in the age of a potential WW3 or nuclear war. Nuclear weapons didn’t exist pre-WW2 and Bioweapons were less advanced back then.
All in all they were misinformed and confused democrats. They all donated to democrat candidates and made posts indicating they were democrats. They were also okay with trying to cheat to win. It’s very common for democrats to project, by making untrue claims such as “[Republicans] are people that advocate the murdering of democrats”, when it’s really more of the other way around judging by those two assassination attempts.
Trump talked about putting Hillary in jail, but when he was president he didn’t because he didn’t believe in persecuting political opponents. He just said it for the entertainment value on stage. People forget that above all else he’s an entertainer. Many Republicans were persecuted; even Steve Bannon was put in jail. I understand some people are mad because he’s generally regarded as the prime reason Trump got into the White House the first time. I even made a comment about that regarding Bannon here on HN years ago when I was a solid-blue liberal all the way through. Coincidentally afterwards he was thoroughly investigated by powerful upset liberals until they could discover some charges on him. I do feel a little bit of guilt in being one of the first to raise public awareness about Bannon and possibly being the one that lead to his investigation and subsequent arrest… but it looks like he’ll be pardoned soon from being kept as a political prisoner. I don’t believe in persecuting political opponents like our left leaning DOJ does. Claims such as “[Republicans] are people that advocate the murdering of democrats” are simply untrue and is just another projection. Perhaps it’s understandable why I labeled that inflammatory rhetoric. At least, now you have a full answer.
>I recognize that the left is so terrified of someone shaking up their world view with the real truth that they lash out like a venomous snake afraid of the truth and god forbid actually seeing the other perspective. That pushes all of the moderates to the right side. The moderates and the independents decide all of the elections. Probably because we’re able to see through the smoke & mirrors and see the truth. >You can recognize things and yet you cannot recognize "left's" concern, a real centrist would be able to understand the plight of both sides and yet here you are unable to do so.
I can recognize the plight of both sides because I’ve been a Democrat my whole life. That’s why I’m able to walk talk and act like a Democrat if I want to. But I didn’t see why I should vote for someone that goes against all of my interests in every single way. It’s quite sad how cooked this economy is. After you share the current country you’re in and your current country of residence, feel free to share with me what your top chief issues are and I’ll hear what your plight is, regardless of what what you say. I might not agree with everything you say, but I’ll certainly give you a platform to speak it and I will certainly read it.
>The truth is you care more about not getting cancelled or hurt than you care about the country or the results of the election and for that reason, you’ll only make a good decision at the polls about half of the time. Like a broken clock that’s correct twice a day and incorrect all of the rest of the time. > i care about my country something in this rant you haven't shown a single bit off, only that your emotions and feelings to be validated as you've said 0 principled ideas and instead things like "we know the TRUTH! I know what you feel and thus you are wrong!", you've probably done more straw men of me than the mental Olympics would allow for.
Good, which country is that? Last sentence is incomprehensible. I hear you on the middle part. Though it sounds like your opinion and your projection. My perception is that this year the left was, for once, was the group of feelings, emotions and unprincipled ideas.
>I’ll leave you with one main view, and if you forget everything else and remember this one thing, maybe you’ll have a chance at being a part of both parties one day. The right-leaning party of 2024, the big tent party, today, is just the party of the people that want the ability to perhaps have a family in the future — or already has a family. Period. Full stop. They perceive the self-loathing left as actively assaulting their work to put food on the table, keep a roof over their head, and give their kid an actual chance in this world to possibly eventually have a kid of his or her own. Stop vilifying those people. They feel bad for the left for being deeply brainwashed and mentally-manipulated by powers stronger than them.
>Republicans have been destroyed by the conservatives who now in turned have been destroyed by the maga cult, if you call that a big tent then I guess we could say that a clitoris is a big penis.
I chuckled when I read this. Thanks for that. Especially after the projection in the previous response. Either I struck a nerve with an uncomfortable truth or you have a comedic side we can all appreciate. I wouldn’t call it destroyed but Yes you’re right the Republican Party have been completely flipped around by people that simply want to Make America Great Again.
Liberals trust anyone that speaks against carbon emissions (except private jets, military equipment, and large ships carrying foreign goods such as imports such as oil from Iran and Russia that might as well have been made here. Just dawn a gay pride, trans-pride flag or some other virtue signal. With that, it doesn’t matter if they want to pass oversized spending packages, reduce freedoms, go to war, increase regulations, or loot our treasury. As long as they don’t say anything that could offend someone of a protected class.
Lol, Republicans don’t even trust each other let alone the other side! Many know that it is merely an opposition party that is captured by the left. Even Fascist Italy under Mussolini and Nazi Germany under the third Reich permitted an opposition party. Those regimes were all totalitarian and the opposition parties were little more than puppets or shells, used by their establishment to maintain a facade of democracy while retaining the regime’s grip on power.
That’s why the Republican Party has been so bad and the uniparty along with it. The Democrat party has spent countless dollars and countless time funding unelectable GOP dufuses such as ones that espouse anti-abortion views to have softballs in the general election. MAGA supporters currently call warmongers or bad Republicans like the Cheney’s “NeoCons”. The people were excited to have a populist billionaire like Trump because it meant they were less likely to have corruption. Someone that goes into office willing to reduce their net worth instead of going there for corruption and the continued selling out of America which has already been hollowed out and sold out many areas already.
The Democrat party spends more time and money subverting the other side than they do improving their own side. Maybe now they’ll do some introspection but who knows, maybe so maybe not. Based on the recent Popular Vote, I can say with certainty that the American people are unhappy with it. The main reason Trump made it as far as he did was he was considered as a joke for the longest time so he was on a list with 2 other republicans primary names for “softballs” the DNC wanted to go up against.
> Republicans feeling bad? where was the "feeling bad" when they mocked Nancy Pelosi's husband being almost murdered by a crazed maga cultist?
I didn’t hear of it. I must’ve missed the part where Nancy Pelosi’s husband has had to dodge bullets like the other side continually had to do. Do you know what guns or weapons were involved, if any? I’m against all acts of violence on both sides. Though if there were none, it’s not the same. The threat model is lesser. My sources say none. Can all of the crime in California be blamed on the Republicans? The state seems to be devolving into lawless anarchy. People say that’s by design because then the people will be begging for a form of totalitarianism to save them. Some people only begin to care when it’s on their front door. All violence is a tense topic so I want to make a joke: Maybe he just wanted insider-congress tips for stock call options like NVDA or PANW.
> Or how about when on a Trump rally just before election they said that everyone in the democratic party are degenerates every single one of them, what a wonderful compassion these republicans have.
The phrase was by Roast comedian Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. This was at the Madison Square Gardens Rally in New York (MSG NY Rally) which had about 19 other speakers. All of the other speakers succeeded in not getting any negative publicity after the rally since Hinchcliffe absorbed it all. It was topped by Biden responding calling half of America that!! Then Trump started driving around a Garbage Truck for the photo ops after that.
Republicans are as welcoming as your local church. Even if you don’t believe any of the views, you’re still welcomed in. Most Republicans, except the most religious, are former Democrats but most Democrats have never been former Republicans. That’s why they’re so welcoming — because they were once just like you.
>And Republicans want to you have families? Sure if you don't need IFV, if you're not gay or trans.
Huh? Trump is very much pro-IVF and then Kamala copied that too like no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, or no tax on social security. Many things that he considered sending her a MAGA hat for since she was copying him on these.
He wouldn’t copy her on taxes for unrealized capital gains though. Probably her worst policy idea overall as that would’ve nuked the economy if that had ever happened. Congress probably wouldn’t have let that pass, but did we really want to take on that risk?
Anyways, nothing is changing for the gays or the trans communities. They still get gay marriage. Trans men just can’t play in women’s professional sports. And conservative families just don’t want to think their kid is going to be turned gay or trans by teachers in school. Nothing’s changing for the gay adults or the kids of far-left liberal parents who want their kids to turn gay or trans as the ultimate form of virtue signaling to their adult peers. It can still happen at home or outside of school. Kids are a captured audience and many believe in keeping political talk outside of the classroom. Some people don’t want their kids to grow up to be little Ella Emhoff’s (Kamala’s heavily tattooed stepdaughter who couldn’t even dress up past street clothes to go to her step mom’s electoral delegation).
>Why are all of the latest policies globalists first and Americans last? I don't care about conspiracies like """globalists""", I care about my country, charlatans and demagagues are far greater threat than your perceived reality of "globalists".
First, It’s not a conspiracy if it’s true. Second, you dodged my question. Calling anyone who raises concern, a charlatan or a demagagues is typical for someone that can’t come up with a response to a debate. Attempting to gaslight the other side with namecalling was not the solution to winning this last election. I don’t know how one can believe that party unwilling to have these difficult and uncomfortable discussions is going to fix any of these problems.
>Why are all of the companies instituting mass layoffs? For different reasons, one of the big one being automation.
I felt myself moving more to the left and closest to the center after reading that. I take pride in changing my view as new data and information arises. It turns out that however we know the picture is not so simple as solely automation. Increasing taxes such as the change in section 174 of the IRS tax to disallow deducting software R&D as a qualified business expense happened for many reasons. One of those reasons is because our government has so much wasteful spending so it vacuums more money out of the private sector to keep up with rising National Debt and rising interest payments on the National Debt. Due to the interest on our debt, a lot of that money doesn’t make it to the public sector, it just goes to pay treasury bond holders, who now in aggregate collect more money than the entirety of the defense budget! Trump was the only candidate supporting the Department of Government Efficiency thanks to Elon Musk’s influence in his campaign. If it weren’t for Musk, there wouldn’t be a DOGE.
The November JOBS report by the BLS showed that the only two sectors with job growth is healthcare (because people can’t live without it) and Government job growth. Analysts at the DOW Jones estimated 112k jobs would be added to the economy in that JOBS report but only 12k were added. Has Bidenomics been working? I like & support Biden because he is our President but Bernie Sanders, may have done a better job with the economy and some other areas. Bernie is the longest serving Independent in U.S. congressional history but he might’ve been made a marionette on the DNC establishment’s leash on the Democrat ticket.
It might not be wise to remain on the losing side. Nowadays tech startups and small tech founders are favoring the Republican side due to less stifling regulations for small business creation. However, large tech companies still favor the democratic side for the regulations that stifle new competition.
You may already know this but typically Republican congress members solicit money from lobbiests by cutting regulations while Democrat congressmembers solicit money from lobbiests by creating more regulations. Businesses lobby either side based on whether they want more or less, sometimes playing both sides. Democrat congressional leaders can also attract money from lobbyists by threatening businesses with new regulations if they don’t pay up. Ex: Elizabeth Warren. Some view that as paying “their fair share” while others view it as a shake down from a party that spends forever-increasing amounts of other people’s money. I view both perspectives as having some merit.
>Should all of America have as much crime as Oakland, Chicago, New York City, L.A., and Portland? Right, you know that's not true? If we go by violent crime by capita it's all republican in the top 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... Only exception being California because of robbery, which surprise, surprise is because criminals around the country aren't stupid and will go where-ever the most rich people per capita live, aka. places you bought up.
According to both the Manhattan Institute and the NY Post, The “red state murder problem” meme, ignores that in many states, the murder rate is significantly a function of the state’s biggest cities, which are often quite blue, have a Democrat mayor, and are quite dangerous.
Criminal homicide is primarily (which does not mean entirely) a problem that resides within large cities. The 50 largest cities in America, home to 15.3% of the country’s population, saw 34.2% of the country’s murders in 2020; 34, or 68%, of the 50 cities had Democratic mayors in 2020, while only 14 (six of which were in blue states that voted for Biden in 2020) had Republican mayors.
The homicide rate in the blue cities was 15.8 per 100,000, compared to 9.4 per 100,000 in the red cities and 10.9 per 100,000 in the two cities with Independent mayors.
Also a little common sense (which is lately in short supply) says defunding the police and decriminalizing crime (instead of rolling back legislation, which the Democratic party has forgotten how to do) has the exact effect you’d expect it would have. California had pretty much legalized crime by not prosecuting misdemeanors anymore. Subsequently shoplifting under $1000 became normalized. This is in contrast with Texas where laws regarding misdemeanors are enforced and prosecuted too and there aren’t liberal movements to defund the police.
I mentioned Oakland, NYC, Chicago, L.A., and Portland, but have you seen how bad Kensington Ave of Philadelphia has become? It has become the most famous Avenue in all of America — for all the wrong reasons.
>How come today, the left is the party of war and the right the party of peace? >The left identifies with the Bushs and Cheneys while the right identifies with >the Kennedys. >Oh cool, tell me which war is USA in right now? How many troops have we deployed to said place? The left is very much anti-war, they've been echoing every single talking point your side has done, it's the centrists are the ones who have said they want to support Ukraine in it's defense of the invading Russia.
While under the Biden/Harris Administration, we are in: 1) The Ukraine and Russia war, 2) The China vs. Taiwan standoff in the South China Sea, 3) The Israel War vs Palestine, and 4) A proxy war against Iran over Israel. That’s 4 wars. If 4 wasn’t enough wars for you, South Korea against North Korea or Pakistan against India may have been soon to join.
Under the Trump Administration there was precisely 0 wars, 0 proxy wars, and even 0 terrorist attacks. More than half of these wars would never have started if he had been the commander and chief and you know it too. Peace through strength.
>Why didn’t we cut funding for further gain of function research after COVID-19 >after it escaped the formerly BSL2 lab at the wuhan institute of Virology? We never funded said laboratory and the lab leak theory has still not been proven.
Now that years have passed and more analysis has been done, the lab leak theory has notably more evidence and support behind it than the Zoonotic (natural evolution) theory. Scientists put the odds at perhaps 1 in 1400 odds in favor of Zoonotic and 1399 in 1400 odds in favor of Lab Leak theory.
Citation: “Do New Documents Prove a COVID Lab Leak?” -Just Asking Questions https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/just-asking-questions/...
That is about as unbiased and neutral of a take as any but you already know you can type “origins of covid-19” into any search engine, podcast app or wherever you feel like doing any research nowadays. Heck, if you prefer, you can find a book on the topic but most evidence will lead to the same conclusion. Life is not a Disney movie or a fairy tale, but it can be if your only source of information is ABC and MSNBC.
>We never funded said laboratory.
Reuters: “US suspends federal funding to Wuhan lab over non-compliance”.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
Reuters has a slight-left or center-left leaning bias so maybe you’ll trust them.
>What all was in The Twitter Files? >Smoking weed and eating mcDonald's special: Nothingburger
“CEO Elon Musk gave the documents to journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and authors Michael Shellenberger, David Zweig and Alex Berenson shortly after he acquired Twitter on October 27, 2022. Taibbi and Weiss coordinated the publication of the documents with Musk, releasing details of the files as a series of Twitter threads.” - Quoted from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files
Matt Taibbi’s reports on it sufficiently well in his Substack here: https://twitterfiles.substack.com (Warning: Contains some NSFW and Not Safe for Children information).
>What is the Deep State and why do we still have one? Government workers, so that our country can function.
I’m not an expert on the deep state though usually it refers to departments that can simply mark any grievances it makes as classified. Often it refers to one of the 17 branches of the intelligence community, but I don’t know. However I disagree with the premise that our country was functioning well or was headed in any great direction.
>Who was a threat to democracy? (in the Republic)? Do you remember >participating in any primary election? Republicans storming Jan 6, 2020. >No please refresh me, what were I doing during the primaries?
We don’t even know what land you’re in. I’m in the USA. In my country, the Democratic parties of most states chose not to hold a primary election.
Since when has any government in history been overthrown by unarmed people, but of course you were never privy to that detail because they didn’t want to let the facts get in the way of a good story or narrative. Over-politicized and naturally, embellished. Also, it was recently stormed again on October 16, 2024, this time by pro-Palestine supporters — but that doesn’t get as much attention because virtually none identify as Republican. Often Democrat, theocratic, or anarchist: https://voz.us/en/politics/231018/7642/pro-palestine-activis...
Either way, it’s political drama and not among the issues that matter the most.
>Should America continue having large amounts of illegal immigration or should there be more legal immigration? We all know how Miami and Texas voted. >Well how sad then that Trump ordered the republicans to kill that bipartisan most extreme bill to date, that would have tried to be the beginning of the long array of fixes needed to secure the border.
Both sides were pointing their fingers at each other and it became hard to know which side is telling more of the truth. I tried to fact check this months ago by researching the bills and came up inconclusive.
All it takes are executive orders to close the border, or being willing to fire Mayorkis — and neither one requires congressional confirmation.
That bill in question might’ve been stuffed with pork barrel legislation and poison pills from both sides before it made it to the senate. Of the states that have the most first hand experience with illegal immigrants, all of California, Texas, and Florida voted Nay on it. Only New Mexico voted Yea and AZ was divided with the independent voting nay. There didn’t need to be a bill passed to close the border though.
>How come Detroit Michigan still has lead in their water and there are superfund sites all over America still? The only environmental policy the left today embraced is global warming.
>Because it's still reeling from the rust belt collapse? There's tons of conservationist and environmental policy but maybe my man/woman, maybe just maybeit's because global warming is an existential threat to us all.
Democrats have had 12 out of the last 16 years to clean up the lead from flint Michigan. Nothing happened. It’s no surprise all 7 purple swing states turned red this year, even Michigan! The people want change.
Global warming is a long and extensive topic worthy of it’s own thread but as quick bullet points:
-Some of the warming can be explained by the sun expanding as it ages, with solar flares being physically closer to the earth.
-If global warming was the real concern, private jets would’ve been banned yesterday.
-Find one or more famous statue or landmark in the USA that was above water many decades ago, and is now below water due to sea levels rising. The “inconvenient truth” by Al gore turned out to be embellishments for the sake of advancing a political cause that never came into fruition.
-The real concern they have is not having a one world government that controls all other governments. That’s the globalist end-game: a totalitarian government that no-one elected.
-Republicans are not against clean energy options or electric cars such as Tesla, or Ford Lightnings. Look at all of the solar and wind power stations there are in Texas. Elon Musk did more to stop global warming than any other man on earth. The rest mostly just virtue signal while driving their gas powered their Subarus, flying their private jets, and advocating for more gas powered armoured vehicles to drive all over Ukraine and all of these other war zones. Imagine the carbon footprint of war.
-To care extensively about globalist topics over all national environmental priorities is a sign of a party that has become captured, infiltrated, and controlled by foreign powers (such as the WEF) for the sake of gathering more power. This is merely a notice for some suspicion and skepticism.
>How come the only freedoms being advocated for are the freedoms to turn gay, become trans, and then preorder your suicide pod from the next Dr. Kevorkian! But at least you can abort your kid and not need an ID when you vote! Lol I’m pro-choice but can you see how the masses would find these solutions to their problems… distasteful?
>So we shouldn't have the freedom to choose these things or what's the point here? I think the only retarded policy democrats have regarding trans-issues is trans athletes.
I’ll acknowledge that you dodged the no ID when voting, like California where it’s expressly illegal for a poll worker to request an ID. Voter ID laws keep people from double-voting or voting more than once.
No, why are the only freedoms being advocated ones that most Americans can expect to never meaningfully utilize? What those two freedoms have in common is that they prevent people from creating a family, which is why they are being benevolently offered.
Yeah being gay is fine, being trans is fine. Few are against those. None of the candidates or vice presidential candidates are against those freedoms. I’m too liberal to be against them either. Who knows, in 12-16 years we may all have to turn gay or trans to feel pride in our own skin color, lol
Yeah Trans athletes isn’t okay with most people. Perhaps you saw Boxing in the Olympics where a transman won by pummeling all of the women to death. Though some like that kind of entertainment. Not you and I though. Considerations to spend our tax dollars for sex reassignment surgeries (sometimes in prison or with illegal immigrants) isn’t very popular.
Let’s have freedoms most Americans can reasonably expect to utilize — freedom of speech, freedom for each American to own land, freedom for a business to be open during Covid, freedom to not grow up to be a debt slave because of the national debt, freedom to give a great country to our kids. Ones that aren’t just globalist agendas but national ones too.
>Are you really improving women’s lives by becoming the party of Islam? Or is that talk about women just propaganda and lip service? >Lol, by that metric the Republicans IS the party of Islam with wanting to:
* Ban abortion
* Ban LGBT people
* Limit women's rights such as voting
* Teaming up with Muslims to enact these policy changes etc. etc.
*Wanting to ban abortion is a lie that Kamala kept reciting at her rallies. It’s really a trap to talk about that because we know Trump wanted to leave it up to the states to decide — and that is the most moderate position a candidate can take.
*Who the F is banning LGBT people? Lol yet another lie.
*Limiting women voting rights is probably the most proposterous thing of these 4 though they all preposterous. Show me one time in 2016 when Trump motioned to reduce women’s voting rights or any video of him saying so. [Citation Needed].
*Teaming up with Muslims? lol where do you get this from?? Lol, you can keep all of your pro-hamas protesters. Maybe you forgot the Trump Muslim travel bans during Covid. However, many Muslims did vote for Trump this time around and they said because they want peace in the Middle East.
>Are pro-Palestine flags virtue signaling or do they advocate Hitler-level genocide as their supporters chant “from the river to the sea” as they aim to wipe an entire group people off the map?
>I don't support Palestine, beyond that they should work together with Israel as it is in Bosnia.
>Out of all of the things the left-leaning NPR can talk about, why did they give an “From to the river to the sea” advocate the microphone? Is NPR where we want our tax dollars to continue going to? >Left-leaning in what way is publicly funded NPR left-leaning? Because they invited on 1 person who has crazy views? You should check into C-SPAN then.
C-Span is neutral, they usually don’t even have any commentary. NPR has a hard time even pretending they are neutral, especially during election seasons. NPR has always been available to listen to for the entirety of my lifetime.
>But again how very centrist of you, judging others.
Nice try attempting to gaslighting me. Recognizing bias or disagreeing with programs on the radio is something anyone should be able to do. It takes critical thinking skills though, which correlate with not always voting for the same side every election.
>There’s a reason the right is always more welcoming of the left than the left is of the right.
>There is a reason the right, this election cycle, was willing to have those open debates and go on the most podcasts & talk shows and have the tough discussions. The campaign strategy of the Trump & Vance campaign was to go on so many podcasts that they were uncensorable by the legacy media. As we all know, their campaign strategy worked and people were able to hear both sides. A campaign running on emotions like “Joy” vs. a better economy that benefits all. Democrats have had their head in the sand when it comes to new media, that's about it, just like Republicans used to have their heads in the sand about cable TV being important. >If you want to learn more, don’t debate me. Listen to an episode of Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, or David Sacks instead. >I'll do whatever I want, and I sure as hell will not be listening to charlatans as you suggest. If you want to read about real conservatives here's a few names:
* Emmanuel Mounier
* Heinrich Pesch
* Wilhelm Röpke
* Hilaire Bel-
I don’t recognize their names or know anything about them. Those names don’t even sound like they’re from the country of America! I also know that your view on who good republicans are is more than questionable. I trust that while you may have a list of good liberals, I don’t trust that you have a list of good people on the “right” side. IDK about them but some people are paid to be dufuses to make the rich Left feel good.
I’m informative but I’m not persuasive. While I’m good at providing and sharing information, I almost never convince anyone of changing any views. Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, or David Sacks can and likely will challenge and change your views.
the Democrat's messaging wasn't clear enough in my opinion and Kamala Harris was a weak candidate.
I listened to some of her interviews and I had a really hard time understanding what her campaign was about besides not being Trump. She also failed to put some distance between her and Biden which means that in my mind and probably in the mind of a lot of voters, she was seen merely as a carbon copy of him but as a woman.
Also the fact that KH was parachuted on the ticket without a primary vote because it was too late for that meant that she just wasn't ready. She put up a good fight but it wasn't enough to beat Trump who by that stage had been on the campaign trail for more than a year and spent time crafting responses, rebuttals and finding ways to attack his opponents.
I think Biden shares some of the blame here but she must have known this was a suicide mission.
All in all I don't think I missed anything by not paying attention to this whole circus.
Yes they most certainly are.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/01/politics/donald-trump-liz-che...
You generally don't give a rifle to people you want to kill. Trump was making an obvious and anodyne point, which has been made time and again, in song and story, which is that war hawks generally don't fight in the wars they cheer for.
what is it specifically about a second term that allows him to rig all future elections? what is different this time that wasn't true in 2016?
Trump is going to let Israel flatten Gaza, Russia take Ukraine, and possibly China engage Taiwan but anti-war. No one is accusing him of misusing the military yet.
> what is it specifically about a second term that allows him to rig all future elections? what is different this time that wasn't true in 2016?
A majority in Congress, a loyal Republican heavy Supreme Court, and the presidency as well as the desire to stay out of jail.
The supreme court balance is the same as it was when he was president, Republicans had the majority in the House from the beginning of Trump’s presidency in January 2017 until the 2018 midterm elections, when the Democrats won control of the House, and Republicans had the majority in the Senate for the entirety of Trump’s presidency.
literally nothing is different this time that's going to let him round up people into camps and turn himself into god-emperor. if he was interested in abusing power in completely new ways he would have pardoned himself before he left office.
I think it's a safe bet that Thomas and Alito will step down in the next two years and be replaced by similarly right-wing justices, just much younger. The court will be majority hard-right for the rest of my life.
> literally nothing is different this time
This time he and his supporters are prepared. If you look at Trump in 2016, he seemed genuinely surprised he won. His transition team was ad-hoc and clumsy. His cabinet and advisory picks ended up being sub-optimal for him, as he kept appointing people who wouldn't go as far as he wanted to. Project 2025 is a thing now, and is a playbook for weakening and subverting the US federal government -- except in areas where conservatives want to keep power so they can impose it on states that don't share their ideology.
And any time states complain, SCOTUS will tell them to stuff it.
Please find me any Republicans who gave Obama credit for ending the Iraq war - in his first term no less.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fact-checking-donald-trumps-...
Because he explicitly stated he wants to use the military domestically to retain power and clean out the US?
Are we really meant to just... not believe the words Trump says? On the topic of Trump?
Why are so many people so clearly misinterpreting him? Do your own homework instead of trusting what activists on the internet tell you to believe.
because they believe everything they're told by corporate news companies owned by billionaires who are financially invested in non-trump candidates
Yes, because, historically, leftists get incredibly violent on election day.
Also this is not ALL he said. He has pledged to recall thousands of American soldiers overseas and station them at the US border. Trump has plans for a mass deportation, affecting millions of Americans, many citizens.
Perhaps you were ignorant of this fact, for which I forgive you. But you are ignorant no longer, so next time I will be forced to believe you are intentionally deceptive.
It doesn't matter. You misinterpreted his words with the intention of making it look like something it wasn't. You're either malicious or readily fooled by misinformation. Either way, it means everything you say on the topic is worthless.
I'm paraphrasing Trump and his own ideology and policy. If that offends you, feel free to vote for someone who better matches your ideology.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Meaning, you can't support Trump and simultaneously say he's lying, or he's just joking, or he's not really going to do that. You voted with the intention and belief he IS going to do that.
Who the fuck votes for someone under the pretenses they hope their policies fall through or are blocked? That makes zero sense.
Trump supporters have entered an era of such supreme shame that even telling them Trump's plans is "misinformation". I can't even ask Trump supporters for his policies, because they won't dare repeat them. I mean, it's absolutely crazy. I have to either listen to Trump directly or ask leftists, because Trump supporters are "know nothing" dishonest people.
I don't know, does that not concern you? That you won't even utter the policy and speech of the guy you voted for? Do you think that's normal? You should be very concerned about that. You should better understand what, and who, you're voting for.
Could you identify one of these too-objectionable-to-say policies of his, including the source of that information? History tells me that it will be your misunderstanding that's made it seem objectionable.
> hope their policies fall through or are blocked? That makes zero sense.
It makes sense if you're voting for practical outcomes instead of ideologically. For example, if they promise one thing you want and is achievable, plus one thing you don't want but is impossible anyway, then it can be rational to vote for them to get the thing you want and also not get the thing you don't want.
Let me break this down:
The military would be deployed domestically, to clean out immigrants and some citizens. Remember, both Trump and Tom Homan have alluded to deporting naturalized citizens.
So how does it not mean that? Even if you disagree, can you see how and why I am making that claim and how it's logically consistent with what Trump has said.
> For example, if they promise one thing you want and is achievable, plus one thing you don't want but is impossible anyway, then it can be rational to vote for them to get the thing you want and also not get the thing you don't want.
You're working under the assumption the impossible cannot be made possible.
The left claims that Trump has his eyes on a dictatorship because of this difference between the left and right. The left believes Trump when he says you won't need to vote anymore and they believe Project 2025. The right thinks Trump is a liar.
I'm not saying the US will be a dictatorship. But, if you actually look at Project 2025, which will be and already is the template for the Trump presidency, it is very shocking.
Trump supporters have so far been able to employ plausible deniability. Now that Trump has made it clear he will dissolve the department of education and he has already committed to appointing many Project 2025 writers to his administration, the plausible deniability is gone.
If you're hoping the left steps in to stop a lot of Trump's policies, you shouldn't have voted for him.
Obama: 1.5 million
Trump: 1.4 million
Biden: 1.1 million+ (still ongoing)
Where's the threshold from acceptable to "clean out the US"? Is it at 1.6 million so Trump will be doing the most in history? That's certainly not terrible by the standards of his predecessors.
How is that for him to "retain power"?
I just looked up Project 2025 and all its aims are reasonable compared to recent history in America and other western countries today. What exactly is too terrible to mention? Dissolving the department of education? So what? That just means decentralizing that part of education funding and control to states rather than the federal government. Just like pretty much every state (typically country) in the world funds its own education. Who's afraid to mention that?
You've been fooled by the "you won't need to vote anymore" misinformation where he was talking about fixing something for Christians which would remain in place - maybe it was the abortion law which actually happened through the proper process.
Right, so the conversation has pivoted from "Trump never said that!" to "Okay, Trump said that... but he doesn't mean it" to "Okay, he said it and I actually agree"
> Deporting illegal immigrants is perfectly normal
Not with the military it's not.
That also doesn't explain his attack on naturalized citizens and Tom Homan's talk about deporting citizens who have family which are illegal. This also doesn't cover DACA and other programs.
Trump is not aiming to deport just illegals, and my source for that is Trump, Tom Homan, and Project 2025. Again, this isn't about you taking me at my word. This is about you taking Trump at his word.
> Dissolving the department of education? So what?
Multiple reasons:
1. the DOE provides financial support for citizens for upward socioeconomic mobility, meaning they put people in college. That's very important for the millions of very smart, but very poor, Americans.
2. Many impoverished and typically red states rely on federal funding from the DOE. The DOE works as a big pot - every state contributes via taxes, and each gets some back. Some, like California, lose more than they gain. Some, like Oklahoma, gain much more than they put in. Red states like Oklahoma, which ranks 49th in education, rely on that funding because they have a weak economy.
This is also just one aspect of Project 2025, I merely used it as an example to show that Project 2025 is real. If you're not aware, Project 2025 is a blueprint for how to transition the US to a fascist regime.
Maybe it won't all be implemented, maybe it will. The fact you don't know about it, and the fact you refuse to listen to Trump, is mind-boggling to me. Okay, so why did you vote for him if you think he's a liar? It makes no sense. You're not doing your fellow republicans any favors - this is exactly the type of stuff that leads people to believe you're misinformed and largely make decisions based purely off of propaganda.
No. Your claim, which I disagree with is "he explicitly stated he wants to use the military domestically to retain power and clean out the US".
How is it to retain power?
> the DOE provides [...]
Yea, of course it does something. But it's not unspeakably bad to not have that department do that. As I said, nearly every other country in the world "suffers" from not having a DOE, because they have no other countries sharing a pool of education funding with them. Somehow their people seem to accept that and even favor independence.
> If you're not aware, Project 2025 is a blueprint for how to transition the US to a fascist regime.
I'm not aware. I just looked up their website which listed their aims. Fascist regime wasn't among them. What's your source for that?
Deploying the military as intimidation and using it to remove US citizens is a ploy to retain power.
That's in addition to his other power plays, such as stripping the bureaucracy and requiring all federal employees to formally announce their loyalty to Trump. That one's in Project 2025.
If that doesn't sound like fascism I don't know what does.
And you keep asking me for sources. Yeah, Trump, his administration, and Project 2025. You know, the stuff you voted for?
If you're trying to not make Trump supporters look like bumbling idiots you're not doing a particularly good job. Naturally, I already know most Trump supports are horribly misinformed about their own platform, so don't try so hard to further prove it to me.
He wanted to use it to protect election security if there was violence or intimidation from "internal enemies". That's not intimidation, except to intimidate people trying to intimidate voters to corrupt elections.
Who are these citizens he wants to deport? Are they only naturalized citizens? Those people can already legally be deported anyway for reasons like a fraudulent application or committing a serious crime. Are those the same ones he wants to deport? In other words, does he just want to enforce the law that already exists? Regardless, that's not to retain power. You have no evidence for that part which is key to your whole claim. Everything else you claimed is just what the government should be doing anyway.
https://youtu.be/gE7xoHJkgvE?si=MVL_GibOGn2WDpLV&t=18
"I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics...and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary by the military."
In the second he’s talking about managing physical discord, not rounding up people minding their own business in their homes or saying whatever on twitter. And he’s saying it specifically in the context of protecting the election process. He’s literally advocating for safe and harmonic voting.
This is why anti Trump rhetoric is exhausting. People grasp at the shortest of straws and make claims that basically feel like I’m being lied to.
There are endless real things to attack Trump on. Please stop lying to me and telling me he’s literally Hitler. He’s not, he’s just racist and shitty.
Frankly he’s neither of those things either.
> In 4 years you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good you're not gonna have to vote.
Seems pretty clear to me.
I think there are plenty of reasons to remain optimistic for the US on longer timescales, but for the next few years, this was a terrible outcome for which pessimism is warranted.
It's true that a lot of people - including me sometimes! - extend this criticism to his supporters, and I think it's also probably true that the backlash to this has a bit to do with the election outcome this year.
But I didn't do that in the comment you replied to. I would go so far as to say that many of the people who voted for Trump totally agree with me. Everyone knows he is a very bad person, that's part of his whole schtick, and even lots of the people who voted for him think he is a bad person to lead the country (ok, they might not say "terrible", like I did). I think where I disagree with most of those people is just on the question of whether electing a member of the incumbent administration would have been better or worse. I think better, they think worse.
In my view, neither of the candidates had a coalition to win with only votes for them, and it was Trump who won the battle for votes against his opponent. Still a bad outcome though, I think!
Just don't forget to turn off the fake news for the next 4 years as you probably already learned from last time or they’ll drive you insane.
I was here last time. It's bad to have a president of such low character. I will prefer some of the policies to what we would have seen instead, but he will continue to sow chaos, cruelty, and division, and we'll all be the much worse for it.
Dems have to appear to be pro-immigration for reasons (honestly I don't know why this is like this, historically). They are genuinely less xenophobic than the Reps, so they respect the rights of recent immigrants much better. But when it comes to preventing more poor workers coming in, they are just as tough as the Reps. And I believe that's because ultimately they are slightly less captured by capital and therefore more amenable to balance the economy in favor of workers.
Reps on the other hand have to appear xenophobic once again for reasons that aren't super clear to me, but when it comes to actually preventing immigration, they always manage to torpedo their own proposals. And arguably that's because if they passed effective anti-immigration laws, that would negatively affect the interests of capital, the very obvious reason they're in politics for (and Trump is certainly no different).
Maybe now we can resolve this apparent paradox and simply accept that the Democrats are first and foremost the party of the educated, metropolitan and utterly disinterested in matters of material conditions. Whereas the Republicans are the party of people who are bitter towards the first group. Which leads to the conclusion that exceptionally few people in the US are voting according to their own economic interests.
In terms of some big issues being bi-partisan… I mean, it would be sort of weird if the broad strokes weren’t somewhat bipartisan, right? Like if we actually switched between having a capitalist and a communist economy every four years… that would not be a feasible way to run a country, haha.
But I mean we’re going to see some pretty big differences: support for our allies in NATO will look different (I don’t think we’re pulling out or anything but the relationships will change). The parties seem to have different visions of how we should try to get semiconductor manufacturing back over here (an industry that basically… determines what a lot the overall economy will look like). Abortion access will probably be determined by states (which will be a life-altering change of circumstance for some folks).
These are big differences.
It's not complicated. It's the Christian Nationalist agenda for the last 50 years. They don't want white people to be the minority and most immigrants don't fit that profile.
> but when it comes to actually preventing immigration, they always manage to torpedo their own proposals.
Because they have to win elections. They do this by declaring something bad, doing nothing about it, then blaming democrats so they can get re-elected. Look at Florida. They've been republican for over two decades, they have a super majority and they don't solve any of the problems they run against the democrats on.
This is absolutely true. Though most people on the Left are terrified to face this fact.
> Whereas the Republicans are the party of people who are bitter towards the first group.
This was true in 2016, probably 2020. But definitely not this election. Just to use myself as an example: I'm an Obama ('12), Clinton ('16), Biden ('20), Trump voter ('24).
I'm not motivated by animosity against Democrats because I was voting for them. Trump's message now is way more positive. It's a message of peace with Russia, making America healthy again, getting competent people in government (Musk), etc.
And that's actually also what a lot of the most influential Trump supporters (Musk, Rogan, RFK, Dana White, Nelk boys, Theo Von, etc) have been espousing too, pretty much all of whom used to be Democrats.
I feel like I've been listening to a very different Trump than you have. Most of what he says involves demonizing various groups of people, cozying up to dictators, or putting his political opponents in jail. His rallies are about stoking outrage and fear.
> It's a message of peace with Russia
At the expense of Ukraine's sovereignty.
Is peace with Russia going to look like what happened with Afghanistan? The withdrawal plan and timeline was Trump's, not Biden's.
> making America healthy again
Every concrete proposal of his (not that he has many) that I've heard will bring us back on the inflation train, increase the deficit, reverse our declining reliance on fossil fuels, and increase income inequality even further. And on top of that he'll even further paralyze the federal government. Which is of course the conservative agenda in a nutshell: dismantle the federal government and let the states decide their fates, except where they want to impose their "values" on blue states.
> getting competent people in government (Musk), etc.
If you think Musk is competent and should be anywhere near government, our fundamentals are so different that there's probably no point in discussing it further.
It sounds more like you've been listening to what the news tells you Trump is.
"cozying up to dictators" is exactly the language used by MSNBC, CNN, CBS, et al. Putting his political opponents in jail is what his opposition tried.
The withdrawal plan is different from the execution, especially when only the high-level is followed. That is on Biden.
> Every concrete proposal of his (not that he has many) that I've heard will bring us back on the inflation train, increase the deficit, reverse our declining reliance on fossil fuels, and increase income inequality even further. And on top of that he'll even further paralyze the federal government. Which is of course the conservative agenda in a nutshell: dismantle the federal government and let the states decide their fates, except where they want to impose their "values" on blue states.
Again, this just sounds like what certain media tells you. I have never heard Trump say his goal is to "paralyze the federal government".
I've been listening to the literal words that Trump says, by watching videos of his rallies.
Regardless, I'm not really interested in engaging with someone who's going to argue that "I'm listening wrong" instead of presenting a coherent argument.
I feel like I've been listening to a very different Trump than you have. Most of what he says involves demonizing various groups of people, becoming a dictator, or putting his political opponents in jail. (And no, I haven't just been listening to sound bites or the most inflammatory short clips.)
> It's a message of peace with Russia
At the expense of Ukraine's sovereignty, appeasing a dictator and emboldening him to take other territory in Eastern Europe. (I bet China is happy with this, too.)
Is peace with Russia going to look like what happened with Afghanistan? The withdrawal plan and timeline was Trump's, not Biden's.
> making America healthy again
Every concrete proposal of his (not that he has many) that I've heard will bring us back on the inflation train, and increase the deficit. And on top of that he'll even further paralyze the federal government. Which is of course the conservative agenda in a nutshell: dismantle the federal government and let the states decide their fates, except where they want to impose their "values" on blue states.
> getting competent people in government (Musk), etc.
I see Musk as a deranged man who has succeeded through luck, timing, and rhetoric, rather than skill or talent. He can't even focus properly on the important things anymore (Tesla, SpaceX), and would prefer to spend his time making sure no one says mean things about him on Twitter. If he were a family member I'd be worried about his mental health. I don't say that to be flippant or cruel; I'm dead serious.
Say you're on the receiving end of this threat. Do you really care what country your replacement is from? Is my "friend" really all that benevolent to fire someone for less money?
I have no idea whether the Times of India is an acceptable source or not, but here is a quote from them on what happened last time.
"Immigration attorney Kripa Upadhyay told TOI, “During the last Trump administration, there was significant disruption due to the introduction of ‘extreme vetting’ for visa interviews. Certain job categories, such as ‘Computer Occupations, All Other,’ may no longer be an option, as they may require applicants to demonstrate specific technical skills and knowledge.”"
So, likely more tightly vetted candidates who are paid more under Trump 47 but not necessarily fewer.
I don't think either political party has shown themselves to be against outsourcing.
So I don't really understand what political conclusion I'm supposed to draw from an anecdote about replacing someone with cheap outsourced labor.
On one side, they have a very religious population. Some of their core values align with republican values - i.e., freedom of religion, pro-life, and what have you.
But they're also voting for the very same people that vows to deport them.
And before anyone tries to argue "But they only want the illegal ones deported!" - we all know damn well that the most vocal part of the republican party couldn't care less if thousands of legal immigrants are deported by "accident".
In the end, people vote against their own interest, and rationalize it with "But it wouldn't happen to me!" (or anyone they know or love).
Same goes for the "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" crowd, and what have you.
I don’t think either campaign made any difference to the outcome of this election at all.
In conclusion it might be an amazing economy on the high level averages but when inflation caused by COVID handouts (I’m reading $16 TRILLION, but that can’t be real surely?) is always going to lose you an election badly.
Silicon Valley didn't care about the rust belt, so why should the rust belt care about SV?
Aren't most things Americans buy imported or contain imported parts (for example all electronics)?
Won't a decrease in exports, because of other nations ti-for-tat tariffs, decrease wages for many US workers?
They won't, and they can't, and they certainly can't do it immediately. It takes decades to build up the manufacturing efficiency and processes to compete with China. We lost all of it.
We will continue to buy from China because it will STILL be cheaper. And your goods will be 3x more expensive, and that's the best-case scenario for a lot of goods.
Do people not understand this?
1. importing your inputs becomes more expensive.
2. other countries will impose retaliatory tariffs on your exports.
This is not how to do economic development; Asian countries instead used export promotion. (…And wage suppression and currency weakening.)
https://recruitonomics.com/the-unexpected-wage-compression/
(Note this is about wage inequality, which strictly speaking isn't income inequality. The best policy for income inequality would be bringing back the expanded CTC.)
But the median voter doesn't actually like this, because they have above-median income due to being older, and this means service workers got more expensive.
Income inequality is stalled because some benefits from 2020 expired, namely the expanded CTC, and we should really fix that.
Inflation is probably relevant, since even though it's down by a lot, the sticker shock so to speak lingers for a while.
Given that he was only in office for the first year of the pandemic, it seems reasonable that Biden signed another $3 trillion away. If all that caused inflation, Trump and Biden deserve the blame together.
So their answer is to vote precisely for a representative of that class (supported by richest guy in the world). And at the same time, the same electors have a strong disdain for anything remotely socialistic such as free health care and education for all.
I'm just disappointed we may never know what Russia has on Musk. He went from being an avid atheist Democrat to pretending to be a Christian and pushing for Republican like his life depended on it. What is he hiding? Why was he so afraid?
You might as well empty Arkham Asylum whilst all the pardons for crimes are being dished out.
> What is he hiding?
I'd go for a more obvious explanation. It's not uncommon for people to adopt more extreme and conservative POV as they get older. Social networks don't help.
You would not need much to destroy a whole Starlink orbit.
I don't know why people believe otherwise. Maybe it's just rising expectations, fueled by rising inequality?
“Nobody likes my product because they are stupid”.
Some data would be good here. I don't have any, but if you want to imply that the bottom 40% went downwards, please show some data instead of insinuating it.
As ever it's a multivariate problem but the biggest part of it is being promised jam tomorrow and even worse being told things are going great when you see evidence they are not. She should have thrown Joe under a bus.
This isn't just a problem in the US the whole West is ungovernable and we will see most governments getting one term assuming that they don't turn into Victor Orban's Hungary.
Rising inequality is entirely enough to explain the whole thing. The bottom two quintiles saw their cost of living absolutely explode, and their salaries not keeping up. Median real income will never reflect something like that.
And that's a lot of people.
Many people don't trust that math.
So they support the candidate with the billionares bankrolling him and and doing "million dollar sweepstakes". Give me a break.
Yeah that’s my read on it too.
Rather unfortunate that the response was to elect someone that’s more showman/ego trip than leader with technocratic skills
It feels like we have been on this march for the last 40+ years of eroding working class leverage and handing power over to politicians and giant corporations.
Dems have been struggling because they keep putting out the same lifetime politicians who promise to play ball and keep moving us down this road. They need someone who promises actual change, someone who is a threat to entrenched power structures. Bernie 100% was that guy for the Dems and they buried him... twice... He was the last time I was remotely excited for an election.
For those who think rather than just react, I guess it would not be as entertaining...?
It unfortunately sits on the shoulders of progressives seeking change to convince the conservatives not seeking it to do so. By choosing not to do this asymmetric work, this is the consequence
I guess I've just been living in heavily blue places, and working alongside highly educated people, since 2016. I thought that everybody could see Trump and Trumpism for what they really are, but I guess not, and I'm left wondering: "Who are these 70M+ people?"
You can be quite highly educated and still sit inside an ideological bubble and have no clue that anything is wrong... until it is.
"Heavily blue" is definitely an ideological bubble, because, as it turns out, and this may shock you (!!!), no political party has a monopoly on truths. There are bad things about Kamala and good things about Trump that you would literally never encounter if you only read "blue media". If you only read blue media, you will also consume a lot of BS (good things that are untrue about Kamala and bad things that are untrue about Trump). Same is true about red media, except with the poles reversed.
And echo chambers just reinforce all this BS.
Intelligent people question the sacred cows, and the most intelligent question the most sacred cows. James Damore was intelligent, wrote an intelligent paper, and instead of engaging with him and his ideas, he got eviscerated. And that was at Google, a supposedly "highly educated" place.
If you just can't say certain things, you are in an oppressive society, or sub-society, end of story.
I got eviscerated on Facebook 2 days ago merely for saying "so I investigated this claim that Trump is fascist, found the attributes of fascism, tried to rate him along those attributes, and he got a C (where F is Fascist)" (for comparison, Kamala got a B somehow, Putin an F, H__ler an F of course). Were there actual counterarguments to it? Nope. Someone asked for evidence, and I cited 3 links with a total of 20+ experts in them who on average said "no, not fascist enough to be labeled it". Then they attacked me for using ChatGPT to help put it all together (genetic fallacy). They kept attacking me and not my analysis. One was a fairly smart individual, but in this case he did not use it.
Since they were mainly attacking ChatGPT at that point, I asked ChatGPT to eviscerate every one of their arguments, defending us both and speaking as itself, which it did, with aplomb, and was amazing.
I didn't necessarily intend to say that it was. I'm just saying that support for Trump has been inversely correlated with education level, so I ended up in a bubble by virtue of working alongside people with advanced degrees (even more so than just living in a blue area). When ~90% of people in one's real life, day-to-day social circle are not Trump supporters it starts to feel like everybody must be of the same opinion, and it's shocking to find out otherwise.
I agree with you about the importance of engaging in independent, critical thought and allowing real discussion.
I honestly find that beautiful because Big Tech, and I mean all of it, was backing Trump and Republicans whether openly or secretly.
Hitler rose via radio, and Trump rose via social media and billionares.
The way I inform myself about politicians is by typing "<name> interview" into YouTube and listen to a few hours of interviews with them.
With Harris, nothing stuck except that she is pro taxing the rich.
With Trump, what stuck is that he is pro border, pro Bitcoin, pro tariffs and pro Tesla.
With "stuck" I mean information about the candidate that stuck with me.
"We're gonna lower your taxes so you have more money to spend" "We're gonna take a sledge hammer to bloated policies so everything will run smoothly. Then we will build a million houses per year"
I would very much consider voting for that person. That said, Trump is a madman, he lies all the time, is a danger to institutions etc. At the same time, I am so disgruntled by the current system and by not a single politician tackling or even speaking about relevant issues that I am easily swayed.
But this is the doublethink that the right-wing is somehow able to pull off. They aren't promising that people will be better off, that wealth will be distributed. Instead they're pointing at even poorer people like immigrants and saying "they're taking your jobs".
Yeah the quality of life for the average person is stagnating, but that's down to politicians and the rich, not to whatever boogeyman they're pushing.
What makes you think he'll have anything ready this time?
I remember an interview at a large evangelical event about how they could vote for the decidedly un-Christian liar, fraudster, etc.. Their answer was that a "deal with the devil" is okay as long he delivers on supreme court justices. That was their literal phrasing.
But I guess this is something that will never change. The older I become, the more apparently I see that it does not matter WHAT you do, it only matters how you SPEAK about what you (will) do, whether it be in politics or in a corporate environment. I'm not the kind of person who regrets things in life, but if I could travel back in time and give my younger self one advice, it would be "focus on becoming a great orator", as this opens any door regardless of the level of experience.
Edit: to clarify, in order to not reply to each comment individually, I might have used the word "terrible" harshly. The thing with politics is that as a complete outsider to the US, I don't have a reliable way to know what policies were proposed and what were adopted/rejected, nor the long term effect of them on the country. The only thing I can rely on, is information available online. His track record is not covered in a good light online.
Sure, you can say that information online is skewed in one direction, but this is true to an insider, as some comments have demonstrated. The results of a particular policy and its application are subjective rather than objective. My entire premise was to demonstrate that actions are meaningless in the eye of the public.
Theoretically, this means that you get a "get out of jail" card no matter what you do in life, as longs as you can articulate your words properly.
Which was partially a good thing, since he failed to dismantle Obamacare or build a wall at the Mexican border, even though those were two very explicit campaign promises.
Who knows what he'll do or not do this time around.
Remember that Obamacare was saved by a single vote from McCain, who is now dead.
“From my understanding, his past performance was terrible too”
Depends on what you focus on. If you listen to soundbites it sounds like a circus. There’s a lot of drama displacing and stepping on toes of the entrenched players in the system.
Are we remembering the same 2010s?
Also, all of what you’re quoting stemmed from the Obama era (except the moving of the US embassy)
It’s not so much that people remember the actions, it’s that they remember the right’s white washing of those actions.
Isis was already losing in 2017 after they lost Raqqa and Mosul. Trump played no part in it.
> Tax cuts
America is already stacked with an insane deficit and debts. Tax cuts don't see like a good thing in that situation.
> Booming economy
Yes, the economy he inherited from Obama and perpetuated by spending ever more public money and increasing the deficit.
> Remain in Mexico
This only concerns 35k people which is a laughable amount.
> Far lower illegal immigrantion
Not if you compare to the end of Bidens term.
We're also still waiting for that wall to happen. Another lie of course.
Republicans also voted against a bi-partisan bill to reduce immigration.
> If you listen to soundbites it sound like a circus
Fucking a pornstar while you're wife is at home with your newly born kid that might also play a role. But somehow the party of the nuclear family doesn't see a problem with that.
The bipartisan bill would have allowed in two million people a year. It threw a few scraps to border control. Great bill to look like they’re doing something while intentionally allowing the situation to continue.
That would have been a net positive.
Don't let perfect be the enemy.
What was terrible for you? He didn't start new wars, he did the abraham accords. He put in a policy of -2 regulations for every new regulation. He was much better on spending UP UNTIL COVID than Biden was.
What was so bad? He might speak like a crazy person, but his policies weren't that bad.
In what way was he better on spending? He managed to increase the deficit every single year, even before COVID.
> He might speak like a crazy person.
He does speak like a crazy person. He advocates for crazy policies. People from his administration are crazy people and advocate for crazy policies.
It's simple marketing and if there's something he's good at is that.
Harris was trying to appeal to people's intelligence with complex answers and arguments, they just tuned out and went "lol, weird laugh".
But this is another example of a string of selfishness in modern politics; it's a "got mine, fuck you" line of thinking. Whereas post-WW2 there was much more of a cooperative mindset, collective national or european-wide trauma, and a drive to cooperate to help each other out, regardless of their employment status. But WW2 has been forgotten and both Europe and the US are shifting back to the right-wing, because there's immigrants after your jobs, benefits and women apparently.
He actually promised the opposite of this last time, because suburbanites don't want any new housing built. I haven't checked what he said this time around.
And then his party reminded him that that is specifically NOT what they do. They like to let the private sector handle everything, because that’s who funds them and how they get rich too.
(Pixel 8 Pro, Firefox)
I suppose that one could conclude that electronic voting simply moved the fraud from local fraud to remote fraud.
And please not the dominion claims that even Fox settled out of court on because they knew they were lying.
It does mean that it is possible to do, and in ways that paper ballots are not.
Remember it is Musk who began the wave of layoffs a bit over two years ago.
Bezos evidently saw the way the wind was blowing already.
I also see almost zero discussion about climate change policy. For many of us non-Americans, this (the disengagement of the US from even the pathetic half-measures it moved towards under Obama) is one of the key things that was horrifying to watch.
"I believe we will need to reopen discussion on the IETF 127 venue."
IETF 127 is (probably soon: was) scheduled to occur November 14th-20th, 2026, in San Francisco.
(Previous US-scheduled IETF meetings during the Trump presidency were moved to Canada, particularly due to Chinese attendees' inability to get Visas.)
https://www.discoverdairy.com/vote/
Where everyone can be happy regardless of the result.
I am not sure what could hit at the self-interest of the 18-29M demographic other than the Selective Service.
If you spend a quarter of your time discussing transgender athletes or unisex bathrooms 99% of people don't have a personal stake in that. In other words, the Dems aren't doing the fundamental job of politicking, which is to engage with their constituents on the topics that matter to them directly.
> The Joe Rogans/Logan Pauls/Elon Musks/Tiktok/Podcast bros are doing serious damage to that demographic.
The attempt was immediately killed upon the next sentence.
The Dems failed with this kind of thinking: It's a prescriptivist ideology that thinks it knows better and that doesn't need to actually listen to the concerns of who they're diagnosing.
How to start off on a better footing? Start with:
"They're right about their feelings, but try to find the genuine sources for them and *don't* snark back."
The last 3 words are important to the point that it needs to be drilled in: *DON'T SNARK BACK.*
Engage in their language and point to alternate sources of their frustrations. Bernie was great at this, and knew to engage with them in a supportive manner, whilst still pointing out new sources for their frustrations.
> Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.
They could have won against the unpopular Biden/Harris with practically any other candidate. Nikki Haley polled well against all possible Democrats.
The party was already done with Trump in February 2021, but then they explicitly decided that they prefer one more try with an old man who doesn’t spare much thought to actual policies but does brag about sexual assault, tried to orchestrate a coup last time he lost an election, etc. etc.
It’s not inflation or Biden’s unpopularity or some other external factor. Lots of Americans really want what Trump is selling.
In that context, I am more curious what his policies will be because even though he rides different waves of general discontent in society, ultimately he doesn't care about anything except the economy and money. So I think he will double down on tariffs, but some things are irreversible - saving the e.g. coal mining industry is a lost cause and he'll throw those people down the drain because it doesn't make economic sense anymore. What I am most curious about is how he'll handle Biden's policies with regards to blocking acquisitions on monopoly prevention grounds.
Also the markets are not open in the US, but over here in Europe they're already skyrocketing. So "Wallstreet" is expecting massive growth in what is already quite an inflated market.
When he ran the first time, the tactic was "oh easy, we'll say we're not as egregious as that guy".
They even sabotaged Bernie to this effect (see Podesta emails), even though he was polling much better than Clinton. This failed miserably, probably in essence because the Democrats were underestimating the power of clicks to drive reality, which Trump understood, at least intuitively.
This was a historical moment where the Democrats could have reorganised things and refocused on their traditional base, namely, the working class. It seemed obvious they should, I personally really thought they would have to.
No no, it turned out. We were treated to years and years of full on circus shenanigans. They doubled down, blamed others - the Russians, Wikileaks, whoever really. Anything but blame themselves and admit that they were offering nothing which was substantively different enough from the Republicans, in the eyes of the voters.
And here we are again. Will they be able to gut the decrepit power structures keeping the zombie Democrat party afloat this time, injecting new life? Or will they find a new scapegoat, treating us to more utterly pointless pontificating through a series of never-ending media cycles.
In summary, it seems they think pandering to identity tropes will be enough to distinguish them in the eyes of the voters, but that is simply playing on Trump's territory where he decides the rules. He does it better than them. It's one of the quite few things you could say he's "good" at.
>It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.
>While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.
>And they’re right.
Anyone here who is still confused about this election result need only unplug their fingers from their ears and open their eyes.
Astounding they have elected a literal criminal as a president. Bonkers even.
Criminal? What are you even talking about?
the US will definitely _not_ love the death of the USD, or no longer having access to rare earth materials located in China ;)
He also sold the entirety of the CIA's intel on Israel's nuclear weapons capacity to the Saudi Arabians in exchange for the Saudis sponsoring a golf tournament at a Trump resort, so there's that too.
If anything, it points to the stark lack of class consciousness in America that even our biggest protests aren't generally able to create long lasting change.
Personally, I'm reminded of MLK's Poor People Campaign shortly before he got FBI'd. Him and the black panthers were both trying to agitate around this issue in different nonpartisan ways, and they faced extreme prejudice from the state for their trouble.
House still won. That fun narrative just makes people feel like they matter while they get screwed.
https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/sectors/gme-stock-g...
I agree but ironically this kind of rhetoric is actually how the American left (not the Democrats) were undermined and now Americans are overworked slaves working two or more jobs to live paycheck to paycheck.
"Right vs left" does matter and it was organized left-wing efforts that created the superior life-work balance and healthcare in Europe.
The US economy thanks you for getting out of the way, I guess. Americans aren't flying to Europe for healthcare - it's the other way around (if you can afford it). So it may be "superior" in the sense that you're just paying for it your entire life via taxes instead of at the time of service and through employer-subsidized insurance, but it's not "superior" in terms of care.
Politics shouldn't be anyone "vs" anyone else. It should be "how can we fix what's broken, how can we make what's good even better." Trump's message was largely "here's how I will fix the economy" and "here's how I will fix the border." Harris's message was "I'm not Trump" and "I won't change any policy of the Biden administration."
Living in the UK I'm more than happy to contribute my way in taxes, knowing I'm always looked after regardless of my employment state or wealth.
Additionally we can also pay for American style (private) healthcare, but aren't paying 10x markup on treatment as is the case for America (see Ozempic pricing for example).
American healthcare is one of the worst in the developed world, it shouldn't be celebrated.
Let me just take this opportunity to point out that Ozempic is the product of a European company. So you can tell me how American healthcare is absurdly expensive, and how it is much cheaper for you, all while you are the ones making it so damn expensive for us.
Along the same lines, lets hear more about Norway being the shining beacon on the hill, the hero come to save us from climate change, while behind the scenes they finance the entire country by exporting pollution to the rest of the world.
It's really difficult to stomach the hypocritical arrogance of some Europeans. Y'all seem so nice in person, I am hoping a lot of the online rhetoric is just Putin doing his thing.
Missing in your analysis is health outcomes for the poor. Maybe you don't view them as human?
Folks missing teeth, folks with broken bones who set improperly, folks who couldn't afford preventative care.
She left the group on the way back so she could stop elsewhere and get her teeth cleaned. She said it was a common sentiment for Americans to cross the border for dental work like that.
(That trip was odd for many other reasons ...)
I read an opinion piece a week or so ago that sounded just like this. It was even more explicit about the point. Paraphrasing, she said 'I know he says really hateful things, but you guys don't get it, at the rallies everyone is giddy and happy, it's such a joyful place to be!'.
The point being that Trump is about joy. Not that his supporters were giddy about his promises of retribution. Totally honest perspective from someone deep in that bubble. I actually appreciate the honesty.
Dems listen to Trump talk about how much he wants to hurt them. They recall that he did exactly that the last time he was president. So of course the democratic candidate says she won't be like Trump. Her supporters don't want to be targeted by their own government again.
That's the thing the dems just don't get. Saying you'll be president for everyone isn't what sells. It's a high minded ideal, like civil rights. Sounds good, inspires a lot of breathless agreement, but most people don't actually care in their hearts, they just care about #1. Appealing to their basest instincts seems wrong, but it's how you win in politics. Stop trying to take the high road that doesn't exist except in your dreams.
Elites are really good at doing that. Go pay attention to China, Russia, gun control, birth control, diversity, BLM, transgender rights. Meanwhile, I will continue to disproportionately take more of America's wealth.
Ukraine will be lost. Russia will encroach on Europe. The Republicans will staff Judges everywhere and build a stronger conservative justice system.
The rich will dominate even further over the poor and the US will become an extension of the Kremlin.
Trump may also try to set the stage for more dictatorial control. The only good thing about this election is Trump is so old he probably won't try to create a dictatorship since he won't benefit from it.
But have no doubt the democrats will not be taking back control within the next generation or two.
You are doing the exact type of sensationalising that OP was talking about
And it's not sensational ism when it's exactly what Trump has promised to do and was in the process of doing when he was fired the first time.
- election between rightist strongman vs. boring guy whose most important selling point is not being the other guy. Also a somewhat controversial candidacy.
- Deep divide between coastal lines vs. the rest; educated and the rest.
- Polls not being confident on either candidate, but the strongman gets mire votes than expected.
Etc. etc. I find it rather strange. (I do enjoy the memes on the Turkish social media though)
I guess China is a gone market for tesla at this point.
A classic kleptocracy.
Ukraine is arguably in this category as well already.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/02/11/trumps-pol...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_el...
A democracy can be ended by popular vote. A dictatorship on the other side cannot be ended by popular vote.
I find the concerns for Democracy comical.
Most of you do not understand the type of people that built and fought for democracy. There is no real fear amongst these same type of people in modern America.
But I do look forward to February 2025, when journalists will once again travel to rural Pennsylvania to interview Trump voters in diners who will say that the economy is amazing now that the Great Man has been in power for a whole week. The magic of recovery!
Except for all metrics that matter. People are on average much poorer.
"He said he'll decrease inflation!"
"But his plans for tariffs will make inflation much much worse!"
".... but he said he'll decrease inflation"
As somebody not living in US, that's surprising. My opinion is that Democrats did a really shit job - focusing on wrong problems, promoting stuff nobody cares about etc. Trump / Musk did appeal to a lot of people for different reasons, some of which I can understand. But both are grifters and very dangerous in my view.
This also goes hand-in-hand with the black-white thinking of a two-party-system.
There is a President of the European Council (Charles Michel, elected by member countries' heads of state), there is a President of the European Commission (Ursula von der Leyen, elected by the European Parliament), and there is a President of the European Parliament (Roberta Metsola, elected by the members of the parliament).
Seats in the European Parliament are not proportionally allocated (small countries have more seats per capita), and member countries have different systems for allocating their seats among representatives, but nobody uses first-past-the-post, maybe except Hungary (debatably - their system is weird).
So, no, none of the "EU presidents" are elected by popular vote strictly speaking, and none of them have a role that is even remotely similar to the US presidency.
In other words the US leans left and Reps only win because of the electoral system.
But yes, the system is not great. This matters even more in the senate elections by the way, where every state gets two senators regardless of population size. I get the argument that you don't want densely populated cities dominating large swaths of rural areas, but 1) elections are about people and not trees, and 2) now it's the reverse where sparsely populated rural areas dominate. So...
I think the takes that this is the right taking over America etc are super doomerist. The more accurate story is: The left put up a really boring, bad candidate. The only campaign the left has figured out how to run for literally the past three elections is "stop Trump", and its not even resonating with their own voters anymore. What are they going to run on in 2028 when there isn't a Trump to stop anymore?
The left needs to wake up and have a Trump moment of their own.
That really is the problem: one side runs a nihilistic campaign completely unencumbered by any truth, morality, or any sense of decency, and the side, well, doesn't. There are two sets of rules and two games being played here. That much has been obvious for almost a decade now. So how do you counter that? Well, no one really knows.
For example, the ACA is very popular. Obamacare is not. It's all about the messaging.
Definitely not, where did you get that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...
The no ID culture and everything around it... I honestly can't understand it.
There is no reason why all ballots can't be counted it a few hours. If more people are needed to do it, then so be it.
I'm sure everyone from every side can come up with their own list. How about we solve it all once and for all.
It's going to happen in EU in some form as well (assuming EU goes into closer integration direction) because there is no way small countries accept closer union without a mechanism similar to electoral college.
The US voting system doesn't even solve that one "problem" you are presenting. The number of districts and votes are constantly adjusted to population.
That's not how the electoral college works. The electoral college equivalent would be one village with 1000 people, the second with 2000, and the third with 4000, and each village getting "electoral votes" proportional to their population that gets awarded entirely to the candidate with the majority vote in that village. The entirety of the first two villages vote for candidate A, which awards 1 electoral vote for the first village and 2 electoral votes for the second. In the third village, which has 4 electoral votes, candidate A only gets 1999 votes, whereas candidate B gets 2001 votes, so they win the electoral vote 4-3 and become the leader despite only winning 2001 votes overall out of 7000.
The reason that the analogy needs to be this complicated is because the electoral college isn't some sort of common-sense system that happens to occasionally produce quirky results; it's an extremely contrived system that produces equally contrived results, which shouldn't be remotely surprising.
>>that gets awarded entirely to the candidate with the majority vote in that village
is not correct. It's up to the states to decide how they split their electoral votes.
It seems natural to me. States gets electoral votes based on census and then they decide how to split them.
> States gets electoral votes based on census and then they decide how to split them.
How is this any different than the original problem you cited before? The majority of a state deciding to allot the entirety of its votes to a single candidate based on a majority of the internal vote is pretty much exactly what you described. That makes sense for a state-wide office like a senator or governor, but there's absolutely no reason that it should work like that for a national election. The only possible argument I could imagine is that it's an attempt to make sure that people in each state have their priorities represented, but it does the _opposite_ of that by rendering what's usually over 40% of the votes in each state entirely meaningless, and that's not even mentioning the fact that states aren't monolithic entities with uniform concerns but populations of individuals who might care about different things.
There's no point in mincing words here; the electoral collage is a construct designed to give states the power at the expense of the individuals in the state. I'm sure there are people who would argue that's a good thing, but I'd argue it's an anachronism from a time when most people had far less access to education and far fewer concerns that ranged beyond their local area. Granted, at the time I'm writing this it's not clear which way the popular vote went in 2024, but that doesn't change the fact that in the presidential elections preceding this one, the "winner" lost the popular vote a third of the time across two decades, so this isn't a theoretical concern.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/politics/john-kelly-tr...
People like me won’t. You not being able to resonate is what makes you and I different - and one of us capable of defending freedom and the other not.
Did you just imply that these high ranking military officers are not the ones actually defending everyone's freedoms?
Please stop with the talking points and actually think about what you are repeating again and again.
And it's really not hard to find more veterans supporting Harris; just the top two search results:
https://commondefense.us/vets-for-harris
https://votevets.org/press-releases/votevets-makes-historic-...
It’s also interesting that you served in the U.S. military and didn’t recognize how self-serving and institutionally corrupt it is. I come from a country with an oversized military relative to its government, and the parallels I can draw between its behavior and that of the U.S. Army are uncanny.
However, comparing American society with one of the Middle East does not resonate with me. That goes hand in hand with comparing a military of a dictatorship with one of a democracy.
- Imprisoning criticizers
- Removing the broadcast licenses of news network that questions him. He's been calling them fake news for years.
- More power to the rich buddies. Not just more money, now they get more control over government affairs. Musk and Thiel are frothing over this.
- Control over women and minorities.
- More power to the theists.
Looks like "comparing American society with one of the Middle East does not resonate with me." will soon become apparent as the parallels start to be clearer.
https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
Many people raised in democratic societies don't fully understand the intricacies of the relationship between the military and dictatorships; they see the military as a tool in the dictator's hand to wield at will. This couldn't be further from the truth. A (strong) military in a dictatorship is its own institution, largely isolated from the rest of society and granted its own perks and benefits. The dictator can wield the military only to the extent that it aligns with the institution's goals. Competent ones try to align the military's goals with their own; incompetent ones get overthrown.
Because of this isolation from broader society, the officers and soldiers believe that what is good for the institution is good for the country. They're not suppressing their citizens; they believe they are protecting the republic.
The U.S. Army is already operating as an isolated entity from broader U.S. society. Monetary corruption is quite substantial—consider the medium- to high-ranking officers and their relationships and revolving doors with defense contractors.
I'm not saying the U.S. is going to become -insert non-democratic country here-, but if we ignore the usual Western caricature of Stalinist-style dictatorships and realize that there are multiple forms of eroding democracy, you'll start to understand why it's not such a far-fetched idea.
This doesn't resonate to me. The conditions in the US are so different than the German Weimar Republic. I mean sure it's possible but without a compelling reason I kind of discard those arguments. The US has had lots of charismatic leaders screwing stuff up and yet still survived.
More importantly, American Exceptionalism is deeply ingrained in our philosophy. I think we're wrong, but it exists. So the general populace doesn't believe this stuff and just makes people sound out of touch. I think when someone is thinking about inflation and rent and mortgages, the idea that they should care about an existential threat to democracy doesn't seem to matter much. That's a rich person's worry.
On the one hand you have a once-proud and powerful state recovering from the most devastating war humanity has ever waged (by that point) that it lost in, which subsequently forced them into paying back massive reparations, sanctions and economic and military limits imposed on it by the victors of said war. Of course a charismatic, populist leader who gives the resentful nation a boogeyman to fight against is going to win.
On the other you have the de facto #1 world power with the most cartoonishly powerful military on the planet that has their fingers involved in every single pie on the planet, which was founded on the principle of democracy some 200 years ago, with strong safeguards put in place to prevent the exact thing that happened with the Weimar republic.
Even pretending like the Weimer Republic's military was anything even resembling what the US military is is ridiculous.
Wasn't always the case, and honestly it's hard to tell where China stands right now, and it seems like it's not slowing down... if you look at e.g. robotics or drones...
> which was founded on the principle of democracy some 200 years ago
Didn't it need a civil war to actually become a democracy? My understanding was that it was not exactly founded as a democracy. But maybe I'm being pedantic there.
> with strong safeguards put in place to prevent the exact thing that happened with the Weimar republic.
Genuinely interested! What are those safeguards and what do they prevent that happened with the Weimar republic?
Sure, but it has been for the better part of a few decades. The whole reason US hegemony has spread so far and wide is due to this.
> Genuinely interested! What are those safeguards and what do they prevent that happened with the Weimar republic?
I'm not American so I'm probably getting the tiny details wrong here so please correct me if I'm wrong on any points. A lot of this is going off my memory, so I'm probably getting some dates and such details wrong as well. I'm definitely not including a very comprehensive answer here, as it's a complex topic with a lot of history attached that I don't know too much myself. I'm mostly just a nerd who finds this kinda stuff fascinating, not any kind of expert :)
The big sticking points for the Weimar were that the president wielded much more legislative and executive power than US presidents do. Article 48 let the Reichspresident call a state of emergency without ever involving the Reichstag (Parliament) which basically enabled them to become dictators whenever they wanted. Article 48 was one of the early keys Hitler used to seize power, as a fire in the Reichstag parliament house gave him an excuse to call a state of emergency because of a supposed Communist uprising. He used Article 48 to arrest Communists en-masse on the basis of the Reichstag Fire Decree which was signed shortly after the fire, which also included many provisions that restricted free speech, movement and other similar civil liberties. I'd recommend further reading up on the Fire Decree yourself, as it's quite interesting as a key turning point in the Weimar turning into Nazi Germany.
In contrast, US presidents cannot supersede congress and decrees are subject to congressional oversight (there probably exist exceptions, so take my words here with a grain of salt). Even emergency powers (such as the ones Hitler used) are much weaker for US presidents and have to go through congressional approval. Even if every single member of congress is a republican, republicans are not a completely united party. A lot of them dislike Trump and have their own agendas they'd prefer to be pushed, and ultimately they have no real reason to bow to the president since they are elected in completely different timeframes, wield different but almost equal power and are also competing with every other member of congress. For example the fear mongering about leaving NATO, there's basically a 0% chance of that happening because it requires a supermajority from congress, despite whatever the President might want. It's a pretty common reason why things like the recently proposed student loan debt forgiveness never end up happening, the president can't just will it to happen.
Another big one is that the militaries work under different philosophies and circumstances between the two, and you can't have a takeover without military backing. The Weimar military was still pretty loyal to the old monarchists and viewed Weimar as a forced state that they were put into under pressure after losing WW1. You have to understand that the whole "democracy" idea was a pretty fresh one at that time for Germany, they only switched from monarchism to republicanism in 1918 after the November revolution.
By contrast, US military as far as I understand it isn't really all that loyal to whoever the current president is, but rather to the constitution. The president might be commander-in-chief, but that doesn't mean he can tell the military to do whatever they want. They still wield power over the military of course, but it's a lot less pronounced than it was in Germany, because the military were loyal to Hitler. If the military leaders who are ultimately the ones commanding the troops don't like the president, there isn't much they can do. Even the national guard is interesting, since it's a split responsibility between states and the federal government. And, again, congress also has a say in many military things, though my knowledge there is for sure lacking so I'd recommend you do your own reading up there.
An example there of the limited power of the president was when Nixon was getting the boot, the secretary of defence James Schlesinger at the time instructed military leaders to run Nixon's order by either him or the secretary of state, because he was worried about Nixon's reaction.
And again, the economic and social situation in Germany at the time cannot be overstated. People were miserable, the country was massively poor and were in a major demographic problem due to the war. Their industry was quickly stagnating due to the aftermath of WW1 and there was a lot of resentment building up in Germany for what they considered to be unfair and harsh treatment from the Allies. They were, to put it charitably, extremely unstable times and it was a matter of time before all of it exploded like it did. If it wasn't Hitler, it would've been the next charismatic leader promising to take revenge on the people who ruined the country (which is massively oversimplifying things of course, but you get the gist)
Definitely think you are being pedantic. By that standard, we're not a "real" democracy right now with felons not being able to vote in many states. That's a valid position to have, but imo not really useful for this discussion.
Which I found interesting, but admittedly not necessarily useful here.
However the explanation for the rise of Hitler you allude to is woefully incomplete. Hitler and his party didn't get into power by winning the majory popular vote. Instead the Hitler and the Nazis formed a coalition with the monarchists and convinced Hindenburg that they would help restore the Monarchy if Hindenburg helped them take power and granted them new powers.
I'm not going to claim we are necessarily in the same situation today, but I do think it is worth being aware of how this kind of thing can happen.
We should be extremely wary about giving a charismatic leader extraordinary powers, even if that leader promises that power will only be used to accomplish your goals.
However the way I see it, people (not you, I just mean in general people who seem to believe Trump will bring about the 5th Reich) are probably out of ignorance of the history there also massively oversimplifying and overestimating how much power the president ultimately wields, especially when compared to Weimer-era Germany. People aren't aware that there are safety mechanisms in the US that didn't exist in the Weimar Republic, and as such simply bringing up that "This is exactly what happened with Nazi Germany!" is massively oversimplifying things as well from the other side.
The comment my comment was replying to did this exact thing, in fact, where they equated the election of a charismatic leader to what happened with the Nazis.
I do agree with you though, I personally tend to align with Frank Herbert when it comes to people who want to wield power and rule over others, in that they should be studied and watched closely and carefully and disposed of swiftly if they pull any Hitler-tier shenanigans
We all lived through 2020-22, yes.
Also even going by his own words, what about his "dictator on day one" comments?
People assume that there's going to be some grand take-over event, a third-world coup d'état if you will.
In reality, modern democracies die slowly. Russia was once a democracy, now it's democracy on paper only. What will Americans do, when their courts are infringing their freedom?
Again, it happens slowly. Bit by bit, in the boring court rooms.
The brief highly instable 1990s after the Soviet collapse that was followed by Putin’s rapid consolidation of power?
Russia was barely a functioning democracy in the 1990s and had no democratic tradition before that, just different flavors of authoritarianism for centuries.
At the time of founding the USA was probably still the most liberal and democratic government in history of the world.
I'm shocked that you would use Russia as an example of a slowly dying democracy.
Trump has explicitly and clearly stated he plans to fill the supreme court with cronies, and then dissolve massive parts of the bureaucracy to instead divert that power to the president. Keep in mind, on top of this, he is also now completely immune from all crimes.
This new-found concentration of power in the president has never before been seen in American politics. It is genuinely worrying, even if you believe Trump will use his new powers in benevolent ways.
I mean the mid-terms are in 2 years and if the dems (hopefully) learn from this, they have a chance to bring it back somewhat.
Seriously, if you go look at the numbers, which are still being counted, Harris clawed back quite a lot. It really was close in the end, similar to how the polls predicted.
I was in denial about it, but I do think the dems lost their own election, the more I look at it, and listen to people who voted Trump, the more I have to admit, they screwed up in many ways, and we all paid for it. Biden calling his supporters garbage was the nail in the coffin IMO. That comment potentially lost them the election if you go look at how close some of the swing states were.
Florida is particularly bitter because Floridians voted to give back felon voting rights and DeSantis and the judicial branch he controls just declared it unconstitutional
You can't "save" someone without understanding what their day to day problems are.
[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2019-06-04/gallu...
I AM the type of people that built and fought for democracy. My people donate to the ACLU and drive people to the polls. We marched for civil rights and women's rights. We fight voter disenfranchisement and poll intimidators and insurrections.
This is EXACLY why I'm concerned for Democracy.
1. Abraham Lincoln said "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Whether you agree or not, some people think we may be at that inflection point right now. If you think American citizens haven’t lost substantial freedoms in the recent past, then you haven’t been paying attention. Is it at the level of “destroying ourselves”? To be determined, but the potential is there, and some folks really aren’t shy about trying to implement that a policy of reduced freedoms.
2. There are many cases in the last 100 years or so of authoritarian regimes rising because people want order during a time of distress — Saddam, Hitler, Mao, Lenin, and others rose to authoritarian power by offering stability during unstable times. They were welcomed with open arms, and often times people (including and especially the military) were willing to give up their freedoms for this potential for stability. Some folks think that the US is one big destabilizing event from welcoming an authoritarian. You may think this way of thinking is hubris, but none of us will know that it happened until after it has occurred.
I’m glad things have worked out for you, but I hope you have open eyes about how things can go south, as they have in the past.
I’d question which party would bring us closer to something such as the cultural revolution or government-ran industries.
Still, what most fail to understand is the core values instilled in places like our military as the ultimate check/balance.
I'm left leaning, but I think jobs in rural areas, inflation, cost of living are all valid concerns that should be addressed regardless of who is in power. I disagree to varying extents with Trump's stance on abortion, immigration and gun control. But I also understand why people have a different opinion to me.
What I see online is a continuing anger towards the left and a determination to not only discredit their opinions, but also punish them for their dissenting views. There is this gleeful perception that it's time for payback.
https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/ranked_choi...
Recommend we rally behind the higher information variant.
A blowout in either direction was necessary here. A clear result is better for everyone.
The press can go back to being adversarial to power (Although straight faced bullshit like the Cheney firing squad thing will probably only be more common, so thats a double edged sword).
The dems will likely stop anointing people.
We never have to sit through a Trump election campaign again.
The first woman president will likely be a much stronger candidate. Kamala could have potentially really ruined it for women going forward.
I thought that after 2016...
2. Harris actually did just ruin it for women going forward. The Democratic party has now put forward two women against Trump that arguably both failed in spectacular fashion. It's not really clear to me why they did this, but they did it, and I don't know why we'd see a woman secure a major party's nomination for president in the next couple decades as a result.
2. I think the problem is inserting women that the voters aren't asking for. They could try asking who to run instead of telling people who to vote for, and they just might get a woman into the office.
There are women out there that have their own real following that could probably get there with the machine behind them, but the machine doesn't want any of them.
Depending on how things go, Tulsi could be the next best chance, if people stop making up shit about her being a Russian asset. But shes on the red team, so the dems will tear her down if she tries.
We might even see the GOP successfully get a woman into the White House before the dems do it, which is just embarrassing.
That happened in the UK with Thatcher.
Mitt Romney did not fail spectacularly when he couldn't beat a popular incumbent. It was impressive that he got as close as he did.
The fundamentals here were similarly harsh for Harris, just for different reasons.
And isn't Harris the incumbent in this situation?
Yes, Harris was treated by voters as the incumbent, and the incumbent administration was unpopular. That is usually an uphill battle for the incumbent.
It was never the dems election to lose. It's too bad you only saw that narrative! Plenty of people wrote about the possibility that this would be a pretty bog standard "reject the incumbents" election.
I find this baffling. With the dems tying themselves to biden and then Harris, it was absolutely an uphill battle. But that was an unforced error.
If they had a robust primary, you have to assume there was someone on the blue team that could beat Trump. If not, then they deserved every bit of this anyway.
Edit to add: I now think that. It isn't what I expected to happen until the results actually came in last night.
Lots of things are foregone conclusions for a long period of time before you have the data to know it.
Think: A competitor is working on a product that massively outcompetes yours, but you don't know that until it is launched. Or you have cancer that is progressing but you don't know until it is diagnosed.
I think this turned out to be like that.
Election denialism is found in both parties in large quantities.
You assume the dems will learn from this loss, which is a big assumption.
> We never have to sit through a Trump election campaign again.
If Trump is alive and well in 2028, I'm sure he will try to run again (ignore rules or change them). But, he also said you'll never have to vote again after this one, so we'll find out what he means by that.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bitch_eating_crackers
Personally, I absolutely despise Trump but he's been firmly in that realm for quite some time now.
I wouldn't count on that. There is a chance that he'll abolish term limits.
There's also a chance that you're right, but only because we've installed a monarch.
I think hes too old to have to worry about that. And I don't think the republicans would try to weekend at Bernie's him after hes gone too far.
I also think its more likely someone succeeds at assassinating him during his term than he tries to overstay his welcome.
He has children who are very much like him and popular in the "MAGA Movement", Donald Trump Jr. specifically. Political dynasties exist in America. Just sayin'.
And that's why the blue folks lost, all about identity politics rather than realpolitik.
This is a guess or a bet, and one I'll take the other side of. Let's check back in in a year.
Trump has said he will be a dictator on day one. Trump has said that after this election we won't have to vote anymore. Trump has suggested we give the police "One rough hour" like the horror movie The Purge and that would solve crime.
I expect that people are going to die because of the policies that Trump enacts during his presidency. And because of the hate and bigoted rhetoric that he subscribes to and legitimizes. Better that we go down fighting than willingly be party to America becoming another authoritarian regime that commits atrocities.
But it appears that the American people value their wallets more. I'm sympathetic to that, even if my values are different. And TBQH I hope I'm wrong. But
> When someone shows you who they are, believe them
This comes with the job. His actions or inactions will have all sorts of impacts, just like every president before him.
> Better that we go down fighting than willingly be party to America becoming another authoritarian regime that commits atrocities
Forgive the snark, but what universe have you been living in? We have a pretty strong record when it comes to committing atrocities.
> But it appears that the American people value their wallets more.
That's a pretty dismissive way to put it. Food and housing and medical care being increasingly unaffordable is an existential issue for a lot of people. Of course Trump presided over some of that decline, but this sort of blind spot towards what the lives of common people are like contributed heavily to this election IMO.
I haven't said that America is perfect or innocent. And past problems don't mean we shouldn't work to prevent future ones.
Ok. It's dismissive. I don't understand. This is deeply confusing and disheartening to me. I find it unconscionable to put my own quality of life above others living at all, and am having a lot of trouble processing why so many people have. I could ask you how bad it is exactly but I wouldn't vote for Trump even if I was homeless. So maybe I can't understand.
Too many people drink from the firehose of bullshit news and it drives them nuts. In reality you can't have much influence on any of this beyond voting, unless you're going all in on it.
And believe it or not, life is going to go on either way. Might as well act accordingly.
Personally, my issue with the Democrats is how they mishandled the electric vehicle charging network initiative. [0]
[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/05/congress-ev-charger...
That's not really the case though.
We had a similar QE in '08 with pretty much no effect on CPI [1] or Housing [2]. As well as the increase in pricing has occurred _when the money printing stopped_ and not _while the money was printing_ [3].
The current inflation isn't caused by money printing. It's caused by pricing power by conglomerates. We've allowed energy companies to join together and they've agreed with OPEC to cut production to lead to price increases. We've allowed rental companies to join together and raise prices. We've allowed meat companies to join together and raise prices. The lack of anti-trust enforcement along with a trigger (Covid) is what caused inflations, companies realized they had a talking point (supply chain problems) that they could pin price increase on regardless of if it was true.
[1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEDCPIM158SFRBCLE
I'm not sure that is fair. Nothing is ever caused by just one thing, of course, but it is unlikely that money printed and given to average Joes was not a significant contributor. COVID relief saw money flow into the hands of regular people, which was quite unlike 2008.
2008 was different as it only went into the hands of the rich. You can print money endlessly and give it all to Jeff Bezos and inflation will never occur. It's just another number in his bank account, so to speak. But if you give it to poor people on the street, soon they are going to start buying things with it, increasing competition for goods and services and thus driving up prices.
Although I would say the biggest factor was the devastating crop failure in 2020 with a dash of COVID problems on top, followed by the EU shutting down their fertilizer plants in 2021, and then Russia invading Ukraine in 2022 which both complicated access to Ukraine food production as well as denying trade with Russian fertilizer. This left food stocks in a precarious situation and thus sent the price of food to the moon. Everyone else followed as best they could to ensure they could continue to eat. Now that we're getting our food house back in order, the inflation panic has started to subside in kind.
Hell, look at how long it took grocery stores to react to the aforementioned food crisis. Us on the farm saw the price of food we were selling double (or even more) from the price norm early in the crisis, but it took another year or so before the consumers of that food started complaining about how much grocery stores were charging. Things happen very slowly.
Indeed, the money supply has been stable for a while, only veering of track for a short time, but inflation is also now stabilizing and only veered off track for a short time.
Because conglomerates (ex. Tyson Foods) were upping their prices as shown by gross margins of 10% increasing to 15% [1].
> but it took another year or so before the consumers of that food started complaining about how much grocery stores were charging. Things happen very slowly.
Uh. More like immediately people complained; just throw a max date on a web search [2] and you'll find them readily.
I can't speak to your own personal anecdotes. But the price of eggs has been talked about ad nauseam since start of covid.
[2]: https://www.google.com/search?q=rising+food+prices&tbs=cdr%3...
[1]: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSN/tyson-foods/gr...
Did they? You seem to only be able to go back to 2021, whereas I was seeing substantial gains in the price of food I was selling on the farm as early as 2019, thanks to another devastating (albeit less so) crop failure.
It is not like the price was $x one day and then $x*2 the next. It ramped up over time. Just like the price of groceries did, albeit on a later timeline.
[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=rising+food+prices&tbs=cdr%3...
[2]: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/rising-food-prices-means-rising-ne...
Seems like people got the best of both worlds - they will be able to keep more rights than they otherwise would have and they will enjoy a better economy. Win-win!
Trump pushed abortion legislation back to the state level, which is a great thing to do. States should be able to decide for themselves.
Trump won’t do shit to stifle free speech, as that’s not who he is. I’m not sure what hoax you’re referring to here since there are so many, but you can rest assured that nobody will be persecuted or denied constitutional rights.
Instead, she insisted the economy was doing great, and the millions of people whose wages have not risen enough to offset inflation just didn't know what they were talking about.
The economy has been doing great for some people, but not for the voters who ended up mattering to the election outcome.
If you pluck that out it completely freezes 50%+ of their operations, people really don't get how much stuff in modern companies is reliant on MS stuff (and thus why they are one of the richest companies on the globe)
Moving away from that would be a massive change management undertaking, but it's not the "Office" part which is our primary challenge. To be fair, I'm not sure we could actually survive the change management required to leave the Office and Windows part, as it would be completely unfamiliar territory for like 95% of our employees, but the collective we at least think that we can. We have quite a lot of Business Central 365 instances, the realistic alternative to those would be Excel (but not Excel). SharePoint is also a semi-massive part of our business as it's basically our "Document Warehouse".
I guess maybe I'm using the 365 term wrong?
You're not missing anything, but that's our current exit strategy none the less. We need to be capable of exiting Microsoft within a month if required. It even says Excel in our strategy even though it would obviously need to be a different spreadsheet program. Well, maybe we would be allowed to use non-cloud Excel, I'm not too sure about that actually. I'm only involved in these things from SWE side of things where I have to give them a strategy for our part, which is very easy because everything is containerized and almost non-platform dependent, so it would be relatively easy to migrate away from Azure. The biggest challenge for our part of the business would be our reliance on AD (well Entra ID) authentication flows. Not a big challenge as far as the actual auth flows, because we could easily accept tokens from something like Keycloak but it would be a challenge to migrate the AD for the SysOps guys.
You have countries that are willing to turn a blind eye toward their tech companies when those companies ignore laws to grow.
In some ways it's "obvious" they'll outgrow companies from countries which have a culture of corporate adherence to laws.
Left wing politics doesn't promote economic growth.
Agreeing with you though that the EU as a whole isn't really "left-wing".
Furthermore, the Greens are blocking real progress in the name of NIMBY-ism. The current government is actively killing markets by introducing harmful policies.
And for the most part it doesn't matter, nor should it.
There are plenty of European customs and views that make developing these companies unpopular (eg data collection and privacy) but the single-massive-market is the economic reason why the US is so powerful.
The VC system and network grew out of this existing development in America (of course the capital markets have been there since before tech, as I mentioned). The banking and finance system grew in America for the same reason - a large single-regulator market.
Spotify is basically a US company today - They have huge US offices, and their US subscribers are crucial. It's also a perfect example of a business that doesn't follow the high-fixed-cost-low-ongoing-cost model. They have to pay a license fee for every stream, so they can't amortize their costs across users nearly as well.
SAP is another example of a business that doesn't amortize as well across users - their product is very bespoke per company, and negotiated individually.
To even have a shot at getting a successful startup off the ground, you need to a assemble a whole team of those people, which is still much more difficult in Europe (though things may be starting to change).
In the end all these regulations allow Europeans to have access to "safe" products but it kills most of our innovations in favor of the US or China.
And keep in mind, if he installs nothing but loyalists and sycophants, who's to stop him from these half-baked ideas?
Try importing California wine into France or Spain as an example. Try importing American cars into China or South Korea.
There is also the de facto tariffs from Chinese currency manipulation.
Hard to be intellectually honest about tariffs without looking what much of the rest of the world already does.
But imposing all-encompassing tariffs is just plain nonsense. It is dangerous nonsense. Replacing federal taxes with those tariffs is even worse.
Again, Trump is fixated with tariffs. At least his idea of it. The last time he tried, ask farmers how that went.
They don't promote a climate where European tech companies can grow and they hamper the usage of US tech companies products.
I'm not innocent of knee-jerk down-voting but I would like to cure myself of the habit. I wonder to what extent the extreme political and cultural polarization that prevails in the West results from a general reluctance on the part of adherents to engage in debate. At least that's my impression.
However, the numbers are much worse than before and on the previous Trump presidency they crashed(recovered with Biden but crashed again): https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/appendix-a-fav...
The anti-establishment movements in EU are also predominantly anti-US, leftists are often anti-US too.
I got the impression of many Americans online believing that Europeans are tech and progress loving, bureaucracy hating people under tyranny of EU which is a building in Brussels that churns rules and regulations.
However that's not true, most Europeans love the big government hate new tech and prefer the slow and worry free life over the daily hustling.
If Trump follows up with its promises, I only imagine EU parting with US on more stuff. I also see many Americans apparently believing that EU is mostly museums and there's no technology. Also not true, EU is made of countries that are traditionally tool-makers and Europeans are anti-tech and anti-change only when it comes to adoption of tech into their daily lives, not when creating tools and machines. ASML is not a coincidence, all kind of precision tooling and machinery is the bread and butter of European industry.
So, if EU parts with US, I imagine that American stuff will be quickly replaced with European made stuff. The dominance of American tech in the daily lives is mostly due to network effect, a forced change will result in what resulted in Russia and China: local alternatives.
Europe is worse off than the US only in Energy and demographics. Two massive issues but there are no quick-fixes for those, so they are European realities with or without the US.
I am in the process of (very slowly) decluttering my life. One weird observation that I had, is that I have very few hardware from the USA, even when I think liberally about "from" as designed and not just manufactured. I found a (crappy) HP printer, (wonderful) Apple hardware and two Zippos. There may be more, but it's not obvious labelled.
Software and some online services on the other hand are different.
From this European perspective the USA is very much a service export and not a stuff export economy.
US invested huge piles of money on the computer age and they cornered the web and software markets and now extracting grotesque profits from it mostly because its a winner takes it all industry. It's not that Europeans don't know how to write software, it's that it doesn't make business sense to go after the established American companies. Linux is invented in Europe, just as the Web but the American entrepreneurs were those who turned these technologies into great businesses. If forced by blocking, it wouldn't take much time to create European alternatives as the hard work of discovering what works and what doesn't is already established. In fact, during the internet age there were many European alternatives for most of it, there's still local alternatives to many.
Take Uber for example, it's not anything special. In places where it's banned, local entrepreneurs quickly made local alternatives.
There's of course industrial software, gaming etc and that's also plenty in EU. It wouldn't take much time to replace everything.
There are plenty of examples from the last 10-20 years where embargoes simply propelled local alternatives even in the most improvised countries.
Americans will have to be stupid to ban software to EU, so it will have to be the EU who bans American software and that probably wouldn't happen until things get really bad.
Speaking of... this has firmly convinced me that deplatforming is the wrong answer. All it has done is create echo chambers. All I see is Democrats scratching their heads and blaming and fuming because they can't possibly understand why they lost. That's because they hang out in places like this or /r/politics and they've all moved to coastal cities with left-leaning political environments. If Harris had won in a landslide you'd see the exact same thing on the other side because they, too, are in echo chambers.
I did get one thing I was hoping for: a clear result. I was hoping whichever way it went it would be unambiguous to avoid a bunch of conspiracy theories and fighting.
Edit: one more takeaway: the traditional media is dead. Toast. They had no idea what was happening and all their takes are basically empty hand waving. They're absolutely clueless and out of touch and no longer have any influence.
Meanwhile the rest of the world has fallen behind the US. China is weaker and sliding (in part thanks to the expansive authoritarianism). Russia is a joke and has been for decades (now a regional power that struggles against Ukraine). Europe broadly is weaker and no longer competitive at almost anything.
US GDP per capita is essentially now double that of Britain or France.
The reality is we are still benefiting from the leadership of some of our more visionary founders and leaders since; but without being reenforced in some way it won't hold up forever. Most people in the US are still under the guise of America being special, and hand waving those scenarios away thinking the worst can't happen here. Which makes it much easier to then vote for Trump, especially if you don't think the climate crisis is real or prescient.
I'm not even convinced of this. The problem is that that many of these protections aren't really legal (at least they aren't all legal), they're conventions and norms. They require the people in power to believe in them, and believe that they're good and useful, or they can be swept aside. The rule of law is a polite fiction that requires people to adhere to it.
Take Elon Musk, for example, who will now likely be involved in government to an alarming degree. By all accounts, he got his start in the US by working here illegally. No problem; rules for thee and not for me. His publicly-admitted drug use should disqualify SpaceX from government contracts. No problem; what are they going to do, cancel them? Musk was unhappy a Delaware judge struck down his Tesla pay package. No problem; reincorporate in Texas and find a different legal framework and judges who like him.
Musk is constantly flaunting norms and getting away with it, and he'll continue to push and ignore these boundaries with whatever government position Trump gives him. Trump does the same, but with a lot more power, and he and his cronies are actually prepared and organized this time, something that wasn't the case in 2016. He has a SCOTUS stacked in his favor, that has already given him broad immunity against illegal acts while in office. He has the Senate, again, and may have the House as well. This time the Senate will temporarily or permanently change the filibuster rules if they're having trouble hitting the 60-vote threshold on things to which it still applies.
During Trump's term, per capital gdp went from $58.2k to $64.3k, a 10% increase.
During Biden's term, it went from $64.3k to $81.7k, a 27% increase.
The proper comparison to make here isn't between America before and America after Trump. It's to America after Trump and a hypothetical America after Clinton.
It may be that we're better off after Trump (though "we" is doing a lot of work in that sentence). But the relevant question to voters is whether we would have been even better off if the other candidate had one.
There is no reason to expect things to go like they did the last time around.
But now what? The Republican establishment has been re-made in his image. The people I respect have all gone public against him in the strongest possible ways. Who will serve under him? I really don't know what to expect this time around.
I doubt even the most radical president could do much to reverse or slow that trend. The strong central government permanent war surveillance state seems so much bigger and more powerful than even the highest office. It’s not like breaking up or not breaking up Google is gonna change the fact that feds can read everyone’s gmail without a warrant.
I personally believe that the office of the president’s effect on long term policy or institutions is generally massively overstated. Their main lever seems to be supreme court appointments and Trump has already pulled that one in his first term (to predictably destructive results). I am unsure whether that is because presidents generally “color inside of the lines” and haven’t attempted sweeping and radical reform, or because the institutions ultimately have more inertia than the temporary machinations of the executive office.
I guess we’ll see if the institutional destruction he seems to seek a) is even possible or b) may result in unexpectedly good outcomes. Then again, most of the stuff he says he seems to speak just for the momentary sake of speaking it; only a small fraction relates to things he plans (or is effectively compelled) to do. I lost count of all of the promises he made, good and bad, that not only weren’t kept, but weren’t even ever mentioned again.
I remain skeptical that his fervent drive during the campaign will translate into fervent reformation action, now that he has obtained what he wants. Despite the constant media hand-wringing, his first term wasn’t as apocalyptic as everyone made it out to be, despite his two main legacies both being perhaps the most destructive things he could have wrought: the supreme court appointments and the insanely massive mismanagement of a deadly pandemic.
His more hardworking and ideologically-motivated support staff have had a lot more time to plan on his behalf this time around, however. Perhaps his weaponized ignorance will be deliberately wielded this time around and his second term will turn out to be massively more destructive than his first, but that is a very high bar to clear given the outsized effect that mismanaging the pandemic response caused. Not many presidents can have that much preventable death in their legacy, even if they explicitly try.
The President has far more power than that.
- Veto Power: Blocks congressional bills; overrides require a two-thirds majority, which is rare.
- Executive Orders: Directives to federal agencies that bypass Congress (limited by courts and future presidents).
- Foreign Policy Leadership: Sole power to negotiate treaties (requiring Senate ratification) and recognize foreign governments.
- Pardon Power: Can pardon federal offenses, unchecked by other branches.
- Appointment Authority: Nominates not only Supreme Court justices, but federal judges, and cabinet members, shaping long-term policy and judicial interpretation.
The question is how much damage can he do in two years? If he goes full loco and starts a global trade war with everyone via high tariffs, while at the same time juicing interest rates via a politicized fed, we will be in a depression within a year or two. If he uses his political capital more wisely, we might avoid that economic hit but have longer term damage to worry about. Thankfully, Trump is pretty impulsive, and he doesn't have a long list of good advisors to choose from (not that he would listen to them anyways), so I'm really just worried about the first scenario.
Executive orders are a big one. I imagine there will be many legal challenges as a result of novel applications of executive authority here. Fortunately whatever he does here can be just as easily reverted in a few years.
Foreign policy is another huge one, and this is probably where he can do lasting damage to the US and its allies.
Pardon power is another like veto: all it does is restrain the government (in this case, from punishing criminals). Not much damage.
Appointments to anything other than the Supreme Court are, in my view, not that big a deal. Activist judges below the Supreme Court will eventually get their rulings overturned if they are too extreme.
I think people overestimate the damage that can be wrought, absent some external crisis/threat (eg covid, or a war, etc) that results in mismanagement in response.
Government funding flows through congress, and being able to veto it means Trump gets enormous control over what goes into it, because legislatures generally won't put things into it that he will refuse to approve, and conversely will put things in that he will approve. Outside of his war powers it's probably the most extreme power in the US.
There are three checks against this that I know of. One is if Congress is not aligned party wise, they can punt to a large degree. Non-issue for Trump since they control Congress. Second is 2/3 majority but given our highly partisan state, unlikely to play any role. Third is perception, Congress and President and play the blame game, which affects their re-election. But given Trump's level of influence that is also unlikely to be a playable card, at least in the near future.
In all Trump has an enormous ability to shape this country through this power alone.
> Pardon power is another like veto: all it does is restrain the government (in this case, from punishing criminals). Not much damage.
Yes but if he's pardoning people he knows, and in particular in a quid pro quo fashion, he can use it to effectively do illegal things without doing them himself. It's a serious loophole.
Overall if people are voting for him because they like what he's doing that is one thing. But I suspect many people voted for / not against him because they ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and say what's the worst that can happen. And the answer is a _lot_. Though I still believe electing an election denier is the biggest issue, because its the simplest way to short-circuit our institutional protections in the future.
Literally the entire discovery feed was post after post of said activists apparently suffering from legitimate mental breakdowns as if the entire world was crumbling around them.
What I'd say is that there is a significant number of "libertarians" whose "liberty" veneer is scratching off and the authoritarian conservative body underneath is starting to show through, as it always does.
Also, most "lefty" US tech workers are "lefty" only on social/cultural issues -- and would not be broadly in favour of socialist or social democratic economic policy... which I guess describes Democrats in the US generally.
That's what you all said the last time he was elected.
Double negatives ought to be illegal, they make muh head hurt
Basically this:
"A Trump victory will be akin to the moment in an unhappy marriage where the spouses are arguing again and one hauls off and hits the other. It might not mean that the marriage is over—but it’ll never be the same. Both partners will have learned something hard about what one is capable of and that will inform their future interactions forever."
For what it’s worth, I have a feeling Canada will elect a questionable conservative next year as well. North America is trending this way. Young men are more conservative than I’ve seen in my lifetime. Things are getting worse in various ways. People are going to vote for a significant change, I think. No other party offers anything of the sort.
> Tens of millions of people are going to wake up [this morning] to find that they don’t live in the country they thought they did. Liberals, classical and otherwise, will discover overnight that they’re now outnumbered by a coalition of earnest fascists, partisan Republicans who’ll rationalize literally anything, and millions upon millions of less tribal voters who don’t care how corrupt Trump is or which laws he breaks or whether he overturns elections or not so long as they get the results on their pet issues that they’re hoping for.
> That’s an identity crisis. A big one. And a lot of people are going to be having it at the same time.
There is certainly going to be domestic and international chaos in the coming years. But a realignment of the world order and domestic politics was inevitable. It's not going to be end of the world like some are making out to be. Nor is it going to be the end of the United States. There will be opportunities. Buckle up and find opportunities where you can.
We're looking at the possibility of a 7-2 Supreme Court stacked with activist judges (the new ones will be even more so). Now, it depends on your definition of "the United States" but whatever comes out the rear end of this is going to look different to the point of potentially being unrecognizable. They already have the playbook.
A few bleary-eyed, scatterbrained possibilities: mass deportations, end of the free press/open internet, end of the Department of Education (public school?), end of birth control, bans on vaccines, etc., etc.
Guess I’ll become a grifter like the rest of them. Become a parasite on society. Fuck everyone else, I guess.
I’m not so sure about that. If it happens I’m not so sure it would be a bad thing either. This country’s system makes no sense. If I was from Texas I wouldn’t want my taxes paying for things I don’t believe in and if I was from California ditto. This country truly makes more sense as several different countries that can choose to cooperate.
Let's make the Federal government primarily fund the armed forces, and certain things like airwaves, and flight. Then get it out of things that it doesn't need to regulate.
Half my non-federal taxes go to my local school. I'm cool with that. I also fund my local fire/police, local governments. I'm cool with that.
We need to restrain the interstate commerce clause; which is out of control. But yes, you are describing federalism. Let's make federalism great again.
- It appears that Democrats are often seen as part of an "elite," which makes it difficult for people at home to relate to or understand their message. A full reset might be needed to bridge this gap.
- Europe has long been under the shadow of the United States. Perhaps this could be a good start toward greater independence for Europe.
I've never understood it, but it's an impressive party trick.
I agree with you, things are looking bad... Today, I'm just trying to be positive. Tomorrow, maybe not ...
Imagine we could spend those resources towards more constructive endeavours. Not just for Europeans, but also people in the US and Russia. Take a look at [1] – they could be doing so much better.
It's all just so sad. And pointless.
Also then there's the entire business with global warming.
[1]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.MA.IN?locat...
And it’s not like Europe was currently in a good state politically speaking.
I wish this were true for so long, but so far we have seen nothing. Not even Draghis recommendations were really introduced.
Just saying "highly illogical" is not very helpful.
(The following is all my imagination, any resemblance to reality is coincidental)
So, I think he would talk about how the mind is not a machine designed for rationality. The mind is a holographic projection, a story told by a collection of organs in your head, fed by sensations from your body.
I think he would talk about the dilemma of aspiration. If you aspire to rationality, and you feel that rationality is the best system of thought, then you will be driven to believe that you are highly rational. Unfortunately, in many things, you cannot differentiate between logical consistency and post-hoc rationalization.
Humans know this; so we have things like peer review.
Unfortunately you also cannot trust another person to rationally evaluate your beliefs - humans have a strong history of in-group/out-group dynamics. It is beneficial to signal agreement and trustworthiness; it is harmful and painful to signal disagreement with the in-group.
And so rational thought requires rational communication with people you disagree with - and people in the out-group, because your in-group may have centered on a wrong, harmful or otherwise useless belief.
Rational communication requires an overlap in perspective. Not the same point of view, but at least a minimal consensus in perception of reality and goals. For instance, most people believe that it is good to invest in young people in some way, though they may disagree about what that means.
Unfortunately, in-group/out-group dynamics can make this very difficult in times of active conflict, as humans have a very strong sense of morality, and sending moral signals to your in-group is more important that rational communication.
----
No one had a plan that got humans to this point in our story. No one has a plan for humans in an age of worldwide social media. We have to build it together.
I don't like country music, but I can see the appeal. Things are simpler in the country - you have to believe in real things like trucks and cows, not theoretical things like software and commodity futures contracts.
It's nice to deal with things that are simple and real.
And everything will continue to suck for the working class. Trump won't actually succeed in fixing much of anything for them, even if he tries, and nobody else is even going to pretend to care. The DNC will continue to be the party for yuppies that sneers at uneducated working men while the RNC takes off the mask stops pretending to care about anything besides the managerial class and Christian/Zionism issues.
Overall though do agree it was a fairly close debate not particularly one-sided.
Will say if guys like Vance & DeSantis are the future of the GOP that a significant upgrade over Trump.
I still don't quite understand why DeSantis fared so poorly w/ the GOP for this election. He appears to be far more competent/palatable than Trump but here are.
For me, once we altogether lose the quintessence of this state (this isn't Disneyland or Lennar), it'll be little more than a Skinner Box with perennial cyclones, bad traffic and pestilence, surrounded by cement embellished views of red tide.
I think a fatal strategy for never-Trumpers is to assume that Trump and MAGA will go away. Every gaffe and every scandal seems to strengthen Trump. It hasn’t gone away, and we will have to live with the consequences. Perhaps a better strategy is to accept that the GOP these days is the MAGA party, and we need new strategies for competing in future elections.
Donald Trump Jr.?
MAGA just lacks the charm without the Orange Man at the helm. Trump is mortal and his successors are lacking.
That said, the Chamber of Commerce Republicans will probably stay Democrat. It'd be at least 2033 before it's clear that MAGA only lasted with Trump leading.
Why not Donald Trump Jr. in 2028?
Why is there a different standard applied to one of the sides?
https://www.americansurveycenter.org/newsletter/why-young-me...
Nearly one in four Gen Z men say they have experienced discrimination or were subject to mistreatment simply because they were men, a rate far greater than older men.
In 2019, less than one-third of young men reported that men experienced some or a lot of discrimination in American society. Only four years later, close to half (45 percent) of young men now believe men are facing gender-based discrimination. For some young men, feminism has morphed from a commitment to gender equality to an ideology aimed at punishing men. That leads to predictable results, like half of men agreeing with the statement, “These days society seems to punish men just for acting like men.”
I wonder what discrimination they face day to day, whether it is phisical or online
Aren’t you now asking yourself, “who are they scared of?”
Let the answer sink in.
For example, there are scholarships and conferences specifically for women, even in spite of college numbers now drastically already favoring women.
I feel as though as a white male I am very heavily discriminated against in the academic job market. I'm certain that if I had a vagina, and all else were equal, I would have 1000x the job prospects in academia. No, I can't prove this, but I know a lot of other men feel the same way.
I created this throwaway account to answer your question because I'm afraid of potential future employers looking at my posting history and seeing the above comment, which I think would instantly disqualify me from the majority of US academic positions.
I think the academia world is broken not in the way you think it is
Although not in the US, she says that when doing something in the academia world being a man or a woman makes no difference (here)
As late as yesterday a woman I need to listen to had opinions on something as basic as how men are supposed to pee, telling that how most men feel comfortable peeing is wrong.
That is just one.
But I think it goes all the way from kindergarten up in some places.
All these guys see on their social feeds, day-in, day-out, is 'feminists' stating that all men are just rapists-in-waiting and how they should have their rights and/or autonomy restricted, or from the most extreme examples, be physically mutilated or outright murdered.
You don't have to look hard to find this stuff on social media, and once you do find it, that's all you'll ever be served.
The Democratic party has a problem communicating to young white men why they should vote democrat. The party doesn't speak to them at all. I don't think there's much wrong with the policies. It could perhaps use some more policies targeting men's rights. But it's mostly a communication problem. Young men don't feel seen by the democratic party, and the democrats need to realize this and fix it for the next election.
Do the Democrat seems left to you?
Feel free to name these policies you think are specifically hostile to white men.
Most white men are not at the peak of society. When they are told how good they have it, they think about how their paycheck barely/doesn't cover their needs, or the needs of his family. They think about how long their car will last before breaking down. They think about the amount of crime in their neighborhood. And then they are told that this is the good life? And they discover that the government is giving people who just got here handouts (which is made from their taxes, money that could have improved their own lives)? They won't stand for it.
Today. This was different 60 years ago. This is different today in more conservative countries. At least that is the perception of those people.
> When they are told how good they have it, they think about how their paycheck barely/doesn't cover their needs, or the needs of his family. They think about how long their car will last before breaking down.
Everyone has those problems, it's not limited to men or white people.
> And they discover that the government is giving people who just got here handouts
And here we have the prime example of manipulation. The reason why all those young men fall to this delusion.
Critical race theory says that white men are and were always at the top. It appears to be a pillar of modern progressive politics. But when one demographic is the majority, they also tend to be the majority across all income brackets.
> Everyone has those problems, it's not limited to men or white people.
People at the 'peak of society' wouldn't worry about those problems. They would have the power and/or money to not have those problems.
> And here we have the prime example of manipulation. The reason why all those young men fall to this delusion.
CBS NYC ending controversial debit card program for migrants: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nyc-debit-card-program-...
PIX11 NYC to end debit card program for migrant families: https://pix11.com/news/local-news/nyc-to-end-migrant-debit-c...
New York Times: New York City Will Stop Giving Debit Cards to Migrants: https://archive.ph/hQtR9
If these programs are ending, it was real, not a delusion.
Telling young men today that they actually shouldn't care about any of these things because they had it so good 60 years ago has done nothing but alienate people who might otherwise have supported Democrats.
Women are becoming more liberal as they push for equality and bodily autonomy. Men are becoming more conservative because they feel that women's rights are coming at the expense of theirs and that no one is addressing their concerns.
And so there is a large cultural and political divide.
Which then has all sorts of side effects e.g. men becoming more 'incel' in their behaviour because women aren't interested in dating them, birth rate dropping because woman don't want to be stay at home moms etc.
At this point with how quickly South Korea is falling apart socially the young men may well welcome an invasion by the North since they have nothing to fight for - what happens if we have a war and we don't show up?
Pretty sure most women would just prefer to fight than be forced to carry a pregnancy.
It was all Beyonce, Michelle Obama and Taylor Swift.
You can say everything you want about Rogan, but I still really, really wish she'd done one interview with him.
Their rights are literally being stripped away, with threats of more. Even without that, the "opposing view" is voting for a convicted rapist, known pedophile, weirdly incestuous with his daughter, incapable of forming a coherent sentence, complete lack of understanding about any complex topic such as economy, admitted to spreading lies on many ocassions, started an insurrection, and on and on and on.
For literally anyone sane, any of those reasons individually would be totally disqualifying in a candidate. Let alone for people such as young women who have a lot to personally lose from a misogynist rapist promising to strip their rights. (If you haven't being paying attention, abortion restrictions have resulted in women dying of preventable reasons because doctors are afraid to do anything which might be interpreted as an abortion, even if the pregnant woman is dying in front of them from sepsis due to an unviable pregnancy; add in the threat of removing non-fault divorces, and it's genuinely scary).
The left can’t admit they’re continue not understanding voter IDs, it doesn’t mean we’re going to shut up until they’re implemented nationwide.
i live in the US and i don’t see any terrified women. please stop speaking for our country thanks.
Abortion restrictions are being implemented, which result in women being forced to carry feti which can be unviable (literally killing them), from rape or incest. Even if you don't believe women have the right to choose for themselves if they want to carry to term (I do, it's about bodily autonomy way before there's any other life in the consideration), this is egregious. Again, women are literally dying in hospitals because doctors don't want to save them out of fear of performing something which might be an abortion. This has happened in Poland, and in the US, and it will happen again.
The Supreme Court, majority appointed by Trump and similarly minded individuals, has already questioned no fault divorces and interracial marriage too.
Project 2025, sponsored by a big conservative think thank which is supporting Trump, and on whose support Trump relies (he has appointed lots of judges vetted by them, so to think they're not related is naive and delusional ), is against no fault divorces.
Most divorces are initiated by women. Most victims of domestic violence are women.
If that's not enough for you as stripping of rights, I don't know what will be. And I'm not a woman, nor American - I care because I'm capable of empathy, which seems to be a foreign concept to many Americans.
Women are a reactionary element for a reason. Now they've finally been pushed to radical extremes and you see this as a bad thing?
No having non-fault divorce doesn't stop divorces if you have an actual reason for it, a "fault" that caused the divorce if you will: Domestic abuse, cheating, abandonment, etc. Considering that men often lose the most in a divorce but don't initiate divorces indicates that women have a privilege here.
Marriage rates aren't only decreasing because of anti-social people: many men are starting to view marriage as a legal institution which benefits women exclusively - allowing them to extract resources from a man with the backing of the state and very little effort.
> Most victims of domestic violence are women.
Most reported victims of domestic violence are women. If you take into account unreported domestic violence, emotional abuse, and non-deadly domestic violence men are actually ahead of women in this particular stage of the oppression olympics.
Maybe if you could share some of that empathy with the men affected by these laws you'd see why they get pushed through, and why women also support them.
Or men don't initiate divorces because they have the most to lose?
> Most reported victims of domestic violence are women. If you take into account unreported domestic violence, emotional abuse, and non-deadly domestic violence men are actually ahead of women in this particular stage of the oppression olympics.
You can't make a claim like that without even a hint of a source. Yes, most female on male domestic violence and abuse goes unreported and hell, many men get mocked for "letting a woman do that to them". It's of course horrific. Is there any indication this is happening at a rate similar to or higher than domestic violence against women? I have never seen any, but feel free to share.
> Maybe if you could share some of that empathy with the men affected by these laws you'd see why they get pushed through,
Which laws?!
then perhaps they should leave the profession if they’re so unsure of themselves. they’re supposed to be among some of the most educated people in society and they can’t read and understand a law? or hire a lawyer?
also have you asked the women what they want? because my wife for instance is against abortion. both of my sisters as well.
Yes, that's the biggest concern for a (probably overworked) doctor, read laws and hire lawyers to make sure if they're allowed to perform a medical procedure.
> also have you asked the women what they want? because my wife for instance is against abortion. both of my sisters as well.
And I hope neither of them is dying while pregnant, willingly or not, and the doctor has to chose before doing the right thing and going to prison. If all three of them cannot realise this and why it's important to have a fucking say on the matter, they're either absurdly dumb or absurdly heartless. If they're willing to let women die of sepsis or be forced to give birth to unviable feti because they think their version of a diety tells them so, there is something wrong with them. (And I'm wording this as politely as I can, believe in whatever shit you want, but if your shit means letting people die of preventable causes because of your beliefs, you're a terrible person)
so again, if they can’t handle the job and know when it’s appropriate to give an abortion and when it isn’t then they need to quit.
Sure - but we're talking about pragmatic considerations. In hindsight, preservation or expansion of abortion rights was not enough to get men to turn out to vote for Harris in sufficient numbers to swing the election, so another kind of message should have been crafted for that voting block.
My stomach dropped when I heard a young men claim that Trump would be better because of his economic policies. To which I reply which ones? Followed by stumbling silence.
This is a young university educated 25 year old men raised in a Social Democrat European developed nation, claiming that Donald Trump would serve American interest and a world economy the best. We are absolutely underestimating the effect of people's world view being shaped by information wars on social media.
Adam Curtis 'Hypernormalisation' now feels like a Nostradamus level prediction of the decades to come.
Surkov will be proud I guess.
I'm pro-choice, but this idea that pro-life opinions are not equally popular with women is just wrong and not support by polling on the subject. I'm more pro-choice than my GF.
Also what rights are on the line here exactly? Free speech? no, thats what the dems have been attacking. Suffrage? Nope no one is trying to remove this. Even if you want to say "Roe v Wade": it's not a right to get an abortion, and its not even banned just not regulated at a federal level.
Sorry, but this is not how it works.
People have fear, prejudice and many other things that worry them. Their fear may or may not be baseless but it is there and if you are sane and more or less logical you have to take it into account.
When people fear or do not understand something they tend to turn to someone who offers them a solution.
Some times it's a doctor, some times it's a drug dealer. Why? Well, many reasons (I'll excuse myself and won't start listing those because you can write a few books about each of them)
You want people to stop turning to mafia\drug dealers or some kind of charlatans for help? You have to do something about their fears.
This is sane and logical and any therapist will tell you something similar.
Yes, it might be hard to accept, but it is quite possible you have to fix this shit to be able to fix the "their rights are literally being stripped away" part.
edit: misprints
Are some people on TikTok saying things like this? Sure. Was this part of the campaign's messaging or the party's platform? No. Not in the least.
If people are rather loudly letting you know they feel left out, you'd better come up with a strategy that somehow resonates with them, rather than saying "we never said that" and continue to lose their vote. Whether you think that's justified or not is not really relevant, not if you want to win, at least.
The same thing goes the other way 'round, if the democrats would win because too many women would have felt left out from the Republican party stance, something I can easily understand too.
Yes, you have a problem, and it's called disinformation.
> If people are rather loudly letting you know they feel left out, you'd better come up with a strategy that somehow resonates with them, rather than saying "we never said that" and continue to lose their vote. Whether you think that's justified or not is not really relevant, not if you want to win, at least.
This is some ludicrous reasoning. What do you want them to do other than say "we literally never said that"? How exactly do you picture them campaigning against strawmen and imagined threats? If people are too dumb to realise they're being lied too, that's really unfortunate, but you can't fix stupid. Ultimately that's why populist politicians with empty words are on the rise. You really cannot fix stupid.
So, reading between the lines, it sounds like these "CIS white males" (I am one, hi!) are being triggered by discussion of inclusion, bias, systemic misogyny, etc. It's not always pleasant to have a light shown on your biases but how else do you expect to grow or for society to ever change? Imagine if abolitionists or suffragettes had kowtowed to people who did or threatened to "check out" because of their work? By GP's (implied) logic, they should have and worked to overtly deal with those issues at. ... some indeterminate point in the future?
I don't think so, caring means doing something about it, if men weren't deeply misogynistic there would have been a woman president decades before. The behavior of men is not surprising however and is expected.
What is shocking is half the women in this country also don't care about their own interests either.
It is one thing for immigrants or working class to be voting against their own interests, economic and border policies are abstract and people historically have failed to attribute links to the administration responsible. Abortion is not abstract however, the linkage to right-wing policy is straightforward.
Who in their right mind votes based on the sexual organs a person has?
The misogyny is so deep that women experience it from other women.
Results in Missouri, Kansas, Montana, Arizona, Ohio, Nevada either yesterday or in the last year, that voted for trump but also voted protections for it say otherwise.
National ban is on the cards now, controlling the courts, Senate and presidency and likely the house it is quite within reach. There is nothing further to say, predictions and warnings have no clearly no effect, perhaps lived experience might, or we keep blaming healthcare workers or immigrants for everything, whatever works.
nope. still the left haven’t learned what decentralized power and states rights are. there will be no federal ban. keep spreading misinformation if you like but as the country has already shown you, we don’t believe it anymore.
I would be happy to be proven wrong , but I wouldn’t count on a strongman being restrained in using the power the court; legislatures and executives have given him.
> What is shocking is half the women in this country also don't care about their own interests either.
Aren't you just assuming for women to care about just one political issue here?...
Every woman between 18(and sadly lot younger but they cannot vote ) and 45 is affected directly personally by reproductive healthcare . It is an issue they get reminded about every month physically.
—-
Electing women heads of state , is an exceptionally low bar on misogyny scale, that only the Middle East, lesser developed parts of Africa and United States have in common .
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elected_and_appointe...
Even non Middle Eastern Islamic countries like Pakistan or Bangladesh where stoning for accusations of adultery is still a thing have democratically elected women leaders .
——
People aren’t voting for trump for his policies, neither he nor his supporters can articulate what they clearly.
2016 was explained about how it was an anti-establishment vote , Hillary had baggage .
2024 the discourse is already it the economy
record numbers voted for him in 2020 when he had the by far worst possible economy of any president ever. Biden only scrapped through by thinnest of margins .
It is disingenuous to then argue that people were smart enough to understand the reason behind the economy then , but cannot comprehend the economic consequences of 2020 policies and the trends of today to attribute to Biden .
It is always something else, we should own who we are as a society.
Kinda funny how the moment real progress is made on trying to give anyone other than males a hand up, they start crying like babies about how they're not getting enough attention. Meanwhile, those same men are literally stripping away women's rights to their own body.
The only way to counter this message is to stop with the hate speech. Like the parent above said. Even independents are tired of it now.
Of course likely the left will again ignore the warnings and continue on so I’m quite anxious to see what 2026 and 2028 bring.
Ultimately, I see the world this way: people want good things for others. Most people who voted for Trump aren't directly fascists. Trump himself I wouldn't even qualify as a fascist. But he espouses fascistic policies. Immigrants polluting the blood of America, stuff like that, those are fascist ways of talking about immigration. So at some point we have to talk about things, and denounce them. And no, Trump himself is not Mussolini. But the shortcut of calling him a fascist is ultimately okay.
Same thing with racisms. Most people aren't fundamentally racist, but they'll espouse racist opinions. So they're racist.
Pointing them out and how fundamentally unsuited that man is for any job, let alone the presidency of any country, is not "hatred". If you have a problem with people being shot at, take this up with your local representative to get better controls on who can acquire a weapon.
Stopping here because this is a blatant lie. He was NOT convicted of rape but instead sexual abuse. They are not the same and if you need further evidence then consult a lawyer.
Remember that disinformation the left claimed the right was spreading? guess what you’re doing now?
Does rape vs sexual abuse change much in your view? Especially when there's also him bragging about grabbing them right by the pussy.
'But Judge Lewis Kaplan called Trump’s semantic argument “entirely unpersuasive.” He clarified that the jury found that the former president did indeed “rape” Carroll based on the common definition of the word.'
I understand that we don't agree here and that we all view things that are said through a distorted lens... so you may feel that certain speech from one person isn't violent, but said by another person is.... and I clearly would flip that around.
Its a shame that things are the way they are, but hopefully we can all understand each other at some point and things are less polarized. Its pretty miserable to have calm and reasonable conversations about anything even broaching politics. Its just contributes to the echo chambers.
Which ones exactly?
I'm confident that I've heard both sides saying exactly what you're saying though... and I remember many times that "the end of democracy" was around the corner.... and if such-and-such wins a race war is going to break out etc.
The rhetoric and post-election-dooming is always the same regardless of which side wins.
I pretty firmly believe that things like the economy, incumbents tendency to remain in power, and a party switch after hitting the term-limit are the biggest factors. What people actually say once the primaries are over just doesn't matter to most people. People will cherry-pick what they want to hear.
What I wonder as a complete outsider: how bad must the image of "the left" be that a shady right-wing populist megalomaniac businessman with sexist tendencies wins the election a second time?
Are the democrats associated with a handful of radicals and idealistic goals that don't apply to the silent majority, or is there a perception that they can't handle the current political and economical challenges?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSw04BwQy4M
You have many examples of left not being really nice towards men in the video and in other videos on her channel.
Meanwhile, Trump has said that you should grab them by the P-word, Vance has criticized "childless cat ladies" as if being a single woman should be a crime. I can go on and on, it really is that simple.
I certainly remember hateful women lambasting men, including myself, for things like saying a woman is attractive.
Also Obama just said: "[P]art of it makes me think, and I’m speaking to men directly… that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that."
I wonder what he meant? That men are sexist because we don’t want a woman president? Or maybe that they wouldn’t vote because they’re heading to the grocery store or something?
It's really easy to find instances of right-wing politicans or pundits saying abhorrent things about women as a group (refer to my previous comment), but no one seems to care. On the other hand Obama makes vague implications that sexist bias may negatively influence their candidates and now half the country hates men.
I love how whenever someone on the left says they're offended by something outrageous and awful, the right says "grow a thicker skin, snowflake", but whenever someone on the left calmly asserts an obvious truth, that bias exists, people on the right whine that they're being attacked and their way of life is being destroyed.
I'm a man and I don't think the Democratic party "hates me". Maybe Republicans need to grow a thicker skin and stop being offended by every little thing. (See, I can be an asshole and argue in bad faith too!)
I can't speak about justifying rape or abuse or pedophilia or reproductive rights or religion or immigration or not being able to afford food. I don't live in a (that) polarised two-party system country. Though I fear we're all sort of heading that way for one reason or another...
If anything, my advice to democrats would be to start playing "dirtier", I haven't seen anyone take advantage of the recent links established between Epstein and Trump, for example.
Well, are they wrong? Once you get past the stupid rehtoric associated with the word, the goal of communists is to usher in an age of post-scarcity.
The United States is clearly leading that charge. Food production is the closest thing we have to post-scarcity, and that's almost entirely thanks to the efforts of US innovation. I even dare say that US innovation in general is doing more for bringing us closer to post-scarcity than anything else seen in the world. Harris seems/seemed on board to see that continue.
Trump may be too. He appears to also stand behind American innovation. Although, perhaps to the determinant of innovation elsewhere, which does set him apart from Harris, and, to be fair, you might argue that leaves him unaligned with the communist intention.
So, if you ignore what a word means, and redefine it, yes, anything can mean whatever you want it to mean.
Communism has an element of post-scarcity as a sort of a prerequisite, but that's neither the main goal, nor the means. There is nothing even remotely communist in anything even remotely mainstream in US politics.
Go on. What does the word mean?
It is oft associated with "member of the Communist Party", of which Harris clearly is not. Perhaps that is what you are thinking of? But that usage is like calling a member of the Democratic Party a liberal – something that is also often done. But to be a liberal does not automatically make you a member of the Democratic Party, even if members of the Democratic Party are often liberal.
> but that's neither the main goal, nor the means.
What is the main goal, then?
The means is undefined. Different communists have different ideas about how to achieve post-scarcity. The Communist Party has a particular stance about that, certainly, but as before, while members of the Communist Party may be communist, not all communists are members of the Communist Party.
So arguing that any of Harris or Trump have anything to do with communism is either very dishonest or coming from a place of deep ignorance.
While Marx believed that was necessary to see post-scarcity, it very well could be that he was wrong. This may come as a surprise to you, but he wasn't an all-knowing genie, just a feeble human. At this point in time we seem to be going down the right road without needing to do that. As before, I think we can agree that American innovation has brought us closer to post-scarcity than anything else the world has ever known.
If you are trying to say that Harris isn't a Marxist, then sure, that's fair. But we're clearly talking about "communist", not "Marxist". That these words happen to share the same last three letters does not imply that they are the same word.
If you are trying to say that Harris isn't a member of the Communist Party, as an earlier poster seemed to mistake, that is also fair. Clearly she is not that either. But, again, we're talking about "communist" not "member of the Communist Party". It is possible for a communist to be a member of the Communist Party, just as a liberal may be a member of the Democratic Party, but being a communist/liberal does not imply alignment with a political party. For our Canadian friends, being a liberal does not imply support of the Liberal Party either. Ideologies and political groups are quite distinct from each other.
> Communism is not about post-scarcity, to the contrary. It's an economic system that seeks to distribute finite resources equitably
Perhaps you just phrased it poorly, but communism is more of a lack of a system. It doesn't even have a state to administer a system! Those things go away when you have post-scarcity, naturally. Communism is not about post-scarcity, but you need post-scarcity to allow it to happen. You fundamentally cannot go stateless, classless, and moneyless without post-scarcity. Hence why communists seek post-scarcity. It is the change that ushers in communism.
> So arguing that any of Harris or Trump have anything to do with communism is either very dishonest or coming from a place of deep ignorance.
Or just boring old semantics. That is what you seem to present here, offing that Harris is not a communist simply by redefining communist (granted, it appears as though you may be struggling to get out what you are trying to say, so it might just be that).
Regardless, I spelled out my definition. Even it is not the same as your pet definition, it is the one that was given. The context is set. Under that definition, how is Harris not a communist?
If you look at the online sentiment which greatly affects young voters, it is very much anti-men in general. In fact you even have instances of this being seen in popular culture entertainment and slipping into mainstream at times. Especially for CIS white males. And guess which population overwhelmingly both voted for Trump, but also gained voters for the Trump camp? Men.
Anti-male rhetoric is at an all time high, and has given rise to male spaces being dominated by accordingly anti-female rhetoric.
This is in part what the parent comments are mentioning. That many of the most outspoke people for Dems (i.e not necessarily politicians themselves) are women who just entirely dismissed even trying to capture male voters who were on the fence. Yes, I get that it is difficult to resonate with people who vote in favor of taking away womens rights, but the problem is that you just aren't going to win if you don't capture at least some of those voters.
Republican speakers on the other hand spew non-stop hate toward every minority I could name and no one cares. If the median voters can't see that (wether he lives in a bubble or simply refuses to acknowledge it), then this country is fucked.
consider and understand =/= agree and support. Regardless of the Harris' or Dems' views, you win elections by getting votes. If we assume everyone who voted for Trump is a sexist asshole, then Harris was running for president in a country where half the electorate are sexist assholes. If you're not gonna extend empathy and try to build bridges with them, then there's no point in running.
nope, misinformation (which why? it’s his last term..). he was NOT convicted of rape and instead of a LESSER crime called sexual abuse.
That's the focus of any canvasser, not just the young women you did not like.
Perhaps. But that's not their fault. Anecdotally, 100% of my left leaning friends and colleagues were pro-Harris but with no reason other than "not Trump." That's not a "message" the undecided independents can believe in. Imagine Pepsi's key msg to be "not Coke".
Frank Luntz just said on ABC News that Harris began to lose ground ~6 wks ago when she resorted to name calling. Didn't HRC make the same mistake? How do undecided independents build trust in someone who was so guarded (e.g., zero press conferences)? And wastes time with name calling instead of hammering home her vision?
It's gonna be another four yrs of left-hate for Trump. The DNC leadership won't own their failure (again). The Harris campaign won't own their bad decisions. It'll all be Trump's fault.
Their incompetence is Trump's fault? That's lack of accountability isn't working. Again.
I get it, her campaign didn't have a lot of time. That said, the DNC should have a pulse on what voters are looking for, etc. As it is, this is the third candidate handpicked by the DNC and 2 of 3 lost to an inexperienced politician. That's not the victor's fault. Tho I'm confident there will be little to no accountability owned by the DNC. It's going to be four more years of blame the winner.
Luntz is widely respected as a political pollster. He said, the focus groups he worked with showed she lost momentum when the name-calling started. Is that why she lost? No, there were plenty of reasons. But if Luntz said that didnt' help then there's no reason to think otherwise.
Why are we letting pure simplistic tribal emotion take over in this age of science and rationality?...
Canvassing is all about ensuring that the people who already agree with your position know how to express that on the ballot, and do.
Maybe after this rematch the blue team will finally understand the loss was their fault, so they can start moving away from the abominable ideology and spiteful elitism that handed them this result.
A women of the luxury belief professional class from an academic family and an uninspiring bureaucratic life story was never going to be able to talk to these people and she didn't really try too either.
The specific policies don't really matter to people when they are exhausted and angry. Revenge does.
Sending love and can relate, original commenter. I wouldn’t pick anywhere in Eastern Europe, that’s for sure. Get prepared for lots of “it’s just a little fascist rhetoric, he doesn’t really mean it when he says all trans people are pedophiles and he’s gonna deport legal immigrants who seem illegal” comments
If you are asking for worker's visa, you will get it (or very unlikely not get it) and be done with it in a few weeks. Then you just live your life normally, have access to job market, pay taxes and all that. Maybe even have a nice tax deal.
If you submit for protection, then government will consider your application in maybe 2 years, but no promise (subtext: we don't want you here anyways, you are not a priority). While it's not approved, your access to labor market is limited (because they take your jobs!).
If you are a tech worker with a visa, you may learn the language or not, do it fast, slow and decide yourself. If you are a status holder, you have an obligation and a case worker. Generally speaking you have a case worker and government wants to know you are still in the country and how you are doing.
Now since you can't have a job, you will also have a problem finding a normal free market rent in a place that suits your vibes, so you will be at the mercy of the government as well. Happening be happening in places where a lot of people with no access to labor market are concentrated and conditions will be, lets just say cheap. Once you are processed you may get social housing. There isn't a whole lot of it sitting free in the center of the capital 5 mins aways from the you dream tech job.
Now as to all of Europe? Probably not all of it, but affluent tech worker probably wants to go to a nice part of it, where everyone also wants to be, including all the actual refugees from the previous three wars and people who joined them on the way and put the foot into the door and don't want to be kicked out. System can handle it in case of emergency, but then the flow has to subside and thing have to be back to normal. Well having constant inflow is a new normal, so what does political body do with it? Downscale and slow down to throttle it.
On the off chance of picking the place that isn't nice for everybody's liking, the burueacracy may be specifically optimized to reject everyone and not speak languages. Bureacracy is also very local and doesn't always match political speeches of the supreme leader whenever you agree with them or not.
Do the normal tech visa, it's fine.
For starters, you'd be quite limited in your personal freedoms until the application is processed [years], unlikely to have the right to work, or the right to leave the country you just landed in without the application being automatically cancelled.
If, and really I can't see this happening, as a US citizen, you were to be granted asylum; then you ever travelling back to the US for any reason would make it likely that you would immediately lose the status (hence right to work, etc), likely with a future entry ban thrown in on top.
Work visas in the European countries I know of are not at all like the US H1B/Green Card style system. There are plenty of Americans here who just did it the 'normal way' and got a job offer and filed the paperwork for that [weeks]
Regardless, I don’t think “coming back to the US to visit family” is on our radar. That’s what makes this election heartbreaking. Asylum or no, moving overseas is effectively abandoning your extended/older family forever, unless you’re rich and/or a climate change denier.
Moving somewhere is very different than being a tourist, or an extended stay.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-goes-all-in-on-anti-trans
"In the past five weeks, Trump’s operation has spent more than $29 million on TV ads criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting transgender surgeries for inmates and illegal immigrants in detention, according to data from the media tracking firm AdImpact. That makes the topic, by far, the biggest focal point when it comes to Trump’s ad spending"
https://michiganadvance.com/2022/11/11/michigan-gop-finger-p...
"There were more ads on transgender sports than inflation, gas prices and bread and butter issues that could have swayed independent voters. We did not have a turn out problem — middle of the road voters simply didn’t like what Tudor was selling."
https://www.wmur.com/article/chuck-morse-kelly-ayotte-debate...
in NH, ayotte wanted forced outing of transgender individuals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TSoTOuo9L0
in ohio, moreno ran ads saying brown “would allow sex change surgery for young kids.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E73kKnbpAVw
in WI, hovde said his opponent (baldwin) supported 'castration' for minors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl1Y2dTzvAU
and in PA, mccormick said his opponent (casey) wants to “force hospitals to perform sex change surgeries on kids.”
Appreciate you citing your sources.
You might also want to take a look at the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty.
A lot of them are looking for software engineers. Just go through the list one by one and keep applying.
However - the salaries in Europe are significantly lower than in the US. Be prepared for that.
Or you could come here to Canada.
The problem is you're going to find the same attitudes outside of the US, just a few years behind.
Be ready to take a paycut. Salaries in Europe aren't what they're like in the US. But we make it up in many other ways.
(Offer applies to anyone else who sees this)
Culturally I think an American would find it easier to adapt than eg France or Germany. The anglosphere individualism is present but watered down from the American extremes. Bureaucracy is low compared to the rest of Europe. People are superficially friendly, but it can be hard to penetrate social circles as an outsider. It is a more high context society than the US - you will be seen as a loud annoying yank, at least at first, but people can forgive, and you can adapt.
There's a functional social welfare system, free education and free Healthcare. All three have their problems, but are ultimately doing way better than our neighbours in the uk.
If you're black you will experience some racism, but not on the same level as in the us. When people hear you speak with an American accent a lot of that will probably evaporate. If you're hispanic, I don't think it will really register as an issue. Spanish speakers in europe are generally spanish, and are considered European, not some other lesser race the way they are in the us.
With a career in cs it should be easy to find a company willing to hire you, and sponsor your visa. Alternatively there is a special visa system (very badly advertised) for founders to move to Ireland and open a startup. Regardless, once you've been resident for 5 years you have the right to get citizenship.
This is all my opinion as an Irish developer who has been living in mainland Europe for the last 6 years or so.
It is not free for all.
This is of course anecdotal, but my partner spent a couple weeks in Dublin and a couple other Irish cities recently for a work thing, and was surprised to feel unsafe there. One of her co-workers was physically attacked by two drunk men, completely unprovoked, and several of her LGBTQ colleagues had disgusting things shouted at them in public, multiple times.
Depending on what group the toplevel poster is in that makes them feel wary about remaining in the US, I'm not convinced Ireland is a good choice.
Maybe look into Dutch American Friendship Treaty?
Illegal aliens? Criminals in general? Trying to think what else
As for hatred of trans people: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cpac-spe...
The last political ad I saw, and it was endorsed by Trump, featured a segment furthering the conspiracies around Imane Khelif, implying she was a man, etc.
We can ascertain from all this that Khelif went through male puberty and has the male physical advantage in sport that is caused by male sexual development.
Interestingly this is the same DSD that Caster Semenya has. Semenya is another male athlete who competed in a women's category at the Olympics, for the 800 metres track event, and who also won gold.
Individuals with this condition are sometimes mistaken for female at birth due to internal testes and an underdeveloped penis. And are then issued identity documents erroneously stating that they are female. This is what happened with Semenya and almost certainly is the case with Khelif too.
yes you have. Unless you are in US illegally, you have 50 states to chose from.
Idk which Nordic country you are in but for example in Denmark there's a scheme called fast track quick job start that can get tech workers (among others) a residence permit the same day someone applies, often within an hour of the application being filed assuming you go straight to their office to get fingerprinted.
SIRI puts a lot of work into making moving here easy if you're a net tax benefit (and imo that's a good thing)
Outside of skilled work and tech though I've heard getting a visa is pretty much impossible for non EU citizens
That's not to say that Canadians are right or wrong in having issues with the levels of Indian migration to Canada, I just don't want to end up on the bad side of that.
+-------------------+-------------+-------+-------+------------+------------+
| Political Group | LGBT Voters | Cis | Trans | Non-Binary | All Voters |
+-------------------+-------------+-------+-------+------------+------------+
| Radical Left | 17 | 16 | 33 | 16 | 14.5 |
| Moderate Left | 16 | 20 | 13 | 10 | 10 |
| Center | 22 | 24 | 20 | 17 | 25 |
| Moderate Right | 15 | 15 | 7 | 17 | 15 |
| Radical Right | 30 | 25 | 26 | 40 | 34.5 |
| Other | - | - | 1 | - | 1 |
+-------------------+-------------+-------+-------+------------+------------+
For LGBTQ+, asylum is the likely option, but one that cannot be exercised until you have demonstrable proof you’d come to harm here in the States. That’ll be easier for folks in Red States whose policies are already openly hostile to our mere existence, but you’d likely get pushback since there are other states to move to and the Federal policies remain unchanged at this time.
Right now, your best bet is to sit, analyze, and prepare. Get your passport and make copies of any identity documentation. Be ready to leave at a moment’s notice, because we don’t have the luxury of believing that man, his party, or his electors are just joking around or otherwise not serious.
EDIT: one other thing you can do is get the hell out of a Red State ASAP and move into one of the “Blue Fortresses” of New England or the Pacific Coast. Equality Map has a good breakdown of states’ laws and protections broken down into LGBTQ-specific categories, and that’s going to be of critical import if Federal protections are tossed out. Those areas also have the added benefit of plentiful immediate transportation options out of the country, either by land, sea, or air if need be.
I'm not privileged enough to have first-handle experience and have the normal knowledge worker visa, but I worked with a dude, who had this setup.
My intention was to empower readers to take charge of their outcomes, something work visas aren’t reliable for in most cases (though in HN readers’ cases, it could be a valid one; I will be curious if any big tech employers offer relocation and visa assistance in the coming years).
Usually you need to have enough qualification and a job offer to apply for a work visa that is bound to the employing company for two years. Switching jobs requires reapplying. Afterwards, you can usually get a work visa that is not bound to a specific company, and less time limited.
Normally it's you applying for the visa, but in some cases the company hiring you can file the application, which can drastically reduce the time you have to wait, but cedes some control.
Of course, all this depends on your nationality and the country where you are applying.
You need to apply for a position and get it. Then you need to apply for the visa. That can take a couple of months to process, which sounds like a lot, but remember that in many European countries this is on par with, or less than, the notice period for changing a job. So for the employer it won't make a big difference.
You will probably have to pay for moving yourself though.
Everything else, including having passport and no previous history of war crimes, raping and pillaging for 5 years also applies to other visas anyway.
It's also not H1B type of slavery, there are not quotas, you can change employer whenever your want and not even lose fancy tax ruling. Work visa is the easiest way.
Remember that 'the EU' is around 30 individual countries each with their own work visa issuing procedures and rules - none of which are really at all comparable to the US system.
Seriously just choose a country and apply for a job with a company that doesn't explicitly state that they need you to already have the right to work in that country and see where it goes.
Girlfriend and I ended up moving over to Morocco on a temporary visa. That didn't end up working. However, I ended up then moving by myself from country to country for about a year, becoming a nomad and mostly living out of a backpack and sleeping bag. Basically walking and hitchhiking across portions of Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
Admittedly, this is rather challenging. However, many areas of the Earth are "ok" with 30-180 day stays, and the experience itself can be rather life changing. Got to go and teach children in Palestine because of that choice, which felt like at least contributing slightly to solving the issues in the Middle East. Here's the list as far as how long they'll allow legal stays per country (for Americans, since American perspective).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_S...
The other issue though, is if you're looking now, you're already kind of behind. Google says the numbers have doubled since 1999, and I've heard much larger numbers (like 17 million in the last three years). If you believe World Population Review, then there's about 8 million registered expats existing abroad.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/american-...
Here's another table from Wikipedia that "mostly" lines up with similar population percentages. Notably, those who have declared residency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_United_Sta...
It would definitely not be my choice if I was actually persecuted in my country.
Do you have any data points on this, I remember reading that some Americans have tried applying for asylum in Canada, but no one has ever been accepted.
As with all plans, this will not withstand enemy contact. You will need to adapt it to survive as required.
I just honestly hope it doesn’t get to that point.
Not being a sore second-hand loser much, may I offer my sincere congratulations to Presidents Putin, and Xi on their successful re-elections.
TLDR of work: We write the global platform
I’m European and most likely the overall effect you’d have, unless you went to a high income country where your impact is minimised, is likely to be net negative by raising housing prices in some poorer country like Portugal. Don’t be too surprised when their own Trump gets elected.
So far, there are no indications of the far-right gaining any amount of power with which they could govern. In a broader sense there have been a number of rightwing victories across Europe, but thus far Portugal (and Spain next door) don't look poised to join that trend.
Of course you are an American expat in Lisbon, so I assume you are living a life that's likely not very connected to local concerns. I assure you, Chega is growing like hell. I am not a supporter, I just see it.
Expats and the ballooning cost of housing is a part of it. The fact that you moved to Lisbon will have the victory of the far right here as a second order effect. Think about that.
The fact that there are so many expats blowing up the cost of living doesn't help.
Enjoy it.
And anyways we aren’t moving to Portugal. We have a few spots in mind, several of them are within the 2 EU countries where we are citizens. Bit odd to suggest we’d be net negatives in our own countries any more than you are a net negative in yours. But I suppose we are all a net negative when it comes to carbon emissions and environmental impact.
Airbnbs were part of the destruction of that city for residents. They’re priced out.
Tourists are not a patsy. Their impact on the city and real estate prices was devastating.
I didnt invite a single person. The owners of capital did.
This cold, zero empathy attitude is very typical of the "expat" culture.
Not sure what kind of empathy you are looking for. How could I possibly solve your problems? Only when you take responsibility, as the only people in the world with a vote, can you change the situation.
Come work in Berlin.
Very LGBTQ friendly.
The current gov. reduced the path to citizenship down to 5 years and allows for dual citizenships.
Get a permanent residency earlier, go live and work in the EU.
There is nowhere to run to. When the Right felt like they were losing the soul of their country, they stayed and they voted. When Democrats feel the same, you want to run? I hear this everywhere and its literally the sensibility destroying America; not because the right is going to destroy America, far from it, but because any unchecked side will.
They want to run because the right is using violent language and saying they are going on a revenge tour. Why is that weird to you?
“for the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely”
Trump banned trans people from serving in the military. More broadly, trans people routinely lose their jobs.
Trump has repeatedly called for socialists to be destroyed. For example:
"We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections...”
Trump has called for socialists to be deported:
“Today I’m announcing a new plan to protect the integrity of our immigration system. Federal law prohibits the entry of communists and totalitarians into the United States. But my question is, what are we going to do with the ones that are already here, that grew up here? I think we have to pass a new law for them.”
Calling Trump Hitler gives Trump too much credit, but the political conditions of 1930's Germany and economic anger giving rise to a desire for national purity and scapegoating minorities is pretty dead on. And it's not like Germany is unique, we're really not much more advanced than ritual sacrifice of people taken by demons to bring about a good harvest, err economy. This has been a persistent bug in Human we keep hitting.
I am a progressive. I'm obviously dissatisfied with the results of this election. But I'm even more dissatisfied with the reaction I'm seeing from the left. I cannot and won't respect the "vibes" of "we're all gonna die, there's roving gangs in F150s in the streets, I'm leaving for Canada, the country hates me". I won't respect that. It is not indicative of any reality outside today, or in the immediate future (and I live in an extremely right-leaning place).
The reality that I want the left to adopt is: Its not that bad. The world isn't going to end. Both Trump and Kamala received fewer votes this year than in 2020. Progressive policies are majority-popular in the United States. Kamala was just a (very) bad candidate. Don't let that energy you're feeling go to waste by planning your escape to Thailand or laying in bed all day wrapped up in a cocoon. Educate the people around you. Be out in your community. And prepare for an even more important election in 2028.
The people who voted for Trump want people like you and me to die. (And fair enough, I want THEM to die!) You can choose how to respond to that, but you cannot deny it. For me, I don't think I have good prospects for leaving the country, but I am investing in a weapon. "Be out in your community" -- fuck that. I am acting for me and mine alone at this point, EVERYONE else can go to hell.
A number of people from marginalized groups literally fear for their lives right now. That's based in reality, coming from Trump's bigoted rhetoric and the people he allies himself with. Whether you think they should feel that way or not, it's the way that they do feel and it's valid.
It's a reasonable reaction when you believe your life is in danger to try and get yourself out of that situation. You saying "it's not that big of an issue" and "where's the evidence" is both tone-deaf and beside the point. This person is scared. They have bigger problems than your opinion that they should stick around and vote. Help or stay out of it.
No one is out to get you. You are a victim of propaganda.
You will not get your SV salary ofc and maybe even less than 100k, but hej, you flee the opressive regime, right?
Now if things are bad and you are targeted personally and have a paper trail, there is also asylum thing. You don't want to do that thing, it sucks. Just get a job in whatever country you fancy and they will move you.
- Biden's Inflation
- Fortunate timing
- Donald Trump is not too too old
- Israel/Gaza split Democratic Base
- Harris underestimated the podcasting worldAn international perspective is useful here:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/15/in-the-u-...
I think it's easy to say "Harri needed more votes" but to go about this strategically, there needs to be on-target messaging.
Did they include into the prediction the fact that in many state mail in ballots have to be counted after normal ballots and that for a lot of reasons Democrats are way more likely to vote by mail.
EDIT: Not that it matters anymore by know.
And takes up to 3 days as it's more work then processing the normal ballot votes (especially if the normal votes are done with voting machines).
but is quite unlikely to change the outcome with how things look by now.
That said, you must have a lot more faith in the current policies than I do. The sole focus on limiting carbon in the atmosphere has been woefully misguided in my opinion. We need to focus on reducing our total impact on the planet, not just trying to mitigate it a bit while we continue to consume more resources and use use more energy every year.
If human impact on the planet is going to kill us all with Trump in office, it was going to happen either way.
I'm honestly not sure how much a difference Trump will make in this. The US greatly increased oil and gas production under Biden.
It seems that policies that supported an energy transition were generally working. If those get rolled back, hopefully things are in a good enough place that more sustainable energy continues dominating.
Moving from fossil fuels to renewables or even nuclear is all well and good, but it takes a huge amount of natural resources to pull off. Nuclear may be easier, renewables require a lot more resources than we currently have.
This is very unrealistic IMO. That will never happen. It flies against the whole idea of civilization and the development of human history.
Energy consumption will rise on larger timescales. Best you can do is to tame the growth by efficiency and using more renewable, greener energy generation.
If you want to keep bees on your apartment roof that is fine, but we are not all going back to being subsistence farmers at this point.
Defeatist? Perhaps, but I don't think so.
We're not only increasing total energy consumption every year, we're increasing energy consumption per capita. It may be one thing if the argument is that energy use will rise or fall inline with population, but that's not the case.
This is the main crux of why climate change debates have always felt hollow to me. We can argue about plastic straws, diesel engine emissions, or what an acceptable level of parts per million in the atmosphere is but those are all surface level problems. Assuming the science linking human impact to climate issues is accurate, we're screwed no matter what we do on those issues if we continue to demand more power from whatever today's preferred energy source is.
But it is not completely out of the question we could solve abundant nonpolluting energy. Failure there is not inevitable.
> people collectively will learn what it means to have "enough"
Maybe I am too cynical, but I think the problem with this is that means, in practice:
"OK, everyone. Let's stop accelerated technological progress, and the level of civilization we have today, that's where we're going to stay at from now on, with maybe some smaller bugfixes rolling out once every 50 years or so.
The quality of life you have today? That's it.
Oh, and all you guys still in poverty [there are still billions of people who use very little energy], you're also going to have to stay there. Sorry."
That will in turn cause civil unrest and even more unhappy people than we have today, which means increased totalitarianism, oppression and violence to quash that to keep societies "stable". For all the ills of consumerism and aspirationism, it _is_ serving as an opium to keep people distracted from the harsh realities of the world.
We'd go back to the Middle Ages, in terms of the rate of improvement of the quality of life. I don't think many people are OK with that.
I am pretty cynical and skeptical, so that may be tainting my view here for sure. This idea of abundant, nonpolluting energy feels like a perpetual motion machine to me. Energy systems require control to be useful, from storage to transmission to heat dissipation. Energy systems are inherently lossy and though we could one day find a cleaner or even truly clean energy source, that energy still has to be stored, transmitted, and used.
> OK, everyone. Let's stop accelerated technological progress, and the level of civilization we have today, that's where we're going to stay at from now on, with maybe some smaller bugfixes rolling out once every 50 years or so.
The opposite side of the coin is interesting to consider as well. We will always think things could be better, and maybe we even can make them better. We need to know what "enough" is though, and that would mean that we could get to a point where we have consumed enough resources and we should slow down or stop. "Progress" as a goal always sounds great on the surface, but it has to be directional (we need to know what we're progressing towards) and it must be bounded when goals are reached.
This is really where my cynicism steps in though. I just haven't seen many examples of people who can actually find "enough" and stop there. We tend to get used to what we have now and imagine ways things could get better. If energy were better used today, for example, I strongly believe that everyone could have the basics of food, water, shelter, and community covered and we wouldn't be stuck hating our jobs and always stressed out. We just collectively don't seem to want that.
And critically, I think, the Harris campaign failed to highlight facts like that, and emphasize how she will be different. Instead she completely bungled the messaging and went for "I'll do nothing different from what Biden did except add a Republican in my cabinet".
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/06/politics/harris-campaign-...
> “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” co-host of ABC’s “The View” Sunny Hostin asked Harris, looking to give her a set for her to spike over the net. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said.
Talk about a monumental failure.
I guess you didn’t know this, the idea is strength in numbers. If you can’t provide for personal and collective defense, gtfo.
When I hear phrases like strength in numbers, I think of elephants. When a herd of elephants watches lions circle their community, the strong ones stand around their young to protect them.
That's analogous to "strong" countries subsidizing ones who can't provide for themselves, because having an allied presence is helpful.
When that is said, its good that most NATO countries are hitting and exceeding 2%. It's clear that Europe can not rely on USA to be the "world police", we need to be be able to defend ourself.
Also, friendly reminder that article 5 has been used exactly once, and that was to defend USA. Soldiers of my country has died defending USA.
This feels like a club you pay 2% for protection…
Chile's attempt at lukewarm socialism didn't fail from internal causes. Cuba didn't brought embargo on themselves. To name but two. Considering the USA has been at war for almost the entirety of it's history, there must be a couple more.
"Club" was a tame euphemism I only took from the comment I was replying to. I think "Mafia" would be more appropriate.
As to what Trump actually is saying, I have no idea, he’s hard to parse.
pay up or gtfo.
That will all depend on how worn down the Russian military actually is and how long it needs to rebuild. And at any rate the threat of Russian military action will be used to punish any European country that doesn’t accept Russian influence. It will be used on former Soviet republics.
The only thing that may stop Trump and saving Europe is his ego now that he has effective immunity from prosecution as Putin is no longer a threat to him.
We will see who the bigger narcissist actually is. Putin is probably smarter though.
We need some seriously smart republicans.
Countries with right wing Russian aligned puppets may prevent direct conflict by appeasement but nevertheless they will be under Putin’s control.
China will continue being China. Where semiconductors fall will be interesting as will access to battery tech.
Trump will print money to appease his base and we will see exactly how economic forces evolve beyond control.
Buying crypto now seems like a good idea.
I stopped reading here. If Putin expands the war it will be nuclear. No country will survive. WW3 is coming soon.
The EU SHOULD be spending the agreed upon 2%, all this weasley shit the EU gov'ts are pulling is a complete joke considering the massive Bear in the room that is Russia.
Any benefit the US thinks they get for the policies that Trump and his ear-whisperers wants to enact will be short-term. Which is not a problem for Trump as he won't be there to see the long term consequences.
Can you imagine what the world might look like if all of the EU spend as much on the military as the U.S.?
Be careful what you wish for.
Decoupling globally continues.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/368528/us-military-army-n...
> Be careful what you wish for.
A strong EU that Putin will think twice before starting anything at their doorstep is my wish. Let's see if they can make it happen!
Why, what's the idea behind it? Isn't he big on military and showing power?
Europe and India are the regions that are actually surprisingly negligible. Africa and the rest of the developing world doesn't make a blip.
When you import goods, you import their emissions. It's just super hard to measure (and we like to blame it all on China).
I meant that in practice it's very difficult to track, because it involves a lot of actors in a lot of countries.
The graal of climate policy would actually be to be able to know precisely the impact of every single action we do. So that we could optimize properly. But because we can't do that, we have to rely on proxies, and that makes it error prone and practically very challenging.
And China is already leading the world in moving to renewable technology, they are moving in the right direction (not entirely for altruistic reasons - it fulfils their ambitions of energy self-sufficiency).
Almost 1/5 people are in China, if tomorrow the country divided itself up into smaller nations would thay change anything about the pollution bring emmited?
Unless you have policy recommendations to change the total number of people on Earth (please don't) then global emissions per capita are the only stat that matters.
China just had an astronomically high population. They will always be higher overall due to this.
An actual measurement of this needs to be performed capita.
Similar, countries with aging population will see an increase in emissions per capita regardless if they are actually decreasing emissions, as long the population loss is greater than emissions decreases.
EPA and other regulatory agencies have been stripped of their regulatory powers. Any “vague” law which was interpreted by agencies can now be challenged in courts.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon...
Dems want to have international treaties to address the problem and are willing to spend money to move away from fossil fuels. Republicans downplay the science (or outright deny it) and think international treaties make the US less independent and therefore weaker, and they would much rather cut taxes for Elon Musk than spend money on energy infrastructure.
It's fair to say that we're "cooked" in ever sense of the word.
The only thing bad about Elon is business interests he will make policies that promote his own businesses. But trump will likely do the same.
I’ve been saying since the hyperloop in like 2014 that he doesn’t, and he’s done nothing to convince me otherwise.
You don’t know your shit if you aren’t aware of how close Elon is to engineering and science.
He hasn’t designed or engineered a single component. He hasn’t managed any internal project.
I have to ask, are you president of his fan club? You seem personally offended that I pointed out that he doesn’t actually contribute meaningfully to any engineering work.
No. I'm not a fan at all. But I don't have this biased hatred for him that you seem to have.
>He’s not knee deep in engineering, at all. It’s ridiculous to imagine he is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYQxG4KEzvo
You are truly out of touch about this guy if you don't know that he's knee deep in engineering. Not even joking here. The fact that you don't know this shows that you don't really know much about him. Dude, just read his biography or if you don't have time watch the above video that sums it up from an unbiased pov.
Dang, how many biggest problems is it okay to have? I can still think of a couple more.
US oil production is the highest in the world, the highest in its history, and is so maxed out that there are loads of drilling rights that aren't even being exercised as oil companies all realized that it was pyrrhic with current low oil prices.
On the climate position I don't think things can go back. Wind, solar and evolving nuclear just make it a silly thing to do.
There just isn't anything to really be done there.
this is the summary of trumps entire campaign platform. i’m honestly not even sure he expressed a concrete policy on anything. he said he wants even more aggressive tariffs and will start deportation on day 1 (and was relatively nonchalant about some “legal” immigrants being caught up with “illegal” ones). cut dei.
there’s honestly no plan or policy, just a nebulous wish list that appeals to the base impulses of humanity.
the only real expectation that i have is that justices thomas and alito will retire early in his term to allow him to appoint new ones early enough to not allow democrats to stall like mcconnell did.
It goes up either way, you might as well have the source be here instead of from a foreign adversary.
He could target research into clean energy technology, ending government initiatives and taking away research grants.
He could remove regulations on energy efficiency.
He could put giant tariffs on anything made in China that is used in clean energy production (like solar panels, batteries, and electronics).
He could make it harder to get approvals to install clean energy production, siding with NIMBYs who oppose solar, wind, and battery projects.
He could cut federal funding for public transit.
I don't know how much of that he would actually do, but in the past he has expressed support for a lot of it. So I think he will try to do some of it.
It's possible we have already reached a tipping point where the total cost of clean energy production and consumption is cheaper even without all of these subsidies and so on. If so, then the transition might continue anyway. But if so, I think it will still be a slower transition.
The way I see it, he will continue with the transition whenever it benefits him/the country. Which means some programs might be canceled, especially if they go against such interests.
Sure Elon might have an impact on CO2 emissions in the transport sector but I don't see him moving things that don't directly benefit him, say, electricity/heat production or agriculture.
Not sure how reliable all this is... Yet it seems "road" is nearly 10-11% which is big enough to solve and to have already an impact in everyday life. Then it cascades to other sectors too.
Edit: actually in the graphic it's the largest sector! My bad
I'm not convinced Musk cares all that much about the environment anymore, if he ever truly did. EVs were a bet that car buyers (and governments) would care about the environment.
Musk just wants to go to Mars and leave Earth behind.
I don't want to live in fantasy land here. Based on observable actions, Musk isn't brining any positive force to the table
He clearly does align with the movement in some ways, but he also is responsible for SpaceX, for example. Don’t you think that marks him out as being a bit different from the others?
Also, there are observable actions. If you listen to some of the podcasts he’s been on recently (as painful as they can be) you’ll hear him very flatly rejecting suggestions of quackery and ‘vaccine scepticism’. He’s so obviously not stupid, even if he’s degenerated somewhat, as many of us have, by constant exposure to poisonous social media.
You can't predicate the fact he has had success with those companies and somehow say his actions are some undercover operation to gain a position of power that will help average Americans or moderate the administration or whatever you want to say with that.
We should be focused on public actions and as it sits over the last 4 years in particular, Musk's actions are very concerning and there is serious cause for concern.
You haven't proven he isn't fully bought on MAGA bullshit with this. Its fantasy thinking running contrary to available evidence. He's broadly bought into Trump and the policies that brings, that much is clear.
Have you listened to his interviews? I don’t think you have.
By the way, I’m saying has bought it to some extent — just not fully.
Just because someone does a sit down interview and nudges around the edges about things they disagree with doesn't mean he's not fully bought in. There is zero evidence he meaningfully disagrees with Trump on anything of consequence
He donated at least $132 million dollars to the Trump campaign and GOP allies[0], for god sakes. Do you really think anyone donates $132 million dollars to something they aren't fully bought in to?
When someone shows you who they are, you should believe them.
[0]: https://fortune.com/2024/10/26/elon-musk-political-donations...
> There is zero evidence he meaningfully disagrees with Trump on anything of consequence
What I just said above is evidence, I think. There certainly isn't zero evidence.
> Do you really think anyone donates $132 million dollars to something they aren't fully bought in to?
Yes — absolutely. People make compromises all the time, and employ strategies that exchange short-term (even reputational) cost for long-term benefit.
> When someone shows you who they are, you should believe them.
He has shown us who he is, so far, by his actions in building companies and promoting rationality and science. Yes, he's also recently gone down the rabbit hole of nonsense on Twitter, but for now I don't think that fully represents his underlying nature.
I have no particular dog in this fight. I'm not American and nor do I have any particular love of Musk. However, I think you're overreacting.
As for your source: I know how much he's donated, and it is a shocking amount. However, in the wake of Trump's re-election, the share price of Tesla has just gone up 15% making Musk $15 billion richer. Makes that $132 million seem like pocket change. At worst, he's a self-interested opportunistic capitalist. But he's not a moron or a religious zealot as others are.
I expect he will either indeed be a moderating influence on the administration (remember this is in the context of Trump; I'm not saying he counts as a moderate in the usual sense) or will quickly lose favour or otherwise become disenchanted with Trump and Trumpism and vacate whatever position he's granted and move on.
Also remember: I'm not arguing he's particularly sensible or even acts like a grown up (he doesn't). I'm arguing that he's not 'literally Hitler' as some seem to be insinuating.
The valid policies will remain. I've been hearing the rest for decades now.
The rise of right wing forces globally and anti immigration forces, is a consequence of immigration from regions that are not only crushed by wars, but also by climate instability.
Since solutions are too complex and require global cooperation, its easier for governments to not do anything.
As this keeps up, and larger areas of the world become uninhabitable, more migration will occur, leading to more power to demagogues and dictators.
Alternatively, if the fed didn't just print money to pay for unnecessary vote-buying schemes then the inflation rate would have been only minimally (if at all) impacted by the points you made.
If you want a straight line drawn in markers for something like the global economy - I mean, sure?
Given the forum though, I hesitate to place you amongst such company. I am guessing you know what the Fed's remit is, and therefore WHY they are printing money.
Voting against the environment in favor of lower prices will ultimately lead to higher prices.
also, it’s going to get worse for that person’s grocery bill under trump. the middle class will come under even greater short-term pressure over the next few years as trump’s “concepts of a plan” begin to materialize.
but hey, at lease my kitten is safe. just wish someone would do something about all the geese here.
It will cause huge amounts of human suffering though.
Beyond that, I agree with you, and it's one of my major concerns as well.
We’re at the beginning of the exponential ramp on this sort of stuff, where the changes are barely noticeable. For example, until last night (so, assuming best case greenhouse projections), there was roughly a 50% chance that some people reading this will live to see the northern half of Europe turn into a glacier.
Anyway, without modern civilization, we probably won’t survive 10,000’s of years of such stuff. The global population bottlenecked at a few thousand the last time this happened.
We are currently living in an era of mass extinction. It's not something that's coming, we are in it, it is measurable. 75% of wild animals, insects and trees have disappeared. That is a fact, and it is not related to climate change at all: "just" to how we humans organize the world (mostly habitat loss).
Climate change will bring famines, natural disasters, and global instability (that means wars). This is yet to come.
It is fairly likely that at this rate, we will reach 4 degrees of global warming. At 4 degrees, a large part of the Earth (around the Equator) becomes unlivable for humans (it's too humid and hot, we can't regulate our temperature by sweating, we die). Which means that billions of people will need to relocate. This is not just normal wars: think entire countries that decide to leave their territory and go somewhere else, together with their army.
I don't know what the definition of "extinction-level" means (maybe you only care about some individuals of the human species surviving), but in my book that's as bad as it gets.
In the book of world history things have been way worse[0].
In the book of world futures things could get way way worse[1].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...
Has it been way worse, really? I think that the climate change that ended the dinosaurs happened slower than what we are expecting with ours (but I didn't check it and I am not completely sure).
I am sure of this, though: the mass extinction we are living now is the fastest we know. Let me rephrase it: we human have made 75% of wild animals, insects and trees disappear faster than it ever happened in the history of Earth.
> In the book of world futures things could get way way worse[1].
"Way way worse"? Do you realise what "20 degrees around the equator becomes uninhabitable" means? It's like half of the inhabited world becomes mars, and the people living there have no choice but to move where the other half is.
I think that it was a figure of speech. Whether it brings the human species to the brink of extinction or makes life unbearable for 90% of humans and destroys civilization as we know it is a bit of a technicality, if you ask me.
In any case it is one of the biggest problems of our time.
Maybe. But in the face of a malicious misinformation campaign, I think it's important to be accurate and careful with our words. Hyperbolic statements are not really helpful as it adds just the right ring of truth to the "it's all a load of bollocks by climate alarmists" claims, so it ends up just helping the misinformation campaign.
If you imagine a big stripe around the equator where people can't survive (it's basically mars) and have no other choice than to "invade" the rest of the world that may already not have the capacity to feed its population anymore, with oceans rising and pushing another couple billions inside the lands (so you can't just build walls as a country, you have civil war).
That's pretty much where we are headed now, and the data seems to show every year that we are actually getting there closer than we thought we were (because when our models "forget" something, usually it's something that made it worse). Not only that, but we are accelerating in that direction.
I personally think we're way passed the point where we can call anything "alarmism". The most conservative scenario I can find without us making drastic changes are all "equally bad" (as in: I don't really care whether or not the human species survives if all my relative and I die in very bad conditions).
That's what I mean with "it's as bad as it gets": between extinction of the human species and the most conservative scenario if we don't change, none of them is acceptable to me.
Like, if most of the tropics reach wet-bulb temperature and more than a billion people live there - that will be grim.
"The President might not sign the bill, however. If he specifically rejects the bill, called a veto, the bill returns to Congress. There it is voted on again, and if both houses of Congress pass the bill again, but this time by a two-thirds majority, then the bill becomes law without the President’s signature. This is called “overriding a veto,” and is difficult to do because of the two-thirds majority requirement."
A large part of the Republicans' strategy is to appoint partisan judges & let them legislate from the bench for the rest of their lives. Talking up thread about "the biggest problem", this is probably it. In the context of climate change, recently we can see SCOTUS shooting down environmental protections. This happens in lower courts too, but those don't make national news.
Not to mention, this is a very naive take, at best.
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-solar-industry...
It's not to argue directly against your point but just that we still have a lot of work to move over to a sustainable electrical grid. And that will be helped by favourable policy
I guess another angle is that he is best buddies with Elon who could potentially do some interesting things there.
In reality we are dealing with Putin having effective control and is now basically unrestrained.
Elon is comoditizing space. If that's profitable, he will get SpaceX to a point where people go on holiday in a rocket. That's exactly going in the wrong direction in terms of climate.
But if you don't see how it is an environmental one... well I don't know how I can help. And I mean that honestly. I see a lot of comments about SpaceX where people seem to genuinely think that it is "helping the human species". And I just don't see what to say against that... it's just pure faith to me.
To me, regarding SpaceX it sounds like engineers saying "if you keep walking one step after the other for long enough, then you'll reach the Moon" and then focusing really hard on the next steps. And if someone says "well if you keep walking you'll surely stay on Earth", they answer "He has a plan, someday a solution will come".
At this moment it does not matter anymore. In the next decades Mar-a-lago will be hit, either if Trump likes it or if not. He just can make it sooner and worse.
The real climate policy we need, and one we might just get from the incoming administration, is support for startups that explore new geoengineering technology. We've on our way to being Kardashev type I civilization, and as such, we should establish explicit closed-loop control over our climate.
The Federal government is not needed for liberals to take the lead on this, but the mediocre center left Democrats who run everything in Blue States refuse to lift a finger.
Per capita energy usage is an interesting choice of metric.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
I think a lot of the unease and disdain for the Western political class stems from their attempts to be inoffensive and appeal to everybody. Whatever policy you enact there is always going to be a trade-off, winners and losers, and if you do now acknowledge that, how can I be sure that you are acting in my interest?
“Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly... stupid.” ― Captain Jack Sparrow
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Neither party offers a real solution, so folks go with the person promising to break everything, even if he has already proven he won't follow the law, enriches himself, and destablizes global politics.
Yeah, it might break a logjam. But don't expect things to be better after a flood.
I am scared of him cutting a bunch of vaccines, but I am excited that he will go after food manufacturers who have been maximizing profits at the cost of public health.
What a shame.
I could write an essay on each massive mistake they made after that first week after the swap, but if I had to simmer it down into a sentence, it would be: people wanted change, Kamala Harris made it extremely clear that she does not represent that change. She cozied up to Biden and tried to be a centrist-right candidate, and literally nobody wants that... and the worst part is that they will never learn a lesson from this.
Donald J. Trump, 07/28/24
Unbelievable.
People will say "I'd be a better person if only I were rich!", but predictably, the number of rich people willing to do those things is almost a rounding error.
The data are unequivocal that liberal democracy, civil rights, and economic freedom lift people out of poverty, but this message is toxic in many parts of the world, and thus many countries live in unnecessary poverty, dependent upon donations from rich countries that follow the straightforwards, simple advice to be well off.
Debating how much better things would be with better governments doesn't change that.
My diverse opinion: "this is much closer to the future that humanity deserves, the AI and surveillance dystopia we have been so intent on getting."
"entertain the possibility that you’re wrong" I would absolutely love for the world to prove me wrong.
Have you listened to the latest the latest Joe Rogan episode with Musk. The Harris camp seems to be guilty of many of the things they accused Trump of.
Echo chambers happen on both sides and are a real issue.
Because those two don't have an agenda at all...
I listened to both and JRE definitely pointed out some fucked up and verifiable systemic issues with the Democrats that you wouldn't have even noticed if you only listened to MSM.
Let me introduce you to my friend, Rupert Murdoch. Once you two are finished talking I don't ever want to hear you conflate mainstream media with leftist influence again.
Yesterday's terrorist will be tomorrow's heroes, and those deemed visionaries today will become despicable in the eyes of those to come. Such is the way since the beginning of human civilization.
That, of course, doesn’t make it a good movement, or a smart one.
But, imo, it’s important to understand why populism is popping off right now.
My parents had to wait ten years to get their citizenship, do a test, etc.
Meanwhile we let people hop the border and download an app these days. It's a disgrace. Thousands of children missing or trafficked across the border, city culture completely upended, businesses getting cheaper and more desperate labor.
This seemed like a reasonable "common sense" starting point: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/new-immigration-as...
Said as a UK resident who lived in North America for a bit.
So even when voter hate when you tell them you can’t vote for THAT guy, THAT guy should not become a dictator ones elected.
First signs of a dictatorships will be human rights violations and the stripping of equal rights among Americans, my guess is that will start pretty soon after he takes office in January.
My guess is also that a large number of people (including foreign governments; particularly in Europe) will simply deny the dictatorial behavior of the USA government, no matter how obvious (similar to climate deniers). Even if there won’t be an election in 4 years, denialism will still prevail. This is the pattern in e.g. the Gaza genocide.
Well of course, claiming a country is a dictatorship or not has absolutely nothing to do with it being a dictatorship or not. It's all about trade and military considerations.
I don’t understand where you are going with this. Words have meanings and accusations have weight. When enough people claim that thing quacking, and swimming over there is a duck, it does weigh in on the consensus that it is indeed a duck. Especially when duck experts start pretty much all agreeing that it is indeed a duck.
Now this hasn’t happened, but what Trump has described and promised is pretty much a dictatorship. What I’m doing here is predicting that if and when the USA conduct dictatorial behavior on a regular basis, including stripping away equal rights, we should all be prepared for denialism to proliferate.
Those are lies spread by the mainstream media (which is mostly controlled by leftists) and you are a victim for believing them.
I know that the HN crowd are left-leaning and I'm going to be downvoted like hell. Maybe even flagged, because apparently leftist platforms like censorship.
But I don't have to prove my point nor there is a need to argue.
My point will be proven in the coming months because as time goes by you guys will see that nothing bad will happen to democracy nor women's rights or anything else important. Economy and public health is going to improve among many other things.
You will see. Just pay attention.
Then maybe you will remember and regret downvoting me.
Oh, also: Listen to what the man is saying himself. Not what the mainstream media says he is saying. Try to see past merely Trump & his public image as well. Pay attention to what the people on his team are saying. Great people like RFK Jr, Tulsi, Vivek, and JD. Maybe you will find yourself to be enlightened.
Peace.
We can look forward to more war, more crime, more suffering, more scapegoating of minorities. This is the start of a long decline that ends in death and destruction.
That Harris and Trump were apparently the best that the US political machine could spew up as choices to run one of the most powerful countries in the world is concerning in itself. Just shows how severely politics is broken in the US.
Do you really believe the Dems would do less war? They are literally siding with Dick Cheney. They were always very pro-war (eg. Hilary Clinton) but now they don't even hide it and they are embracing the whole "security through strength" and "escalation to de-escalate" in the middle east.
If you look back at the past few presidency (incl. Obama), Trump was far more peaceful. He was the first president in a very long time to not invade a new country. I don't think he does it out of love or empathy, I suspect he just thinks it's a waste of money, but the end result is the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_States_rel...
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/23/heres-john-bolton-promis...
And, in general:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Shayrat_missile_strike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Inherent_Resolve
(Trump continued the Obama admin policies in the middle east)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_Donald_T...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_Donald_Trump...
All evidence points to Trump supporting Russia in its expansionist efforts, which means more war, not less.
Trump had nationalistic parades:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Salute_to_America
I mean, you can make an argument based on speculation, but we have the evidence of what has happened in the past.
And guess what? During the Iraq War, Trump sided with Dick Cheney as well:
What does this tell you?
As a fellow democrat, lose with some grace.
It was a close election. Possibly driven by the echo chambers people are in -- like seeing "I voted for Hilary" in left leaning sources and "I voted for Trump" in right leaning sources. Like when Anna Seltzer's poll came out the left ran with that but largely ignored the +10 poll for Trump that came out shortly after.
I personally try to vary my sources to counter the echo chamber effects. I don't always agree with everything that is said, I just want to try and understand what is going on.
I was seeing commentators on the left decrying the Puerto Recan joke, saying that it would hurt the Trump campaign. Then Biden made his comment about Trump supporters being garbage which the left dismissed. After that the right took it as a symbol, making memes about bins going to vote, Trump arriving to rallies in a garbage truck, people wearing bin bags to vote, etc. The left didn't see that going on, or dismissed things like the garbage truck as a stunt.
A similar thing with Trump's McDonald's stint. Both of these helped connect with regular workers, something that Harris didn't have. Something that the commentators on the left failed to see or understand.
I don't follow things like TikTok, but I heard a commentator mention how that helped women turn against Trump, especially amongst new voters. I suspect that due to the ranking algorithm and bubbles that this predominantly targetted democratic or left leaning voters as there were many women that voted for Trump.
My understanding is that they were a less trusted pollster in the first place especially vs Ann's poll.
It would be interesting to see the sampling data between the different polls to see how they adjust for potential biases.
Seriously, the people who voted for him probably didn’t want to defend it to people asking their opinion.
If you're a normal person and some random intern with a 10% non-American accent probably in their early 20s calls you from some random number greeting you by your full name and says they're a part of some polling company you wouldn't recognize even if you'd heard of it before, are you going to confess in the slightest to them you intend to vote for orange cheeto man who is like literally worse than mustache man from WW2?
Probably not.
All polls have indicated that economy and inflation was the number 1 issue that voters on the right cared about, and yet they haven't flinched at the proposals that Trump have laid out. Musk even said it in clear language, that there will be "austerity" moving forward.
The greatest grift in modern times - and the people that stood most to lose walked straight into it, cheering.
I guess the only hope is that the economy is fine, and improving - which makes any radical changes much more visible and risky. If Trump and Musk want to set off the bomb and likely crater it, then they'll own that mess. But hopefully they'll just do nothing, and try to take credit for the trajectory they've inherited - for the sake of your average citizen.
But the courts will be screwed for decades.
What's dangerous about this is not the plan itself, but that there won't be anyone to confront Trump about his half-baked, or downright disastrous plans.
The economy isn't shit. The economy is booming. Job growth has been good, summer consumer spending was good. Real wage growth has outpaced inflation the past 18 months.
Inflation is going down. Interest rates are going down.
America came out of this victorious, compared to other countries that faced the exact same post-COVID woes.
The problem is that democrats couldn't convey this stronger. Republicans managed to spread the doom and gloom more than facts.
Now it's going to be trade wars, tax cuts for the wealthy, more crony capitalism. Trump is fixated with tariffs, because in his mind, deal-making comes down to strong-arming the other party. Trump seems to be oblivious of the soft power the US has wielded for decades. That's also about to get flushed down the toilet - all countries in the world are embracing for Trump-style "negotiations".
I know it is not good to engage in victim blaming...but maybe the voters do get what they deserve?
Peter Santenello has a good YouTube channel where he goes around the country (and world) and interviews regular people. It will give you some insight on the economy for the remaining 70%.
She proposed controls on gouging, which is already codified in even the reddest of red states.
Biden is wildly unpopular. People are extremely unhappy with his management of the economy, immigration, etc.
Democrats could have changed directions. Instead they doubled down on Biden. Harris said she would do nothing different. So people didn't vote for her. That's very logical.
That's not to say that Trump will do a good job or that his policies are better. They're worse and he's a crook. But voters everywhere made this sentiment clear for an entire year and were totally ignored by the Democratic party.
The economy has been on a up-swing for a good year now, and things have improved all-over. People can't live under a rock and think that a global pandemic wasn't a huge part of this - most countries experienced the very same economic effects.
But, again, Trump laying out his disastrous tariff plans is the canary in the coalmine - that his voters either don't understand economics, or simply chose to live in a make-believe world where they imagine Trump will just "fix" things.
It doesn't matter what some economist says the economy is doing. Most people are be unhappy with the economy. That's what matters. Democrats listened to economists instead of voters.
Of course Trump's votes don't understand economics. Why do you think overwhelmingly we see educated people now vote Democrats and non educated people vote for Trump?
Trust us some economist says we're doing a good job was a crappy message. This was an own goal.
Reagan had a plaque at the oval office that said: "There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit"
Biden should have used executive orders to deal with the border. Just like Trump did. Biden didn't because he didn't care that voters were extremely upset about the border. Now we get to "enjoy" Trump again.
My reading is "This election has been a testament to the complete and utter obliviousness of the Dems to the American voter".
Seriously, politicians who are out of touch with their constituencies should not really be expecting to win.
Turns out if the other country decides they are altering the deal, and you don't have any leverage - the bit of paper isn't worth all that much in practice.
Would you repeat the same feat with Taiwan, if you were in Trump's place?
Curious what do you base that on?
When? He's gone out of his way to *not* imprison his opponents. Why do you think Hillary is still running around?
> violently deal with immigrants
*Illegal Immigrants
Not so sure about the violent part either, but let's just say that that's true.
Why overturn Roe otherwise?
Why not implement it now when they'll control all branches of government and have a 6-3 favor in the supreme court?
No, it's not.
> Why overturn Roe otherwise?
To let states decide how it should be handled, rather than a federal mandate. Allowing different possibilities to be tested - maybe in some states it will become completely illegal, maybe in others mothers will face pressure to terminate a pregnancy.
Why do I think that's much more probable for abortion to become illegal than for women to be pressured to terminate pregnancies?
Your comment feels so innocent, but different possibilities to be tested just ends up in women being denied abortion
> There aren't states where terminating pregnancies is forced.
I personally don't think this could ever come from a mandated level (same as outright bans), I think instead we see it in the form of social pressure: and we can already see it across the US. An estimated 65% of abortions in the US are unwanted but the mother was heavily pressured by peers, family, work, etc. You can also see this in the downstream effects: getting an abortion raises your chances of suicide by 6x and depression by 4x.
Clinics also do not screen for coersion, the same way organ donations, adoptions, loans are all screened.
Again, should abortion be illegal because of the above? No. But it does indicate it's not as innocent as making sure women are ready/able/willing to have a child.
I'm gonna trust more a study by the university of San Francisco which finds that most women don't regret having an abortion or are happy about it https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/01/416421/five-years-after-ab...
If that's the case - why are states criminalizing getting an abortion in another state?
Some states decide for all states, that's the sort of thing that has to be decided on a federal level
Why should one get to play Laboratory of Democracy with women's lives?
Netherlands, Austria predominantly leaning right now, joining Hungary, Slovakia.
Germany and France are both with very unstable governments.
Pretty much leaves Poland and the Baltics
Dems lost this election because they’ve become the party of warmongerers. You need to understand that played a big role.
If Russia invades Alaska, do you think the average Republican will take the same sentiment? Just give him that land because otherwise lots of people will die.
Americans mostly don’t seem to care about foreign policy at all.
The American people cried that the economy was bad for them and the democrat message was no it’s better than ever.
The American people said why are we sending billions to Ukraine when we need the money here. They were told we were supporting dictatorships. Just look at some of the responses to my comment here.
The American voter was concerned about the huge crime waves in the cities and the biden admin told us crime was good and made up.
The Democrat response to COVId was to shut up and take the vaccine or lose your job.
I’m surprised she didn’t lose more with all the pain biden Harris caused.
The logical conclusion of this is that we should always just surrender whenever some other army comes knocking at our door. Let Putin walk all the way to Portugal, let Kim Jong Un walk to the south tip of the Korean peninsula, because any peace deal, no matter how bad, is always better than firing a single shot.
Putin invaded Crimea and then said "I'm done". Then by proxy he invaded the Donbas, and said "I'm done". Then he invaded Ukraine. Why do you think that if we sign a peace deal with him, that he just won't build up his forces in another year or two and invade again -- either Ukraine, or one of the other Baltic countries?
At some point you have to say, "It stops here".
EDIT: Furthermore, you have to think of the knock-on effects. If we settle now in Ukraine, that won't stop war with Russia: Putin has learned that invading your neighbor is fine, and he'll do it again and again. Xi and Kim will learn the same thing, and there will be wars in Taiwan and Korea.
On the other hand, Russia is almost defeated -- another 2 years and they'll be completely out of materiel. They're already resorting to pulling in North Korean troops. Support Ukraine for another year or two, and the war will end for good -- and Xi and Kim will learn that invading your neighbor is a losing proposition, and war in Taiwan and Korea will be avoided.
> You need to understand that played a big role.
Do you have any support for this statement? I haven't heard many people bring up Ukraine as a major reason for voting Trump or not voting Harris.
Ironically, there were Arabs and progressives who failed to support Harris because she supported Israel too much, and there are Zionist Jews and Christians who support Trump because they think Kamala didn't support Israel enough. On that particular conflict I don't think there's any winning position for the Democrats.
Its a bad look when many citizens are hurting economically and you send billions and billions to a foreign government and then gaslight them the economy is indeed fine.
If Poland France and the UK are more invested in opposing Russia then one would think that the Ukraine wouldn't be entirely reliant on the US to support it. This is the fundamental problem with the proxy war in the Ukraine, the people pushing for it talk about it as if the fate of the European continent rests on the fulcrum of the Ukraine and yet the other European countries hardly seem to care.
In practise, doesn't that depend on what the US decides?
This is a threat Trump has made openly and repeatedly.
If USA pulls out it’s likely that EU will shift some of its aid over to military. This is already happening: European countries have started setting up arms production within Ukraine which gives Ukraine more guns per dollar spent than what donations of western built weapons does. So don’t think the dollar amount donated tells you everything about the amount of military support given.
This is happening any week now with or without Trump.
I am as much against Trump as the next guy, but let's don't degrade HN conversations to this level.
Taking fluoride away from drinking water. Weakening vaccine research and development.
Looks like most Americans will be in for a long suffering in the coming decades. Combine that with privatisation of health insurance and weakening Medicaid, this heavily points towards a Brexit moment for the USA.
Trump has always wanted to be a tyrant; he has always wanted to run the country like he runs his businesses -- he says something and it's done, he makes decisions for his own personal benefit, he rewards his friends and punishes his enemies.
In 2016 he wasn't expecting to win and didn't really know what he wanted, so he appointed well-respected people from the Republican establishment. Those people believed in the constitution, the rule of law, the rules-based international order, and so on, and pushed back and refused to obey him when he wanted to act like a tyrant.
This time is different. He knows what he wants: People who will be personally loyal to him. The Republican establishment has been destroyed. The Supreme Court has officially decreed that nearly anything he does is immune from prosecution. He will have a much easier time getting his way this time than he did in 2016.
"- Israel given carte blanche and a lot of support to bulldoze Gaza"
I agree, both parties are way to big buddy with Isreal, war with Iran I am not sure sure.
"- Russian sanctions lifted"
Ah yeah that is why Putin endorsed Kamala for that EXACT OPPOSITE reason that Trump put heavy sanctions on Russia and he did not like that.
"- Elon looking to cut government spending - healthcare, subsidies"
Any evidence of this claim? Of course not. Making government more efficient does not equal to your doomsday fears. Has Elon ever public-ally indicated and of this? I do not know his positions on this honestly but I doubt your claims. Elon is for UBI, he says the world needs it because Robots will take over, and I doubt he will support a UBI where people can not effort to pay their doctors and surgeons with. So I am calling straight BS on this.
"- Anti abortion law possibly being implemented on a federal level"
Any hint about this claim? No of course not.
"What else am i missing?" A lot actually:
- No more stupid DEI BS that is already on a downwards trend even during Biden/K
- No more castrating kids, chopping their breasts of pps of.
- No more hiding from parents that they supposedly changed their gender/pronouns or whatever they latest trendy woke sh1t it.
- No more indoctrination in education like things that you are more oppressed/valuable the more "minority" checkboxes you check. Hopefully the DEATH of wokeness.
- Less of the PURPOSEFULLY pushing illegals to vote (for dems of course). BY LAW in California they can not ask people for ID to vote. Total insanity, not sure if they can required ID federally but I hope they can and will.
- Securing the Border. Kamala flipped on this btw, as she did on plenty of others things b4. But as she noted the people actually WANT a secure border, including all the people she thought will vote for her, she suddenly claimed she wanted the same thing that was always Trumps thing and she railed against.
- Free Speech online and offline, something the real left once was championing but now they are all pro censorship of all the opinions they do not like. Simply call everything they do not like "hate-speech" and call everyone who dares to have a "right" opinion on something a nazi.
- Less regulations more economic opportunity. Something that ties into Elons government efficiency endearment I guess. What they will cut it bureaucracy and the burden to start and operate a business.
- I am sceptical of this is just a lie but Trump at least claims he is anti-war. While the left openly the war mongering 24/7. You very typically put "deal" in quotes and make it sound like a peace deal is something bad. Peace deals are incredibly good and if Trump can actually make and negotiate deals with countries instead of starting WW3 that would be great. The US needs to stop invading counties and getting involved on the globe with 700 military basis across the world ... it needs to end. And I do not think Trump will end it, but a president that will start 1 war less then the other side is still a win. And Trump is hopefully that guy. The Israel Gaza situations is bad and Trump is 100% wrong so far on this.
If it does happen, it will be the largest "ethnic cleansing" in human history—bigger than the Yugoslavian migrations, bigger than the Armenian genocide, bigger than the Holocaust, bigger than the Holodomor, bigger than the US's previous forced removals of Native Americans. I say "ethnic" because it's primarily directed at people who are dark-skinned because of their Native American ancestry and driven by racism against them. It isn't directed against white illegal immigrants like Elon Musk and Melania Trump were.
There is a phrase that took root in the American legal subculture a while back: “come to Jesus meeting”. It refers to a meeting where a lawyer explains to their client the realities of their situation with the expectation that presentation of the cold facts and current climate will “recalibrate their expectations” and move them on a new path…normally to settlement and no further wasting of the Court’s time. The Democratic Party would do well to consider having such public meetings with elder statesmen types from both sides of the aisle. The US is best served when both political parties are strong and healthy.
Paradoxically, it’s harder for the Republicans to do that now, since they are winning. Normally requires a hard slap in the face…as has occurred for Democrats.
Tried to Google it but all I find is a bunch of American news website like CNN and website like https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/the-five-types-t...
I'm trying to look beyond the propaganda, any idea if there has been scientific studies or anything remotely credible ?
https://www.economist.com/letters/2024/11/04/letters-to-the-...
Most pro Trump arguments seem to be some vague statements about freedom of speech and "weaponizing of the Justice Department", which I find unconvincing given the things Trump said several times during the last few months, indicating he would do exactly that and worse.
The letters are as vague as this example:
> My concern is that Ms Harris will at a minimum continue the leftist direction of America that has been pursued, or at least tolerated, by Joe Biden. Not to mention the violation of basic constitutional rights that the president tried to introduce with his vaccine mandate during the pandemic.
or
> Mr Trump will cut bureaucracy and regulations to unleash creativity and productivity in the American economy, especially manufacturing. Ms Harris will inflict taxes and spending that will spur higher deficits and inflation.
or
> You overlooked the unacceptable risks posed by the Democratic Party and Vice-President Harris. These include support for censorship, political correctness, selective prosecution and soft totalitarianism. The Republicans spend more, impose tariffs, and obsess on immigration whereas the Democrats tax more, regulate more and censor. Neither party confronts the hard choices required to limit monetary expansion, deficits and entitlements that gnaw at the dollar. I choose the Republicans because I value freedom of speech and oppose the totalitarianism implied in weaponising the Justice Department.
and that's most of the pro-Trump statements already.
I have no doubt the arguments exist, and those I wanted to hear, because I too share OPs question.
Well there's this sort of thing:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/colorado-baker-lose...
If you think there are plenty of places out there to get a wedding cake or a gender transition cake, and people should just leave people alone whom they disagree with, who do you vote for?
You may think they're wrong, but I find it entirely plausible and convincing that that is just exactly what they believe.
I'm not "dismissing" anything either. I have no opinion on Trump vs. Harris, as strange as that sounds to those with strong believes.
I merely observe that OP asked for arguments, and that link points to opinion letters that don't even attempt to make one. Which is fine for them - this is about this sub-thread's context. OP asked for arguments and the link does not provide them, this is not a dismissal of whatever is going on in that linked page itself, only whether it serves to satisfy OPs request here.
(Why else would they own such "lossmaking" businesses).
You especially see it if you pay attention to framing. On every mainstream platform, social issues are always first and foremost framed as "how can we afford this expensive social program!?!". It's always business friendly and worker hostile.
It was a major deal that Biden's health was declining and he showed signs of dementia. But when Trump displays similar symptoms there's dead silence.
There's a consistent "sane washing" of the crazy things Trump says across nearly all media and the double standard is unreal.
Trump has a rambling oratory style, but that is more of a stylistic affection.
The question isn't if he's better or worse than Biden, the question is if he's well enough for the presidency. And he's shown very clear signs of mental decline the last months.
Neither Trump nor Biden should have been chosen as candidates, yet all the focus has been on Biden.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of LA Times/San Diego Union Tribune, and other newspapers, LA Lakers, billionaire biotech person
- Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, owner of Time magazine
- Laurene Powell Jobs, billionaire widow of Steve Jobs, owns The Atlantic Monthly
- Masayoshi Son, Softbank CEO, USA Today/Gannet media group owned by New Media Investment Group via Fortress Investment group via Softbank
[edit - added below]
- Michael Bloomberg (former mayor of New York city) owns Bloomberg
- Sumner Redstone owns Paramount/Viacom/CBS
- Thomson family (Canada) owns Thomson Reuters via Woodbridge Company
- Brain L. Roberts, CEO Comcast, son of company founder, NBCUniversal, Sky Group, owned via 33% controlling supershares
- Donald Newhouse, son of company founder, Conde Nast (New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue), newspapers, controlling stake in Discovery Comms.
- John Malone, former CEO of TCI cable, largest shareholder of Liberty Media, et al.
If it's the oligarchs in the media who were a factor in this second victory, then it was through one truly spectacular mass-scale reverse psychology of getting exactly the opposite of the narrative they almost consistently pushed. That would be one very interesting story if it were at all true.
More realistically: to a very big (and apparently growing) swathe of the American voting public, the kind of shit that mattered most was what much of the media and their progressive political supporters in the major cities derided enough for all those millions of voters to dig in their heels and ignore them. Trump symbolically and often also literally, vocally represents this resistance to that media narrative, and thus he won again.
Several of my neighbors wear Trump's mark.
It is strange how there is this superficial notion that areas are 'Blu' or 'Red'.
And when I say you have to understand people I mean truly understand, not intellectually lazy crap like "oh they're just stupid" or "they're racist" like you already see in this thread. Stupid/racist/etc people do exist, but that isn't most people and it isn't most Trump voters either. They are normal people with real concerns and needs, not caricatures of evil.
"The economy is terrible" -- well, no it's not. We had some inflation a few years ago, but so did every other country in the world, and the US has had far lower than most other places. The Biden administration has been doing a great job with the economy. And you know those business people who want Trump to win because they want lower regulations? Yeah, they're not on your side -- they're trying to screw you over. You feel economic pressure, and so you're going to vote someone who's going to make it worse?
"Libs are weaponizing the justice department" -- People who have flagrantly tried to flout laws and undermine our democracy need to be held accountable. I mean yeah, "Always prosecute the outgoing party" is something we want to avoid, but "Never prosecute anything any politician does" is just as bad, if not worse. And at any rate, if that's something you're actually concerned about, why is your solution to vote for "LOCK HER UP!" Trump?
"Biden / Harris are just as bad" -- I mean, no? Trump literally sent an armed mob to attack his own vice president. Nothing you think the alleged "Biden crime family" comes anywhere close (and BTW there is no "Biden crime family").
"Immigrant gangs are invading our country" -- I mean, just no.
Not everyone is like this, but a lot of people are just living in a fictional reality constructed by Fox, Newsmax, and now Musk.
Often I have found the same fears, desires and hopes in my opponents as myself. For example: "I want my children to grow up happy"
From that level of similarity we can reach people. It takes effort.
And you fail to see why that might be uninteresting and unconvincing to a low income voter struggling even harder to make ends meet? Maybe even infuriating enough to vote against whoever said it?
Imagine someone buys a Kia hoping to reduce how much they pay in gasoline; but then the price of gasoline doubles, and they end up paying more than they were before anyway; and so they say, "Kia is a terrible car, it's so expensive to fill up, I'm going to buy a Hummer instead".
That's what voting for Trump in this situation is like: at minimum he's going to enable rich oligarchs to squeeze low-income voters even harder, and at worst he's going to trash the economy by raising tariffs, deporting working immigrants, and politicizing the federal reserve (lowering interest rates and triggering even more inflation).
I think normal voters are perfectly capable of understanding this. It's you who seem to be saying that low income voters are incapable of understanding this and should instead be lied to.
I offer in rebuttal the election results (which, to be clear, I myself am not happy about).
The Democrats could have promised a lot more programs and initiatives to relieve the pain of the working class than they did. They could have made economic relief a lot more central to their advertising. People want their pain acknowledged and sympathized with, not waved away with an airy "it's not so bad".
One thing that Trump is incredibly talented at at is getting everyone to talk about him. I've always thought that the way to get him beat wasn't to trash him, but to talk about the great things about the alternate candidate. So I made it a point to avoid talking about Trump on my social media. After the DNC, I thought we were going to get the same thing from the Harris campaign -- but it seems like in the last few weeks, Harris went hard on attacking Trump, hoping to get women out to vote for reproductive rights, leaving me nothing really to share or talk about on FB.
Trump, on the other hand, went hard on getting young adult males, who typically don't vote at all, to come out and vote for him. Both efforts had their effect, but Trump's bet seems to have paid off more, and put him back in the white house.
A lot of red states are benefiting from Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and don't even realize it.
It's not wrong to try to understand another.
Biden is wildly unpopular, Harris is his right hand, she didn't get put up by any competitive process, and she never promised change to a country that very much wants it. The nyt always considered her the worst possible option from day 1, aside from Biden. This shouldn't be a surprise.
But if you are lucky he will allow you vote for the other side in 4 years again and then you will vote republicans after and back and forth we go.
Is a lot a things, economy for sure, but the demiocrafts passed 4 years calling half the country nazis and facists, and denying things that everyone could see like Biden health issues. This comes with a price.
I doubt most people like those two things. The difference is, they get insulted, shamed and targeted for social ostracisation if they let on what they don't like.
Which results in the election results that you see - just because you've successfully silenced someone from expressing their opinion, that doesn't mean that you changed their vote.
Americans (and people in general) do not care about social issues when they are hurting financially.
They discuss a paper "The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth About Political Illegitimacy.”
Which asks the Q:
"H]ow can a constituency of voters find a candidate ‘authentically appealing’ (i.e., view him positively as authentic) even though he is a ‘lying demagogue’ (someone who deliberately tells lies and appeals to non-normative private prejudices)?”
one A is:
"Trump’s boldly false proclamations—about himself, about his rivals and critics, about the world—are not a bug. They’re a feature. They demonstrate he is sticking it to the other side. To the elites, the media, the establishment, the government, academia, Hollywood, the libs, the woke crowd, the minorities, the…whoever it is his supporters resent, despise, or disregard."
The solution at its heart is to reduce conflict and bridge the gap. I have enjoyed Zachary Elwoods most recent podcast episode showing how Trump is misquoted by traditional media outlets which has the negative effect of furthering the perception of bias.
It’s framed as an equality movement whereas it takes as an axiom that society is built on systemic oppression - that’s the unquestionable tenet. And then the prescription is using governments power to impose “preferred” outcomes, no matter the cost.
Thanks, but no thanks - I prefer to live in a meritocracy.
Also my personal pet peeve - having a cultural preference is not racism, god damn it! Not all cultures are the same, and we should be allowed to state and fight for our preferences! (Unlike discriminating on the basis of physical appearance or features, which is actual racism).
The fact that America equates the two is asinine to me (as an immigrant)
You didn't say, but I think strongly implied, this is untrue. Why do you think so?
Well, maybe he has, but he aligns his campaign to match the voters' will instead of trying to change the will of the voters' to match his campaign.
Dems: "Listen up: these are the issues that are important to you."
Trump: "That's important to you? Well, in that case it's important to me too!"
You can't expect to win if you are out of touch with what the voters want.
It.. unironically seems so? Not long ago Trump used to be a Democrat. He has often backtracked and tweaked his public ideology to whatever gets the most populist support, e.g. Abortions.
And inflation is almost down to normal levels, and Trump is promising wide ranging and massive tariffs that it is hard to see not causing a significant rise in inflation.
So its hard to see how people who are concerned about those issues would vote for Trump.
Even if they don't like Democrat approaches to those issues, or really dislike Democrat ideology which might explain voting for Trump now when the only real choices were Trump and Harris, what about during the Republican primaries?
Republicans used to have many reasonably competent people in the primaries. How the heck could they not find anyone better than Trump?
There are people who vote because they want the insular America and to bring jobs back from China/Mexico/etc, those who vote to burn down 'the establishment' because they feel no hope, and those who just hope that any change means cost of living drops.
Pretending like "this isn't us", "this isnt real america" is just keeping them from doing any real introspection.
Of course not statistical, but seems to be a large trend in discussion
I also think that's the same reason the exact same guy was voted out four years ago. Pretty bizarre if true, so it's probably not the whole story.
Americans (with the help of the media) are just plain stupid and vote against their own interests.
But in the end that doesn't matter is the media isn't willing to talk about that. And people keep listening to those media.
Remember age didn't matter anymore once Biden dropped out? If the NYT hammered Trump the same way they did Biden, the outcome would be different.
Of course, that's also what the Republicans / Heritage Foundation are aiming for, if they have their way they will do away with democracy. Which isn't exactly what I was thinking of.
Some perspective is called for.
There are two senators per state regardless of population, so low-population rural states have an outsized influence in the Senate.
In the electoral college, each state is weighted by population. It’s unavoidably biased (just by the nature of chunking votes into seats and states) but it doesn’t consistently favor either side.
That said, so far she hasn't won the popular vote either, so that's not what we should be blaming in this election.
is not a sentence.
Hell I'm from a rural family that voted majority trump. I'm a bud not a stem. I'm also 33 with no kids.
people keep talking about how "this is what all these Americans want" - bologna I say. They're just voting how they've been programmed to believe.
Find me a Trump supporter that has only researched him from first-hand credible sources and has not been influenced by friends, family, social media, or mainstream media. I would be very surprised if any person like this exists.
http://exiledonline.com/we-the-spiteful/
>The left won’t accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast that they believe they can fix “if only the people knew the Truth.”
>But what if the Truth is that Americans don’t want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance–and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left’s wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America’s rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it’s not so much Goering’s famous “bigger lie” that works here, but the dumber and meaner the lie, the more the public wants to hear it repeated.
In reality every Trump voter has their own reason to behave this way. And their behavior is perfectly rational according to their own beliefs. My personal theory is that we have been grossly underestimating the potency of misinformation and disinformation propaganda on social media. Especially those which weaponizes peoples actual grievances with authority, and directs them in this way. Anybody can be a victim of misinformation (we see this in action with people that fall victims to scam), the misinformation you personally don’t fall victim to was probably not directed at you (see e.g. the Nigerian Prince filter for wire fraud scams).
I think that even though humans are smart, and we have our own agency, there are also number of ways which our intelligence can be exploited. This is the case for scams, but also for misinformation propaganda. I think the real lesson here is in the failures of our democratic institutions to protect us from this exploitation.
I never called Trump voters stupid. I think there may be a misunderstanding here because traditional discourse has people believe that only stupid people fall for misinformation propaganda (or a scam). I was explicitly rejecting that.
However misinformation campaigns are a fact of social media. There are several documented cases of misinformation spreading. It is possible that I have just been lied to about that the media et.all lied about the scale and severity of misinformation and I believed it (although, wouldn’t that be a misinformation campaign which proofs their existence?)
I mean sure: depending on your media diet you might find all his flaws acceptable, but ask yourself if Obama (or any other candidate) displayed the very same flaws if that would cause you outrage. If yes, you might need some introspection.
You don't get to be president without being a pathological liar who only cares about themselves and not the people. I'm not saying this to excuse Trump, far from it. I am ashamed to have him as a president (to the extent I'm ashamed of anything outside my control anyways). But I've been just as ashamed to have Biden, Obama, and Bush as the president too.
The Donald Trump that your media reports on isn't the real Donald Trump, or at the very least the one his supporters see.
Example: Trump talks to a group of people who normally don't vote, and asks them to make an exception and vote this time, noting that this will be the last time he runs, and so they won't need to vote for him again. The media then takes "you won't need to vote for me again" out of context and uses it to claim that Trump will end elections in the US. People who only listen to the media see one thing, and his supporters (who are aware of the context) see another.
Poor US. Poor World.
Im not American and barely engaged with politics at all but all of that sounds like a pretty good idea to me without looking at any stats or trying to find out why my fellow citizens were confused into making the wrong choice.
I wouldn’t trust literally anything in this guys hands’ and even less a country.
But sure, on the surface they sound good I suppose.
One explanation from Hochschild is that you have a group of disenfranchised votes, who see "everyone else" get to "jump the line" for help. Not only do they get to jump the line, they see the president (Obama back then) help these other people (immigrants, women, people of color, LGBTQ, an so on) move ahead of the line, while they are left behind to fend for themselves.
I haven't read the books yet, but I definitely plan to. From the article it certainly sound like it would help me understand why some Americans vote the way they do.
Even if you claim it’s noble bigotry because you’re discriminating against people with evil ancestors or who happen to share a sex with bad people.
And this illustrates the problem. Hochschild is a professor emeritus of sociology at Berkeley. Why in heaven's name would you think that good insights will be garnered by reading a Danish article about a book written by a Blue professor about another group of Red people... when you can go on x dot com and read for yourself why people voted as they did?
I can say for certain - from reading and listening to what Trump voters have said themselves - that Trump voters are absolutely done with this kind of framing.
Personally I'm not interested in going on Twitter, or Facebook, because those are going to be the most extreme people, at both ends. I'm also no prepared to do the filtering required to identify trolls or propaganda. My interest is in the vast majority of people who don't really have a voice online. I can't go out and talk to them, I'm on the other side of the planet. I'd still like to know why they vote the way they do, because I'm directly affected by how rural America votes. I wish I weren't, so I guess that's one opinion I share with Trump.
> If your own political conviction influence your works as a professor, then you're perhaps not that great a professor
Indeed. This is a major ongoing crisis in academe. And journalism.
As a self check, if you think that Trump's "very fine people on both sides" remark referred to white supremacists as "very fine people", then you need to upgrade your sources. Find the extended original video. It is hard to do! If you give up, let me know and I will send you a link. The search is instructive, however.
If you go back and read carefully, I suggested going directly to the source because we live in an age of unprecedented direct access, and it is no longer necessary to have same-side "explainers" about what the other side thinks and says.
To hear what Team Blue thinks, I'd recommend Team Red simply read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Time Magazine, et. al. Or watch CNN, MSNBC, BBC America, network news... Even Wikipedia.
My reading directly from the voters is that they feel Democrats are out of touch, pandering only to a very limited set of elites with very specific, weird values who are dangerously authoritarian, dogmatic and powerful. They feel that Democrats have contempt for the poor, working and middle classes, but mask this contempt by dismissing any policy debate or disagreement as racist or transphobic. They feel that Democratic partisans have a firm grip on mainstream media, academic institutions, and much of government, and a demonstrated willingness to promote lies through those institutions, so Team Red views any pronouncements from those sources as deeply untrustworthy when not outright false. They see the rioting as madness, and believe that continuing down the path set by Democrats as bringing more of the same. Whenever they try to have Team Blue effectively address these concerns, their feedback is only "Wow! Racist much? Take your Russian asset ass out of here, dinosaur. Adults are talking." That's not really much of an exaggeration, by the way. Trump, again, according to them, is an underdog in that fight, but will at least try to restore order.
That's my take on what they're collectively saying and why Trump won. Yours might be different. Like I said, go to the sources. But, when I compare the way Team Red and Team Blue we're talking about issues, it did not surprise me that Team Red won this round. Team Blue needs to become less hysterical and bullying to win next round. My personal hope is that Team Blue will listen, reflect and reform, but I've been hoping for that for several cycles now. They'll probably just wait until Team Red overreaches, as each side always does.
It is also a theory which (very wrongly) presumes that no member of minority groups voted for Trump.
Consider Starr County, Texas – at 97% Hispanic/Latino, it is the most Hispanic county in the 50 states. In 2016, Clinton won it 79.1% to Trump's 19%; in 2020, Clinton won it 52.1% to Trump's 47.1%; in 2024, Trump won 57.7%, ending a 132 year streak of Democrats winning it in Presidential elections.
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2024/11/06/starr-county-flip...
One has to think that this palimpsest property of his speech, be it intentional or accidental, is key to his appeal. Every listener to parse the message they want to hear out of his language.
Not all. No need to be careful or generous. A very straightforward, plain reading of his statement makes it clear he explicitly excluded the neo-Nazis and white supremacists, because he explicitly did so in the same speech, practically in the same breath: "I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally." He said it that clearly, but you cannot find a clip which includes that quote from NYT nor WP nor CNN nor from any outlet to whom Team Blue is likely to listen.
... which illustrates my main point. A helpful answer to the question of why anyone would vote for Trump will simply not be found in Blue sources. Blue sources will only impart a conceptual model of Trump's victory that is frightening and the opposite of helpful.
> One has to think that this palimpsest property of his speech...
Support Trump or not, most of the controversies regarding his speech are similar deliberate misreading of his intent by people we had hitherto entrusted with the curation of facts to be used in our national dialogue.
The left did not hear or read the condemnation at all, as we have established. Rather, they continue to be presented with curated sounds bites crafted to bolster a very particular narrative.
It really will serve you to listen carefully to what your fellow Americans, including your President, are actually saying. You don't have to agree, but you will have a better idea of what's happening. It will not serve you to consume third-hand think-pieces discussing what they really meant by that "dogwhistle".
What are we talking about here? https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-im...
Trump is a fascist at his core, a textbook one.
> "So I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye (Kanye West), who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else, and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed ‘advice’," Trump wrote in a message posted Saturday to his Truth Social account. "He shows up with 3 people, two of which I didn’t know, the other a political person who I haven’t seen in years. I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win. Fake News went CRAZY!"
His explanation is not printed at the beginning. It is printed near the end, only after quoting 10 people who disapproved of the meeting, plus an extensive catalogue of Ye's and Fuente's moral failings. The article relies on emotionalism to craft a specific view. They even capitalize CRAZY, which makes the explanation sound less plausible.
Trump may indeed be a "textbook fascist" whatever that means, but this article does not grant its audience the intelligence to work that out for themselves. Rather, to accept the article without skepticism requires one to believe that Trump is a white supremacist anti-Semite. That will be much easier to do if one has been primed by similar low-quality articles to believe it.
Ye has been a friend to Trump and is clearly disturbed. He brought people along with whom Trump was not familiar, yet the article makes it sound as if he deliberately invited them to attend some kind of sinister summit. The idea that a Latino and Black man would be welcome in white supremacist circles is absurd.
Trump has been the most pro-Israel President in history, and has a Jewish son-in-law - one of his closest advisors - and grandchildren. He is not an anti-Semite, so the article's attempt to tar him with that brush is silly.
Just walk through each article about Trump with the skeptical view that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you will see that most such articles - even from formerly well-respected journals like NYT and WaPo - rely on emotionalism to convey an impression about Trump. The only evidence that Trump is a dangerous fascist is of similar low quality. Like the evidence for alien visitation: lots of evidence, but all of it very low-quality rumors, innuendo and wishful thinking.
The question of whether Trump is a good President is a separate matter. He may be petty, vindictive, selfish. On the other hand, he invited a friend for counseling at great political risk to himself. He's also the only President in my lifetime who did not start a new war. So, a mixed bag, like all the others. The extreme hysteria around Trump actually prevents people like me from evaluating Trump on his actual merits. Every article only highlights the negative of anything Trump does, which is as unhelpful as highlighting only the positive.
But no, I don't think Trump is a fascist, textbook or otherwise. I think the unhinged reactions to Trump are far more dangerous to our country, to be honest. We allowed the FBI to suppress a news story last election that would have been bad for Biden. That's terrifying.
The matter of concern here (completely independent of the article) is that he doesn't seem to mind inviting such characters into his house.
But no, I don't think Trump is a fascist, textbook or otherwise.
The concern is that he unmistakably flirts with fascist rhetoric and techniques of psychological manipulation.
The unhinged reactions to Trump
"Unhinged" is what we can call several of his recent cabinet nominations.
And he's just getting started.
There is no coherent standard by which both Trump did not start a war and every other recent President has. This is just a “say something often enough and people begin to accept it as true” thing.
> The extreme hysteria around Trump actually prevents people like me from evaluating Trump on his actual merits.
You seem to have a very firm opinion of him on the merits, which is inconsistent with believing that you have been prevented from that.
> Every article only highlights the negative of anything Trump doe Where'd you get the idea that he is the only President in your life not to start a war then? The truth is that there are plenty of outlets pushing neutral and positive Trump outlets, and even actively suppressing stories that might hurt Trump (less so now than immediately before the election, as a whole bunch stopped such suppression when it no longer served to influence the election), and “every article highlights only the negative” is a lie.
> But no, I don't think Trump is a fascist, textbook or otherwise
He openly has proposed personal-loyalty-based purges of the military officer corps and thr civilian civil service, deploying the military domestically in a deportation operation he explicitly modeled on the notoriously racisr, due process denying, legal injigrant and citizen expelling Operation Wetback of the 1950s (which itself, unlike Trumps overt olan, stopped short of using the military), massively scaled up, and has proposed solving urban homelessness by forcibly relocating the homeless to concentration camps.
And lets not get started on Musk, D.O.G.E., and fascist corporatism.
(But I, too, think Trump is not exactly a fascist, he’s a kleptocrat hiding behind fascism. But the functional difference between that and an actual fascist is likely to be minor.)
That said, I'm not sure stuff like "He's annointed by God", "He tells it like it is/Isn't afraid to speak his mind", "Liberals are evil/devil/<insert literally any reason to hate them> " is stuff you want to hear, but it does represent a somewhat overall sentiment (generalized of course).
More centered around ignorance and perceived old "conservative values". I find very few people actually able to articulate their points.
1) Voters think “the economy” is “can I afford to live” NOT “we are doing better nationally than others”. Inflation is politically more important than GDP
2) Immigration matters, both the sense of control/uncontrolled and the raw numbers, particularly when money is tight. See 1
3) Don’t take voters for fools: in this case don’t insist a clearly gaga leader is up to the job
4) Don’t try to fight a charismatic opponent with someone who can’t answer basic questions about why they want to be in charge. The ability to communicate is not an optional extra for politicians, it is a core part of the job description
5) Go woke, go politically broke
6) What the metro elites regard as an illogical vote is not necessarily illogical for people who are struggling and angry - see 1,2,3,4,5 Personally I think democracy matters very much and some/much of what Trump says is appalling but until his opponents learn the lessons above, voters will keep voting for someone who manages to encapsulate what they feel"
They think correct, in the only sense that matters.
They aren't, really. That's just what a vocal minority calls them, said minority actually deluding themselves into thinking that they are the majority.
I'm not a Yank nor do I vote or care to ever vote, but if I were and all I ever saw was every mainstream source of news and media, including sites like Reddit and apparently even HN, calling me a retard (which funnily enough is a pretty bigoted insult coming from the supposed moral & good side) and a bigot non-stop I'd probably say "fuck it" and vote for the guy too.
From where I'm sitting across the pond, the Republicans want stricter border control, smaller government, lower taxes, free speech (which itself is a loaded term that means different things depending on who's saying/hearing it), which is basically what the populist parties across the EU are promising as well.
So it's not really surprising he won, and the margin isn't surprising either.
(I suspect the problem, of course, is that the newfound prosperity is not shared evenly amongst the population.)
Yep, it's an own goal. Similar shit has led to the rise of right-wing populism all across the world, time and again. Yet they never learn. They never realize that shitting on the average Joe is not how you get power in a democratic setup.
This is why democracy is broken, because not everyone gets a voice.
That isn't how statistics work. Sample size reduces your error relative to the population you are randomly sampling from.
When you don't have a random sampling, then you sampling method is what determines how generalizable your findings are. A good sample size with a bad sampling method tells us little to nothing about the general population and only informs us about the specific sub population for which the sample can be considered a random selection from.
With significant differences in voting rates across many different demographics, votes are absolutely not a representative sample of the overall population.
And there are many examples like these, where he's quoted WAY out of context, and that kind of stuff. If you believe that for years and at one point learn that it's actually bs and he didn't say that or the context reveals he was quoting someone else, or negates the comment the next sentence, etc, you start to question ALL your beliefs.
They pushed too far, fabricated just a BIT too much, and people caught on.
And most people would say that would categorize you as mentally deficient. Voting against your own best interests because you feel people are mean to you isn't usually seen as very intelligent.
Obviously I don't buy it, hence the reason I asked if studies had been made.
It surprises me that I see so many different reason here in the comment why people think others chose trump, when it's clearly their own reasoning.
You say they voted trump because they are fed up of being called bigot, just like YOU would do. Well that's the issue, some Americans might have say fuck them I vote trump but I honestly believe it is marginal.
I believe most cared about the election economy first, but I could be biased and that's literally the reason I asked if studies had been done, beyond the usual blablah.
I worked for Best Buy. They fired us and hired an Indian offshore team. They had H1B representatives in the U.S. that I had to spend three months training to do my job.
H1B is supposed to be to fill critical shortages. There wasn’t a critical shortage because I existed and my entire team existed.
Best Buy’s CEO preaches “inclusivity” and “the value of each employee” — while simultaneously firing Americans (and permanent residents) to lower costs — while making the vast majority of their profit selling products to Americans.
The other reason I voted Trump was the Covid lockdowns and the attempted vaccine mandates. Blue states such as California had schools closed for over a year, while red states such as Texas and Florida quickly reopened. The type of government that would arrest a person surfing off of Santa Cruz is a government that has lost their mind. And anyone Dr Sarah Cody of Santa Clara county would support, I’m going to support the opposite.
On a more subjective level — anyone that the establishment tries so hard to oppose-arrest-bankrupt-kill is worthy of my vote. When Dick Cheney endorsed Harris, the decision got really easy to support Trump. Also, see the Abraham Accords for why many support Trump on a foreign policy level.
I don’t care about engaging in a debate and plenty will downvote simply because I’m not in their tribe — but while you asked for a scientific study, there isn’t one yet, but there are tens of millions of anecdotes like mine which should give you a good start.
Not that it matters — my wife is an immigrant from Mexico and her entire family in the U.S. (who are all first generation citizens) — all voted Trump as well. Some make the mistake of assuming “immigrants” are all “undocumented.” There’s a huge difference in being anti-immigrant and anti-illegal-immigrant. The left-wing media fails to make the distinction. Also have a look at the so-called “Black” vote — they have a lot more nuance than the media would have you believe.
Bingo. All of the “my body my choice” rhetoric rings very hollow when you need to show proof of vaccination to sit down at a Starbucks to drink your $4.69 Americano (and still be required to wear a mask, despite being vaccinated twice in a state with something like a 90% vaccination rate).
And calling republicans facist and anti-democracy after closing small businesses, schools, playgrounds, etc. setting up phone numbers to dime out your neighbors?
Saying you are anti-1% when your covid policies directly enrich the 1%? Saying you are anti-racism when your covid policies directly hurt those without?
And then the massive economic fall out after when surprise surprise, doing all that will fuck shit up?
I was a loyal democrat my entire life before 2020. Never again.
- The economy is what ultimately matters to many people, and the impression is that the economy has been bad for the last 4 years under Biden but was better under Trump. The actual data is more unclear and confusing, but the average person has this impression.
- Harris wasn't likable/charismatic enough to many people, and was largely supported for her policies first and her personality second. Trump, on the other hand, went on a lot of longform podcasts, worked at McDonalds for a few hours, and generally seems more "human" to the average person.
- A general sense of rage/dislike/push-back at "elites" in Washington DC, the coasts, the mainstream media organizations, etc. If you google "trust in government" or "trust in media", they will elaborate on this issue. Trump, although a billionaire from NYC, is generally disliked there and is perceived as being an outsider and rebel vs. the elite group mentioned.
- Some protectionist policies Trump claims to support will benefit people in key battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc
Ultimately it comes down to two things, IMO: personal charisma and the economy. Everything else is only relevant in close elections.
I would argue it was the other way round. They both went on podcasts etc and I'm debate and in rallies Trump was verging on incoherent and boring his own supporters. But on policy he was far stronger. I'm not American and I'm left wing but the trade and tax policies he's proposing do speak to traditional left wing, trade union workers: put up barriers to lower cost countries undercutting American workers. I don't know what Harris vision is, it seems she has trouble articulating it clearly.
IMO the average voter is quite in-line with Rogan and Theo Von culturally (more than they are with Trump or Harris, for that matter) and so for Harris to skip those was a major misstep that just further made her seem like an aloof member of the DC/Coastal elite.
Biden didn't have this problem because he was more of a blue collar/middle class guy from Scranton and despite his gaffes, was more likable by the average person.
Harris just wanted him to fly to another city and do a 1-hour interview in their studio. To make an exception for a single guest seems unfair and I don't blame Rogan for not agreeing.
https://youtu.be/_aT2grMe1I4?si=jMtsUggT2eaOZdpo
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/29/joe-rogan-ka...
https://newrepublic.com/post/187601/fox-news-joe-rogan-donal...
Why spread misinformation?
Rich people getting richer doesn't matter if your rent goes up.
> Trump, on the other hand, went on a lot of longform podcasts,
Harris sure does have the time to go on Rogan now...
Joe Rogan found it convincing enough to endorse Trump afterwards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qZl_5xHoBw
You could also watch the episode interviewing Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBMoPUAeLnY
Or his VP, Vance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRyyTAs1XY8
Presumably the majority are people who agree with the message conveyed during such interviews.
Ban short form media.
This continued from Clinton to the Obama era. While Obamacare was a step in the right direction, it was seen as too little too late. It also had unintended consequences. For example, some of my part-time service job colleagues reported that pre-Obamacare, the employer could have them work 40 hours a week, because they weren't forced to provide them health insurance that met some minimum standard. However post-Obamacare, their hours were limited at 29 hours, which made it much harder to make a living.
By 2016, there was an opioid addiction crisis composing largely of working whites with only a high school degree, and the economy was still suffering from the slower-than-possible recovery from the Great Recession. (Economists say it would've been faster with more stimulus, but Obama was cowed by his neoliberal econ advisors). Due to gridlock in the political system, immigration system reform was impossible, and Presidents could only use Executive Orders to try to mitigate (but not solve) the problem of an increasing number of illegal immigrants from the Southern border.
All the pieces were in place:
- Scapegoat: illegal immigrants
- Weak economy: check
- Disgruntled populace: check
Feeling abandoned by both parties, the electorate went with an anti-establishment strongman demagogue who preyed on their hopes and fears. It's almost identical to the political environment that gave rise to Hitler and Mussolini.
The saving grace for the US during Trump's first term has been her strong democratic institutions. Pray they hold up during his second and hopefully final term.
Totally agreed that neoliberalism is a cancer though
I'm afraid this is the problem - your implication is that Trump voters need explaining using scientific analysis as some sort of aberration.
One day, there will hopefully be an analysis - but it will be of how among huge parts of the media and establishment this ideological view became the null hypothesis to the extent that people - in good faith - thought they were looking beyond the propoganda while asking questions like yours.
The majority of people have picked a side long ago and are sticking to it. You want to talk to independents or people that have changed sides recently.
The interesting thing for me was seeing the blowback from the woke movement. People I know that were raised Democrats and supported gay rights could no longer identify with the party supporting a movement that appeared to be telling them that they are racist (and BTW be careful or you might get cancelled) and that it would be great if their kids changed genders. This led them away from legacy media and towards opposite points of view.
I am not claiming this was the decisive reason- just pointing out something that I don’t see talked about much. Listen to people and you will find other reasons.
Party affiliation is a huge part of people's culture and personality in the US, "We are a Republican family" is something people outside of the US wouldn't say out loud. They have always voted Republican and will always vote Republican even if it's against their interests.
> I'm trying to look beyond the propaganda, any idea if there has been scientific studies or anything remotely credible ?
Exactly, they "propaganded" so hard that they created a narrative that they are the definitive winners. So you bought into their propaganda and now you are surprised. The reality is that the democrats are not that good and the people voted.
You could try to ask HN'ers who voted Trump why they did ... statistically speaking, folks on HN do not exactly strike me as fitting the "bunch of redneck retarded bigots" profile.
Oh but wait, that would only be possible if admitting on HN that you supported Trump was not guaranteed to have the following effect:
- starting flamewars, which might get you banned
- being ostracized and attacked
Except that more than half of the country supports him, so if you pick 100 people, even in the non-"bunch of redneck retarded bigots" circles, chances are, you know ...
There is something deeply dysfunctional about a society where you have to hide your democratic choice for fear of being socially destroyed.
How has this happened and what went wrong?
Discuss.
Edit: Flagged as usual.
For elections this includes all the things that people think about a candidate that they don’t feel comfortable saying out loud, or even operate subconsciously.
A candidate without a primary is extremely risky.
People claiming economy was better under Trump's first presidency then under Biden / Kamela's recent presidency. E.g. people mentioning super high inflation.
There were other arguments, but it seems to me this is the major one.
2) The electorate demographic without college degrees is more likely to make an emotional decision that is more easily manipulated with Trump-style bombast.
Not in a battleground state, I didn't see any advertising, but the Dems should have pounded Trump as a criminal sex offending lying hypocrit draft dodger loser felon bankrupt self-obsessed asshole (note this is not snark it's literally how they should have gone at him).
The UK voted for Margaret Thatcher three times (1979, 1983, 1987). I'm sceptical about claims that the 2020s US is somehow more sexist than 1980s Britain.
Maybe, it is easier for centre-right female leaders to win than centre-left ones? Maybe the first female President of the US will be a Republican?
Regardless of who you vote for, many would argue that a lot of the USA’s (and most countries nowadays, really) socioeconomic issues stem from unregulated capitalism, which -- quite simply -- prioritizes profit over people.
I'm going to share a tweet with you that is not my own tweet but one that more than 200k people have upvoted. If you want to see a list of topics that motivated Trump re-election: https://twitter.com/wildbarestepf/status/1854026810331365823
My main issue with right wingers is the derision, mockery, and anger which they direct at their political opponents. People talk about division in the country. I think that's by design. Right wingers have been doing this since the days when Paul Harvey was on the radio, and then later on Rush Limbaugh.
I was responsible enough to put aside my hate for the system and vote conservatively, rather than indulging in lashing out at my fellow citizens. It's a true shame for western civilization that more people were not.
Everyone voted as anticipated in the main and Musk’s antics did nothing to boost Trump.
Trump‘s campaign was a disaster, pulling him back and losing him votes. No one can be proud of returning fewer votes than before. Nothing he did worked.
White suburban men and the Latino population didn’t show up for Harris. Outside that even groups that didn’t vote for her in large numbers, or voted in part for Trump, otherwise performed as expected.
Polls are not good at identifying voters who traditionally vote one way and then decide not to show up. The apathetic voters were falsely recorded as being votes for Harris.
Many theories are out there to explain the apathy. Certainly there’s an element or sexism and racism. Many people don’t want to vote for a brown woman. Trump and his surrogates attacked Harris directly as a minority woman by implying she was only good for sex and had slept her way to power.
The Latino population in the US skews catholic and that constituency skews them conservative.
On top of that they often live in states with high immigration from South and Central America and are more hawkish on that issue than most. Many do not identify with the countries their parents or grandparents came from and consider themselves “good” immigrants who are angry at the “bad” immigrants they are often lumped in with.
People talking about any move to the right by Trump are wrong. If anything the country is less Trumpest than it was 4 years ago. He has no mandate.
America still seems unwilling to elect a woman to the highest office. People who think Obama election means race is no longer an issue are also wrong. Politically Obama was Michael Jordan. His performance and ability cannot be considered the new normal. He may remain an outlier in the same way Thatcher, the UKs only elected female PM, is.
With Trump wanting to support Russia over Ukraine and his talk about leaving NATO, yeah.
Blowing some shit up in the grey zone (or even Kursk) is one thing - his state hasn’t been threatened in any real way (which is their nuke threshold policy).
However, lobbing western made (and make no mistake, western operated) weapons into their internationally recognized territory is an entirely different ballgame.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/has-putin-threatened-us...
Ukraine send well trained troops there while they were needed in the east. Now they are loosing the ground there but cant really pull out. While loosing trained soldiers as well.
If anything this played quite well for Russia.
No, the fact that Russia didn't use nukes in response to Kursk incursion says nothing about his willingness to use nukes when the security of the state is actually at risk. Nuclear weapons will change the complexion of this war in ways that neither side can fully predict. It is rational to avoid moving the war to an unpredictable stage when the current stage is manageable in your favor. Not every border skirmish is created equal. They do not all rationally warrant the use of nuclear weapons.
With that said, NATO members (France, UK) have nukes. That's a line Putin can't cross.
In mainland Europe, France with La-Penne and Germany with AfD and now Sarah Wagenknecht[1] have far-right problems of their own and don't have political will for anti Russia stance so they won't be able do much either, rest of Europe are minor players or far-right governments like in Hungary under Orbàn.
[1] I refuse to call her party far left, now matter how she is described in media.
I really hope I'm just not seeing all the pieces, and that such option is not even remotely viable, but it would be bad.
I'm quite sure the US will see a military coup, in the event that Trump tries to ally with Russia and become enemies with NATO countries. I mean, I don't think it is possible for Trump to pull out of NATO. Worst case is he simply decides to shut off all funding.
Politicians are short term, military officers are life-long and ideological.
If the EU declines to do this then the Polish government and possibly the Swedes will do it. It's a toss up whether Germany will in my estimation.
Nuclear proliferation incoming.
The EU has no army. NATO (which UK is part of) is still in effect and it is not going to change.
If you want security can you really rely on someone who may or may not have your back, especially if they have a policy of transactionalism?
So, the EU needs to look to their own security, and the ultimate deterrence is nuclear weapons. And if the EU doesn't take up the mantle then the Poles will definitely do it, and probably Sweden, and possibly Finland / Germany. And so the EU needs to figure out if they are happy with a fragmented nuclear policy or not.
Nothing is going to happen to NATO.
Hollywood's opinion has been proven worthless and have no influence on elections.
In 2014, nothing was going to threaten the UK's membership of the EU.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall was going to stay put for another 50-100 years.
In 1938, the UK Prime Minister waved paper promising peace in our time.
Nobody saw the Great Depression coming in January 1929.
The mesh of treaties including the Triple Entente was supposed to prevent WW1.
The southern states were convinced they had both legal right to secede and the economic support and military power that the north wouldn't try to keep them.
The British were convinced that democracy was a stupid idea and that the 13 colonies would come crawling back when they realised they needed some proper aristocrats to govern.
The world doesn't much care about things like this, pro or con.
That being said I don't see EU being able to develop a consensus on this - even if just because of Orban and Fico being Trump allies.
Can't mess with them or Trump will raise hell.
Positive outcomes I see is that much like with the US's unequivocal support of Israel, this devastates the US's reputation and foreign influence. Trump wants to abandon Europe and Ukraine, which might grant Europe the independence and the urgency to step up and support Ukraine itself, unfettered by dysfunctional politics back in the US. A third pole on the world power stage would improve things, the US isolated back home in its infighting and staying out of the rest of the worlds business. IF the EU steps up.
> the world views this outcome much like we did in 2016.
You represent the world's view, ey? More than likely you're just repeating what the media told you to think.
When you don't understand something happening in real life then you might want to consider trying harder to figure it out, instead of feeling smug about it. Just doubling down on the things you believe should matter is not very productive.
We survived the first time?
I want to believe that somehow having Musk involved will help? I think there are a few people who feel encouraged by that based on how effective some of his companies are, and others think he will just call in a political favor for his own profit.
There seem to be two alternate realities. Either we are on the brink of a horrific fascist cyberpunk dystopia, or we have dealt a massive blow to the war-profiteering drug-profiteering establishment.
I don't think either is the real world, but the extreme divergence in predictions is confusing. I dislike this guy quite a lot but I also don't think the Democrats are trustworthy or honest.
In reality, the war and drug profitiers will be fine and the facist cyberpunk dystopia is still approaching at roughly the same speed.
this time, they're primed to enable and embolden their plans (see project 2025).
I don't expect these four years to be anything like the last time. I legitimately won't be surprised if this is the last somewhat-normal presidential election in the united states
Step 2: Become dictator/king
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit
---
History repeats itself.
Most people are already set on who they will vote for. Perhaps Trump supporters more so than Democrats. So, it all boils down to turnout:
1. Kamala wasn't the candidate to bring out Democrats (no primary, not a popular choice even among Democrats, selected by the DNC)
2. Trump can bring out his voters. The added advantage was a female opponent. A number of his supporter (male and female) have a pretty strong misogynistic streak. They will turn out to vote against a female opponent just because of that. I suspect a male Democratic candidate (even Biden) would have done much better (entirely driven by lower turnout of Trump supporters as they would not have been so committed against a male opponent)
This is further supported by the results of 2018 /2022 mid-terms. Trump was not on the ballot. So, Republican turnout (especially the kind that is in the cult) was impacted and Democrats had a good showing. We will see the same in 2026 (even more so as the economy will tank over the next 2 years and Democrats will come out in force). I predict a clean sweep by Democrats in 2026 perhaps even 60 Senate seats (yes, the economy will be that bad) and then the impeachment will start.
https://www.overseasvotefoundation.org/content/what-state-do...
> The difference between an expat and an immigrant? Semantics
> “Immigrants are usually defined as people who have come to a different country in order to live there permanently, whereas expats move abroad for a limited amount of time or have not yet decided upon the length of their stay,” he says.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-fa...
> Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years
People from the wealthier first-world nations enjoy more international privileges — visa-on-arrival, stress-free travel, higher rates in currency exchange, dual citizenships, better societal structures and support for assimilation into foreign cultures.
Immigrants are either fleeing persecution or leaving their countries seeking a better life, requirements for visas and security checks, usually with not enough money, little privilege, and defacto distrust from foreign societal structures.
Relatively speaking, the typical expat can move around the world as they wish. Immigrants can't. So yes, immigrants, when they move, often do so, seeking to live elsewhere permanently.
"No taxation without representation."
So you're in favor of exempting minors from federal taxation?
After all, their income is basically a rounding error economically and most don't make enough to pay net federal taxes so it might even be a net loss. There's no real reason to tax them unless it's some perverse Cartmanic exercise in making them accustomed to it.
It’s not foreign influence when America more or less demands it.
What difference does it make where you vote when you're an expat? You're still taxed and represented.
It would be a different matter if taxes were not involved, at least in my humble opinion. Other countries have revoked voting writes when you're no longer a tax paying citizen.
To me this feels like the kind of strategy that leads to us removing voting rights for expats. If the rule is meant to allow expats to still participating in voting in their hometown, and people abuse that to impact elections they have no real business voting in, eventually that right will just be removed.
Is the rule meant to do that? I don't perceive that to be the case. What even is a hometown? What if someone doesn't have a hometown? What if you leave and never plan to return?
Decidedly expats do have real business in voting in elections otherwise this rule would have been removed. But it would be unconstitutional to tax citizens abroad upon depriving them the right to representation so this seems. Given there seems to be no appetite to disowning American expats this all seems moot.
I'm not aware of any other country with this sort of policy. It certainly seems to me that you get precisely what you ask for here, and there is no possiblity of abuse.
Personally that feels like a great way to make sure we ruin things, rather than just arguing that those GOP members helping gerrymander might ruin things.
Do we know that yet? Last I checked, there were still millions of votes not counted. (California alone still has enough to change it, if they all went one way.) They just aren’t in areas that would swing the overall electoral vote, so the people doing the math can call the race overall.
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com
It is an interesting idea.
I'm more committed to democracy than politics.
One (of many) arguments against it: We were promised the costs of the indirection-layer of sober statesmen would provide a feature, protecting against a patently unqualified demagogue. The feature broke spectacularly.
That said, if I had a magic-genie wish between (A) popular vote for President and (B) replacing all our plurality-voting schemes with one of the many better systems, I would choose the latter.
I really hope this clear loss without the excuse of the electoral college leads to a total reformation into a sane party. I just wish that had happened to republicans first.
This is a really interesting analysis that differs greatly from how I'm seeing it - in particular your characterization of the democrats as "far left." What policies of theirs would you describe as "far left?" Specifically ones that don't have to do with identity politics, since you categorized that as something else.
In my opinion, leftists in the USA are effectively disenfranchised and there's votes on the table for a leftist voting bloc. The democrats this election turned hard right (immigration, law enforcement, Israel weapon sales, etc), which is a strategy that has never really worked for them but remains their favorite thing to continually try. If someone didn't want immigration, why would they vote for the candidate that's light on immigration when they could vote for the guy promising to deport (somehow) millions?
I saw another interesting chart that showed that something like 4% of registered republicans voted for Biden and 3% for Kamala. Capturing right wing votes seems to be a fools errand for the Democrats that they simply won't give up. Meanwhile there's a whole entire political spectrum unrepresented in the USA - and it's not like there's no historical precedence for demonstrable popularity of leftist candidates, one of the most popular and consistently reelected senators is an out and out socialist.
> The democrats this election turned hard right (immigration
After 3.5 years of scolding everyone for being racist for being against uncontrolled immigration, they tried to pass a weak compromise bill that acknowledges the problem, while continuing to advocate allowing a "first come first serve" border policy to the tune of thousands of people a week. That failed, then after years of saying their hands were tied, suddenly decide that they actually can do something, a few months before the election.
> If someone didn't want immigration, why would they vote for the candidate that's light on immigration when they could vote for the guy promising to deport (somehow) millions?
It's clearly not a binary issue. That's exactly why Democrats need to reform themselves into a party of sanity, instead of e.g. this: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-reopens-asylum-a.... The idea that a local domestic violence issue becomes a case for asylum is insane on so many levels.
> law enforcement
Again, too little too late, and after too much scolding about racism.
> Israel weapon sales
I won't comment on Israel "weapon sales" specifically, that is missing the big picture. I'll just give a few perspectives on how I reached the conclusion I posted about democrats.
Biden's diplomacy in the middle east has been just totally pathetic. Every week for months we got the headline "Cease fire coming tomorrow - Biden". Biden's desperation makes it crystal clear to both sides that he has zero leverage and can be ignored. And why is he so desperate? Because he has to entertain the demands of the far left of the democratic voter base.
More generally, this is an issue where Democrats have allowed their weird obsession with colonialism to cloud their judgement. At the end of the day, the middle east is almost exclusively theocratic dictatorships that have ethnically cleansed their populations of jews over the last 50-100 years, or failed states controlled by Iranian proxy militaries. And then there's Israel, a secular democracy (for now) with a 20% Arab population, including Arab elected officials.
It's very distressing seeing college students in Iran protesting at very real risk to their lives and freedoms against the very same forces that college students in the US are protesting (effectively, wittingly or not) in support of.
I remember watching the raw unfiltered video from Oct 7 and thinking this was the clearest casus belli for a total war for a regime change and occupation since WWII. Hell, even WWI and WWII still did not have such a clear singular provocation. Yet, democrats find themselves muddled and confused about the issue. Not at first, but democrats proved themselves beholden to their fringe lunatics on this issue.
...and Israel didn't? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cast_Thy_Bread
Supporting relatively better theocratic democracy is how the United States ended up justifying weapon sales to Iran and Pakistan. Are we holding Israel to the standards of America, or to the standards of their reprehensible peers? Are we looking at this from a flawed relativist standpoint, or are we willing to identify flaws before they spiral out of hand?
This feels like something we should clear up before the Gaza death toll surpasses Bangladesh. Alternatively, America can also admit that we never cared in the first place and announce that we're open for business to any sufficiently rich nationalists. Israel represents the point at which America can either bring down the hammer or double down hoping this time is different than the other nationalist theocracies that imported US weapons under the premise of fighting terrorism.
Student debt cancellation
The democrats, by european standards, are about as centrist as it gets.
Describing any policy of the dems as "far-left" is just nonsense. It's used as an insult rather than to further actual political discourse.
- Decriminalization of theft (now overturned via prop 36 in California) - Wealth redistribution via wealth taxes, unrealized gains taxes etc (Kamala policy proposal) - Support for anarchist movements (support for Jihadist elements, 2020 riots etc)
Take all the issue with prosecutorial discretion that you want, but don't pretend that an adjustment in the misdemeanor/felony threshold by $450 means theft is no longer a crime.
This is a red herring, and ultimately thinking it had any real effect on the race (beyond being used as fodder for mocking them) is a dangerous distraction.
Despite the fact that the president doesn’t have that many short term economic levers that aren’t destructive/wasteful, the fact that most USians have worse economic circumstances now than they did four years ago is probably the main driver.
The big irony of this is that a lot of it is probably the lingering echoes of the massive economic damage from the pandemic, most of which was not only not mitigated, but massively accelerated by Trump’s policies during the main sequence of same.
This despite the fact that we're all old, white, and economically privileged enough that we're for all practical purposes immune to the awful policies that are being put in place.
The sad thing is, the idea that moving away is a constructive political act comes straight from Atlas Shrugged. It's right wing logic. Express your consumer preference, and through the magic of the invisible hand, that becomes political power. Making yourself happy is the only form of political engagement you need.
this is probably not going to pan out. Trump's become the figurehead for an organized and motivated movement to completely dismantle the administrative state. nobody's going to be immune to the effects of that. Project 2025 includes shutting down the weather service, even to the point of privatizing tornado warnings. he's also talked many times about replacing the entire income tax system with hefty tariffs, which literally hundreds of economists say would be a disastrous move.
they're also talking about a national abortion ban. you might indeed be old enough for that not to affect your life any more, but if you have extended family, it will affect someone you care about, guaranteed.
last but not least, Trump's stated goal of mass deportation would require intense surveillance, broad leeway for law enforcement agencies, and drastically reduced civil liberties protections. once you've got that, you can target a lot of people. a site like Twitter is going to have a lot of data about political inclinations, and cultural factors like sexuality or race that can get you targeted politically.
the real problem that got Trump in office was normalcy bias. what we're dealing with is so bad that if you tell people who don't already know, they assume you're exaggerating.
This is understated IMO. In almost every other democracy in the world, 1% of the mess that comes out of Trump's mouth would deem him utterly unelectable on account of how crazy he sounds. The US seems to lap it up though.
His opponents have done a very bad job of not making it look like everyone's simply biased and out to get him, and he's capitalised on that.
I do care about the people who will be affected. But it won't be people in my social class.
There's a lot of hypocrisy built into the social conservative mentality. I've seen the world they want to go back to, and it was never about eliminating, say, abortion. Progressives think that right wingers want to eradicate abortion the way progressives want to eliminate malaria and poverty. There are a few extremists who do, yes. But most right wing people just want to institute social rules that stigmatize abortion. They want people who get abortions to be discreet about it, and they want to shame and punish anybody who gets caught. They want abortions to be a crime for the poor and a scandal for the rich. That's all they want. If they get that, they don't care how many abortions people get.
My friends are sophisticated enough and have enough resources that they would be able to get an abortion if they needed one. They would find an anonymous way to get a pregnancy test. They would not share knowledge of their pregnancy with anyone. They would schedule a holiday in an abortion-friendly place and Instagram every step of it. In this way, they would respect the taboo, and that's all that most right wing people care about. Rich people being able to break the rules is very much part of the plan.
The burden of punishment will fall on people who weren't wealthy or sophisticated enough to navigate this hypocrisy, or who belong to disfavored groups (racial minorities, etc.) who are specifically targeted for enforcement.
Think of how Alan Turing was punished for homosexuality. The nature of his sexual behavior was obvious to the police, but he was not going to be punished for it. All he had to do was deny it. Show respect for the taboo. But he didn't deny it, he didn't participate in the hypocrisy, so he was punished.
> last but not least, Trump's stated goal of mass deportation would require intense surveillance
You're thinking like a progressive technocrat. You're thinking, how would I institute a fair, efficient, and effective program of mass deportation? Trump doesn't care how many people he deports, or even whether he deports the right people. He's not going to be surveilling rich white people to catch people like Elon Musk who overstay their visa. Any mass deportations will be like his wall: a half-assed, purely symbolic stunt that makes his supporters happy and confuses progressives because of the blatant lack of ambition to accomplish anything.
Again, the victims will be people that right wingers consider fair game because of their economic status and their skin color.
I'm really not.
Heh. I read Atlas Shrugged in college, and at the time I liked it pretty well. I was hungry for a book about The Big Questions.
But now, I see the protagonists saying, "these leeches keep taking advantage of me! I'm going to move to a secret town in the middle of nowhere, and deny them my genius!" And it's the most teenaged, self-important thing I've ever heard.
I like many things about where I live, and I've become practiced at getting along with people that I have deep disagreements with on politics.
But particularly this morning, I can sympathize with the urge to move to a place where I'm more likely to share a common set of values with the average person in the grocery store, and those values are more likely to be reflected by the institutions around me.
I wouldn't feel any virtue moving to a deep blue area, but I would feel a bit of relief.
Who, exactly, are you targeting with this message? You realize you are in the minority, right?
Any US President, by design, can go against israel, because the US is a free nation not beholden to israel.
Google APIAC and how much donations they give to senators and check their recent statements in favor of genocide. Get out of the cave
I'll repeat. The US is free and not beholden to israel. They could decide tomorrow to stop support, they won't, but they are absolutely free to.
LOL
The compromise is total. Presidents are puppets. They do as told. There is a shadow government, and CoG is still at play. The reality is so crazy most people can't handle it.
Congress is the same. Total compromise. Every once in a while someone tries to buck a bit like Thomas Massie. Then his wife died suddenly...
Hope more high income manufacturing jobs are created for the working class and they build a bigger middle class.
A lot of political thoughts in these comments. I think the important thing going forwards is to figure out how to maximise the opportunity that you find in your environment.
For our team we were looking to relocate our manufacturing from China and get additional investment. One of our objectives today is to figure out how the recent result in the US will affect this planning.
Wish I'd bet more in the election markets and crypto, but hindsight is always 20/20 as they say.
Deregulation and immigration reform is inherently at-odds with putting American workers first. Apple didn't send their manufacturing jobs to China because of too many regulations and immigrants in America - they did it for the opposite reason. It happened with automotive manufacturing, it happened with silicon fabrication, and it's going to continue for every consumer good America cannot export competitively.
Voting in this guy, and his policies reduces the legitimacy of the US. If Trump withdraws from Nato, then members may not pay so much to US for weapons any more. Protection money only works while you get Protection. Maybe the Visa and Mastercard tribute taxes we all pay back to the US will be less welcome.
Maybe, in the new protectionist world, tax dodging US tech companies will be less welcome too.
In that sense, you have to have some pretence about why you disagree. You mentioned it was something along the lines of people thinking about a 'mighty dollar', but that seems conflationary.
Saying it's a nonsensical vote in a two party race is a bit off.
In other words: culture wars.
If Trump follows through on his promises, the US will be in bad shape.
Might be a good learning experience for the Red states.
One huge issue in the US politics is that the Red states are largely insulated from the consequences of their decisions by the Federal budget transfers. Nearly all deep Red states are net receivers of the Federal funds, especially when Medicare/SS are taken into account.
All that culture war nonsense, CHIPS act, and so on do not make any tangible difference for a voter in Alabama. All these amount to peanuts compared with the overall Federal spending.
Trump is poised to seriously change this.
Hitler got entrenched in power because his economic policies _worked_ in 1930-s. They were broadly Keynesian: state spending to stimulate infrastructure (for the military) and manufacturing (also mostly military). This led to economic growth that people really felt in their wallets: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Economic_development...
And so it resulted in a huge upswing in Nazi support, enabling Hitler to stay in power. People really _loved_ him.
This doesn't work all that well backwards. If peoples' lives keep getting materially worse, it's hard to keep blaming it on "the others".
There's been plenty of opportunities to learn, facts don't matter apparently.
Nothing since that time has really affected the Red states fiscally.
Couldn't a Trump administration rework the distribution of funds so that states that voted for him got even more money, and states that didn't got none?
https://ohss.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-06/2024_0418_o...
Ultimately, I think Trump won because a lot of key independent voters cast votes against the Democrats. It's a referendum on the way Democrats have been running campaigns for the past 20 years. See 2016 Democrat Primaries [1] where Hillary Clinton's campaign pulled some shady deals to get Bernie Sanders out of the race. Hopefully, we'll get a legitimate 3rd party one of these days to properly give a referendum on both leading parties. Doubtful, but one still has to dream.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_Party_presiden...
So long as the war in the middle east or Ukraine does not involve US soldiers on the ground, Trump can finance or equip one of the side - for the average voter in the US, there is no "war".
Maybe the the young men in the US were more concerned about the war in Russia escalating to a conflict that would involve US soldiers on the ground.
We know how Trump will behave with Putin (he will offer half of Ukraine on a plate in exchange for pinky promises.)
We can suspect that Trump will not move a finger when those promises are broken and the Baltics are invaded.
What is still a mystery is how Trump will deal with Iran - here, there is no clear policy that will please both Israël and Russia, so someone will have to give.
And Israel invades Gaza every year, under every president. It's just that in 2023, someone decided they had the propaganda power to make it seem like a new thing and that it was Biden's fault.
It's one thing to speculate that this is what would have happened, call it one's "gut feeling" or "character read" or even "reasoned speculation", and leave it go at that.
But to be "absolutely certain" about a pure hypothetical like this (concerning a war that dumb and irrational for Putin to start, in any case) seems, well -- quite strange.
It's also unlikely, given that one of the key drivers for Putin's decision to launch the full-scale invasion was likely (not proven of course, but by any analysis it does seem highly likely) Trump's isolation stance in Afghanistan, and blatant backstabbing of the local Afghan government. This surely emboldened Putin, convincing him that a new era of disdain for interventionism had take hold on the US side -- and that he could most likely go in and have his way with Ukraine, with no significant consequences of any kind.
Did Biden "start" the Israel-Hamas war? Or even do anything to conceivably precipitate it?
Since the answer is "no" -- why does this count as a war "started under Biden"?
[1] https://apnews.com/article/cheney-gonzales-harris-endorsemen...
As for the left and Democrats, the shift is equally noticeable in public perception. But instead of the sentiment being "oorah let's go to war for American glory" it's instead being heavily influenced by emotional appeals. This was most evident in Democrats support of the Russia / Ukraine war on social media. Once the leaders of the Democrat party, including President Biden, saw the overwhelming public support, they implemented policies that ultimately led to the expansion of the war. Refer to Anthony Bilken's visit to Kyiv during early peace talks. And again, I'm not making a claim as to who's right or wrong. Just trying to provide some context on how public perception is being leveraged and manipulated on both sides.
While there is still more nuance to it than that, there is still truth. In the UK, one of Rupert Murdoch’s papers The Sun likes to boast about their political influence on voters. “It’s The Sun what won it.” This is a bare faced statement that The Sun basically decides on their candidate of choice and voters go with that.
So it is when you depend on a so-called free press to give you the facts in nice, bite-sized form.
Edit: In fact, some say she lost the election because of her performance directly in front of the news media on TV and whatnot.
There was also the difficulty for her campaign that she was not voted for in a primary, just picked.
I've no idea whether this was from the ownership class pulling strings to cut any real objective criticism of ZIRP corporate welfare, democrats uninterested in economics being blind to the fact that inflation actually has concrete causes, or from the writers having their brains steeped in things like racism-everywhere orthodoxy and thinking that referencing those narratives makes for a neutral objective article. But regardless of why, with friends like those...
That's mainly because Trump is a Russian asset and it's in Putin's best interests to manipulate the US to yield and capitulate to his demands to betray allies. So under the bullshit excuse of being isolationist and pro-peace, you'll see Trump ultimately ensure Ukraine ceases to exist, NATO is dismantled, and war ravages through eastern and western Europe.
Trump likes to win. I have a feeling he wants to "win" over Putin. The man is shallow, it isn't rocket science.
Isn’t it possible that the educated elite are incorrectly perceiving what is in the interests of the “uneducated and poor”?
Perhaps it’s possible they have a different utility function and set of preferences than the elites perceive?
It’s aways funny when the left who claim to “save democracy” go from 0-60 in a split second toward totalitarianism when they have decided the masses simply aren’t educated enough and don’t know what they need.
As a final point, since this is HN, would you mind sharing some examples of what Trump has done or policies he has that are “against their own interests”?
I'll give a policy example against the average person's interests -- his 20% tarrifs across the board will cause approximately 20% inflation and a trade war that will ruin our export markets just like it did the first time. Trump brags about giving billions to farmers because he had to after his policies decimated their markets.
The US president has limited authority to unilaterally implement tariffs. He would have to claim national security concerns or retaliation to unfair trade practices from other countries. Trump previously imposed tariffs on China due to (well documenented) unfair trade practices. Biden then extended the China tariffs. But Trump would be legally challenged and most certainly lose if he claimed unfair trade practices by every country on earth.
Here's a good video explaining the problems with tariffs. They have lots of unpredictable long term outcomes and are hard to remove once implemented. Apparently there's still a chicken and truck tax on trade between US and Europe that dates back to WWII.
Regarding tariffs this is a complex issue and he has said repeatedly that it’s a negotiation tool. The records reflects that in he expanded US overseas market access with heavy handed negotiations. Most countries are much more protectionist than the US.
Industrial farming with massive soybean exports to China, who can’t even produce 50% of the calories their population needs domestically, is again a very complicated topic.
China is not in good shape and Trump’s first term was a clear inflection point in their trajectory.
So you believe it had nothing to do with a global pandemic and propping up their real estate markets until they popped?
Lowering taxes especially payroll and corporate and overtime taxes has a massive benefit to them. Lower income tax rates are actually very high once it’s understood that any tax or regulatory cost that is a head tax is a tax on them - “employer taxes” is a fairy tale economically, all taxes are on the employees if they aren’t paid if you are fired, if they are still paid then they are on investors/shareholders/capital and those are also negative for growth and employment.
Ending forever wars will allow shifting of budget priorities. A reduction of just 10-15% of defense and intelligence budgets and cutting funding to Israel and Ukraine can pay for childcare for every child in the US easily.
The list goes on …
Better question is what policies did Harris propose that help the uneducated and poor?
If that was really the case how come you just elected the very same guy who killed the border deal?
> Ending forever wars will allow shifting of budget priorities. A reduction of just 10-15% of defense and intelligence budgets and cutting funding to Israel and Ukraine can pay for childcare for every child in the US easily.
There is no "funding to Israel and Ukraine". For Ukraine there's transfer of outdated weapon systems reaching the end of life and already obsolete, which in turn is creating jobs in the US to restock and replenish the US's arsenal. If anything, you're seeing money go into the US defense industry which ends up being the US's take on welfare and social security program with all the pork programs.
Whoever fooled you into believing people are handing over cash to Ukraine, fooled you very well.
You should inform yourself about the bipartisan border bill that Trump killed at the last moment. The "amnesty" thing only exists as a propaganda talking point. The bill tightened up requirements for asylum and imposed automatic deportation rules.
There isn't. Go read the bill.
Hell, the bill was co-authored by republicans, and even approved by some republicans after Trump told them to sit.
Who falls for this bullshit talking point?
In any event, I'm not saying I agree with trump that the bill should have been squashed. It just had a lot of provisions and exceptions that one could take umbrage with, if read impartially, which right now probably is a bit too tricky for half the country.
I didn't vote for the guy, I don't like the guy. I find it to be a fascinating mental exercise to hold two opposing ideas in my head without accepting or denying either. I think someone smart said that once, long time ago.
Emotion clouds judgement.
We don't need to cut foreign military aid to fund childcare in the US. Reforming entitlements would get us there with more leeway and without ripping the rug out from under our allies.
Lowering taxes is a good thing, and that's about the only area you would find me in agreement upon.
It can also pay for unicorns and rainbows, what makes you believe "paying for childcare" has ever been a part of Trump/Republican agenda?
https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/economic-bulletin/ris...
https://www.cbpp.org/research/immigrants-contribute-greatly-...
https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/north-american-century/b...
I am not saying I endorse either thing, just answering your "not possible" claim. Most things are possible, few things are not.
Didn't fill existing positions for monitoring pandemic diseases arising in China that were put in place by Bush then strengthened by Obama, allowing for a slower response to what would become covid[1].
Huge corporate tax cuts that lead to stock buy backs, which enriched the wealthy while doing little to nothing below (buying stocks back and raising stock value generally does not help the average/low income individual beyond maybe their 401k).[2]
[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/how-whi...
[2] For just the tax information later, there are plenty of articles about stock buybacks at that time if you don't trust the org. https://itep.org/one-legacy-of-the-trump-tax-law-big-tax-bre...
Dems almost exclusively Lord over academia as something so valuable that the people that do jobs that keep the lights on, water running, and the floors steady are tired of hearing how much knowledge they lack. They say this in the same breath as they accuse republicans of keeping the sacred university knowledge from trades workers
That's one article that seemed a good summary, but there are a half dozen different things that could be cited as ways Biden has supported unions.
I can state the Infrastructure bill and the CHIPS act from the last 2 years giving more job opportunities.
To me this seems a pretty clear case of inflation=“punish the incumbent” and also Biden spread out the pain of covid recovery instead of making red states bear the burden. Kamala promised more of the same, including lots of investment into rural and red areas that aren’t gonna vote for her anyway. Result? 10-15 million blue voters stayed home this cycle. Trump turned out his entire base.
Just pontificating…
I've seen these conversations happen thousands of times in political communities online, before you know it, the person trying to understand starts getting angry at some point, and both people are calling each other names. Very few people truly want to understand the other side. If you want to understand the other side, the first step is to listen, and not say anything (don't try to defend your viewpoint, this isn't part of your goal, and it will derail it), ask questions, and agree to disagree politely.
(to a C programmer) "Why are you using C?"
"Because it's memory-safe."
"But it's not memory-safe."
"Yes it is. Your program will just segfault rather than getting hacked."
"No it won't... see these examples of C programs getting hacked without segfaulting."
"You're using it wrong. See look, if you write with spaces instead of tabs, your program is memory-safe."
Do you remember "MongoDB is web scale"? Would you not get angry when trying to find good reasons to use MongoDB? That's what it's like talking to the average Trump supporter, except it's about the removal of human rights instead of just which database you should use.
They voted for him because 15+ years of government + federal reserve policy has led to massive bubbles in all US capital assets while impoverishing a wide swath of the population. The people who voted for Trump are those who've "lost" in the giant crypto+stock Ponzi scheme.
The reason people on the winning side of this have such a hard time seeing it is that, en masse, they've turned away from any semblance of traditional valuation measures for capital assets. I assume they've done this because it's too emotionally uncomfortable to consider the notion that their entire wealth isn't because they're geniuses but because of deranged government policy.
>US Senator Lummis reaffirms Bitcoin will be become a national reserve asset following Trump's victory
I personally think it's a culture war thing that caused this. And it is probably going to get worse.
That's what a lot of Trump voters believe about people who don't like him. He used to generally have good public opinion (prior to his ascendance in 2015). A lot of people believe that his bad press is primarily due to intentional smear campaigns and lawfare by the powers that be.
In that sense, for many people, a vote for Trump is like apes in /r/stonks buying and holding GME. It's less about what they want in a positive sense, and more about what they don't want: namely extreme leftism and the current ruling class in Washington, the media, billionaires, and everyone else who attended the WEF in Davos -- all the folks who care nothing for the average Joe.
He may not fix it, they may not even expect him to be able to, but voting for him is a way to have a voice. At least he really upsets all those powerful people! And he did get some stuff conservatives liked done in his first term.
To give one specific example, private equity firms have been buying out small local businesses on a massive scale (like veterinary clinics), jacking up the prices, paying the workers less, and giving customers a worse experience.
That's not the sort of thing they perceive Trump to be doing with his riches and power. In fact, I don't see any way Trump is messing with the macroeconomy in his own business practices (do you know of any?).
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/aa383026-ac12-4d39-b6ee-075c2a248...
[2] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dozens-of-lawsuits-accuse-t...
That's not like Bill Gates buying up 275000 acres of farmland. That's not like World Economic Forum people in Davos scheming to eliminate ownership from common people across the world.
There's such a wide gulf between Trump and these sorts of people.
Besides, the examples you gave would come across as something a legacy media smear campaign dug up and misrepresented.
Just that whatever he did as a businessman, it didn't threaten or negatively affect the entire US economy.
There are of course more than one reason why people voted for him, but there's literally tons of comments in this very thread explaining why with no nonsense and under no uncertain terms.
Ironically, a lot of those comments get flagged and are no longer visible.
And before you jump to the extreme of “but they don’t want me to EXIST!”, that’s not the point. The point is that we temper each other, partially by negotiating, and partially by simply making the “other side” more used to our ideas.
That just happens with repeated exposure. If something is scary, but generally not bad, people can get used to it, but only if they’re exposed to it regularly. You get used to public speaking after the ten thousandth time instead, because you’ve likely already confronted every fear you had in real life by now.
Ironically, this is extremely easy to fix. Politicians can simply get along in public. We’ve got studies showing that political extremism can die almost overnight when the opposing politicians simply explain that they do respect their opponent.
As for the people here explaining themselves clearly - that’s because dang has done a good job of fostering a community of high quality commenters. You won’t find this kind of discourse anywhere else, and it’s the main reason I treasure this site.
Absolutely.
> As for the people here explaining themselves clearly - that’s because dang has done a good job of fostering a community of high quality commenters.
Hard disagree. The level of political discussion on HN is barely a step above r/politics. This is a forum for 110 IQ codecels who think minor domain expertise means they are smarter than everyone else in all aspects.
The contempt for ordinary people in this very thread is nauseating.
Yes. We educate the population for good reason. People _should_ understand that a tariff is a tax imposed on consumers, and if done with reasonable intent it is to prop up a key industry despite the distortionary effects with a particular goal in mind, such as national security, improvement of the populace, etc.
"Bringing back manufacturing" is not a coherent goal, it just sounds like one, because as soon as the tariffs are removed the US is back to offshoring again OR the purchasing power of the dollar is so low that it doesn't matter.
"Establishing manufacturing in key industries" is a completely reasonable goal -- which Biden did (solar, among others).
So once again, the Trump policy set is not actually good policy.
people _should_ understand that a president getting shot at live on television is not a hoax.
Do you really think farming plebs for political gain on social media is going to break for democrats? Really? That feels a bit out of touch to me.
I am not seeing how this tangent is connected to the rest of the conversation. Can you please explain why you thought it related to discussions regarding interviews of random individuals on the street?
> Do you really think farming plebs for political gain on social media is going to break for democrats? Really? That feels a bit out of touch to me.
Are you saying I'm farming plebs for political gain on social media for the democrats? That's weird. I've no association to any political party nor do I care for their political gain. I think political parties are unfortunate and strongly prefer ranked choice voting explicitly to weaken their grip. That said, I do analysis for policy and strategy, so perhaps I should have been more explicit in my recommendation that actual outcomes-focused policy is better for people than vibes-focused word salads (which Trump often espouses as well as most Republicans and Democrats as they attempt to make soundbites) regardless of political affiliation. Please forgive my clear lack of clarity.
A video of a random Trump supporter misunderstanding tarrifs is not a steelman argument against Trump supporters.
In the same way coastal liberals denying the assassination attempt and calling it a hoax is not a steelman argument against liberalism.
Both sides do this but theres a particular brand of "dumb out of touch liberals" that is pervasive on social media.
By way of background and disclosure, I got a PhD in economics at a point in life. This just means I've spent a bit of time thinking about tariffs and impact more than the average person. I understand the "theory" of tariffs and their impact, and the data has mostly supported the stylized facts that people point to for why they aren't good policy.
It's definitely true that tariffs aren't the first thing people think of in the morning (me included), and I consider it reasonable to say it is unfair to most people to expect, without some prompting first, a solid understanding that tariffs are a distortionary tax that the end buyer pays for. Higher tax means higher price. What concerns me is when I see people choosing to willfully ignore even a basic definition of something because of who said it, regardless of political affiliation. I strongly believe we can't operate on different facts, and should work to reduce jargon that confuse understanding.
> a particular brand of "dumb out of touch liberals" that is pervasive on social media.
I agree. I think this is an area where there is a lot of "both sides do this". Elitism is never a unifying attitude, nor are shibboleths generally.
> In the same way coastal liberals denying the assassination attempt and calling it a hoax is not a steelman argument against liberalism.
Yep. What chaos that event was. There are details both sides ignore that I call out only to acknowledge them, not agree with -- the shooter having strong affiliation with one party and weak affiliation with the other, the acknowledgement or ignoring of Trump's prior behavior and actions to influence opinion drawing from his entertainment background in WWE/The Apprentice -- but most of the speculation is crass and downplays the fact that someone tried to shoot a candidate for president. Speculate all you want about conspiracies on either side, it's not something that draws people together nor promotes liberalism.
If nothing else, surely we can empathize with being frustrated for ages and finally feeling seen.
Do they know Trump doesn't see them either - that he just wants their vote and their tax money!
Do they know Trump doesn't see them either - that he just wants their vote and their tax money?
They want cheaper gas prices first and foremost, and I guarantee that'll happen to some extent. Trump will expand drilling in the US, or reduce sales of our exports and divert them to the US, or something to that effect. The price of gas is a huge concern.
They don't want to hear any more about these culture movements they view as ridiculous, or for schools to teach their kids how to feel about $currentSocialMovement, especially when it goes directly against legitimately-held religious beliefs - "I can raise my kids how I want, thanks"-type attitude. This is the kindling for more parental rights political campaigns, which often includes the right to send your kid to whichever school you want.
They don't want to send money to Ukraine. Some know it's a lot of equipment, but it still costs money to send that, and there's an opportunity cost. It sucks what's happening over there, but they worry about being able to afford gas to get to work. They don't really care about what's going on half a world away.
etc. etc.
Plus, the media in general has been pretty aggressive towards Trump. Deserved or not, there's at least an air of truth to it. It's easy to dismiss a lot of concerns from the media. The Hunter Biden laptop thing (I haven't followed this at all) apparently is a big deal and seems to have massively fueled this idea.
I'm not going to reiterate their entire stance, because it probably varies from region to region anyways. Please don't shoot the messenger, I'm not going to argue their points, I'm simply summarizing what I've heard.
I for one cannot. As a libertarian, I've long empathized with the concerns. I share many of the concerns. I've often tried to discuss how I was working to create solutions to their concerns of centralized control in the technology sphere, or that there are actually ways to prevent "GPS satellites tracking their phones" and not just resigned angst. None of it mattered. Because I wasn't just repeating their not-even-wrong talking points, I was othered and ignored regardless.
There is a severe lack of analysis going on in that red tribe, which is why they keep voting for politicians that superficially play to their egos while actually making their situation worse and worse. Trump is nothing new for them - he's from the same vein of looting elites they'll follow until they finally realize they've been had. The main difference is the degree to which Trump openly shits on American institutions and values, and it's a true tragedy for western civilization that four years was not enough for them to see it this time.
Hell, I'm not even from America and I saw it comming from a mile away. Calling half of their country "nazis" and "fascist" was the worst campaign move I have ever seen in my life.
Very disappointing to be honest.
> "lib woketards"
but i agree with you that alienating more than half of the country was a move so stupid that only the establishment democrats could pull it off.
Which is why people voted Trump and why I called them "lib woketards", because I don't care about being popular or winning anyone's approval, but presidential candidates do, which is why it's so stupid how dems alienated a large part of their voter base like that and still thought they could win.
And I say this as someone who did this exact thing in 2016.
They like Trump because he appears anti-establishment and they fear/dislike the establishment. They don't feel the establishment in place is good for them. They truly, truly struggle with finances. Many are in the military and on food stamps. Some are farmers who can't make farming work anymore. They fear immigrants because they might take jobs or bring crime (and drugs). They fear they cannot protect themselves so the want access to guns.
One common thread was the stimulus checks. They really liked the stimulus checks.
Another thing is pining for the good ol' days. Lot of that, too. No issues like pronouns muddying things up.
Generally, not racist, not sexist, but some are, just like any rando person.
Seemed to me just like regular folk who are scared and can't make ends meet like they used to, well, a long time ago. The grocery store prices that are annoying to me are truly a decision point for them.
Then when you take three steps back, and look at it objectively, it's often of their own doing. A lot, I mean a lot, of disparagement of education, even of K-12, so the means to get better employment is more of a struggle. A whole lot of drug and alcohol abuse on top of it. They are the only people I know who smoke. Lot of broken relationships and marriages. Family chaos. The image of solid salt of the earth isn't what my Trumper acquaintances (friends?) are experiencing. They are pretty desperate and really wish there was some way to get back on top of things.
So, in desperation they vote for a person that promises to make it better. And really they don't care about much else. If you want to win elections, do the chicken in every pot line.
This is all anecdotal of course, but I went to the effort, this was seven people, all of whom I'm on good terms with and converse with on a regular basis. And they were respectful of my position - that you need both conservatives (to keep what's good of the old ways) and progressives (to find new ways that are better) in the political arena to make it work. That's not a popular position, though.
I think a huge part of it is also that they feel seen by someone, finally. Trump did a great job of making these people feel like the spotlight was finally on them, and honestly it’s true.
When I ask folks why those things don't matter, I either get "what about So-and-so," or "I don't believe that," or they just blow off the question without an answer. I even went to the Ask a Conservative sub on Reddit and asked why people think millions of noncitizens are voting in elections, and I got yelled at, called naive, and told that some local municipalities allow non-citizen votes in local elections so therefore they can vote federally too.
That said, I'd LOVE to know why none of the things Trump says or does dissuades his voters. Truly, because I really do not understand. I don't want to argue, or to try to convince you you're wrong, I would love to know why those things don't matter and you think Trump is a force for good.
Have you considered the possibility his supporters know something you don't? A lot of what you mentioned is either debunked or is fraught with misinformation
Why do you believe this?
> Have you considered the possibility his supporters know something you don't?
They literally considered that, it's a main point of the post you're replying to, they got answers that lacked actual details or hinged on hyperbole.
> A lot of what you mentioned is either debunked or is fraught with misinformation
See what I mean? "A lot" meaning what number of things? Either debunked or is fraught with misinformation? What does that even mean? Which things? Jan 6 is "debunked" or "fraught with misinformation" or both? Trump didn't release his health care plan, Trump called GA to find votes, Trump constantly complained about rigged elections. Those are sincere and unarguable facts. What are you speaking about in rebuttal?
I appreciate that someone actually read my post. I'm not happy to say that's the usual reply I get from Trumpers, just an angry "you're wrong" and no discussion. I'm out of ideas on how to get them to engage in a conversation. I hate arguing. I really, really just want to understand their point of view but I just get yelled at.
And I'm NOT trying to denigrate anyone with that statement, it just feels like there's so much anger between Americans that it's hard to get someone to believe I'm sincere when I don't agree with them. It seems to immediately cause them to shut down and go into anger mode rather than just explaining to me why they feel I'm wrong.
He's got them convinced that people who disagree can't be trusted, and it fucking *hurts*.
I'm dead serious and 100% sincere: Please show me the evidence. I REALLY want to see it. I don't believe people, I believe data. I don't even believe MYSELF without data.
I live in Georgia, I heard the tape with Trump and Raffensperger, but if you have evidence that call is somehow not true, please share it.
I heard Trump say he has "a concept of a plan" on Healthcare 8 years after he told me he already had a plan. If he's got an ACA replacement, I'd love to see it. I don't understand why it has to be repealed before it can be replaced, usually we just pass new laws that supersede the old one, but whatever, I'll look at whatever you have.
I don't think you can provide evidence that he doesn't complain about everything he doesn't like, every rally comes with a list of grievances. But again, if you have evidence, I'll look at it with an open mind.
And even if you don't have evidence for those things, show me what evidence you DO have, I'll be happy to examine it. I even looked at the stuff Mike Lindell released. I'll always look at evidence, but I just can't do the whole "do your own research" thing any more.
By contrast when Biden calls me garbage, I'm pretty sure he means it.
He's not, though. A lot of Trump voters were shocked when he really tried to repeal the ACA. Marketplace did a piece on it, visiting Erie county PA after the repeal efforts. You shouldn't assume he's BSing, as he's tried to do just about everything he said he would. I can't imagine voting for someone and thinking, "Oh, he'll never do the things he says he will."
I found it helpful to go directly to commentators on the right for deeper analysis. The average Trump voter generally has a hard time articulating specific reasons. Same is true on the left. Not to say they don't have valid reasons for their votes, but it's difficult for most people to remove the emotion online and clearly articulate substantive reasons.
This really requires a much longer essay. I found it helpful to set aside the impulse to immediately say "yes, but Trump did the same thing but worse." For the sake of brevity, the below focuses on the Democrat's mistakes which I believe were the ultimate root issue.
The summary of my analysis so far:
Trump rose to political fame in 2008 off the ridiculous "birther" claims against Obama. The left saw his success and has been trying (and failing) to beat him at this new media race to the bottom game. The Democratic party has strayed way too far from the center over the past few years. Kamala was the most progressive (far left) Democrat candidate in the history of the US. She ran a short campaign with many critical mistakes.
Because Kamala never clearly articulated her plan for the country, this left a lot of undecided Americans feeling like she was being controlled by the Democrat leaders and potentially hiding plans for overly unpopular (by majority) progressive policies. Specifically the plan to tax unrealized capital gains. She also made many of the same mistakes of Hillary Clinton's campaign assuming white women and black males would vote for her because of identity politics instead of winning them over on her policies. The right and center voters are extremely tired of being talked down to and lumped into identity politics.
In the end, Trump's campaign did a better job swinging back to the center while Harris's campaign left a lot of open questions on the table. This is a well documented mistake in American election political history. It almost always costs the win in a close election. Perception is everything. An ultimately the critical mass votes on policies and plans (whether real or perceived) vs character.
Why did Trump supporters ignore his atrocious behavior? They didn't, at least not completely. Mostly, the left's insane tactics of trying to equate Trump to Hitler using out of context sound bites backfired. There was a tremendous amount of social media activity on the right countering every one of these attacks using the source material from Trump's speeches. It made the left and mainstream media untrustworthy. All Trump had to do was pull back from using the same tactics (which the right uses just as much as the left) a couple months ahead of the election. This allowed the left to dig their own grave with undecided voters. Notice Trump stopped (or substantially reduced) using nicknames and personal attacks on Kamala many weeks ago.
Given that the right and most of the center lost all trust in mainstream media, it made it easier for people to rationalize. "Yes, Trump is morally bankrupt, but we had 4 pretty good years under his previous presidency. So I'll vote on the issues and not character."
And issues for most Americans always comes back to economy and taxes.
The short of it: Democrats lost the election more than Trump won.
Here are some videos that dive deeper into the analysis.
Piers Morgan - see Cenk Uygur's (Democrat) critique of the left. He's been highly critical of the way Democrats are playing politics for many years.
https://youtu.be/mIDLJnKesQM?si=tQu_H_JMqSLFVTNb&t=263
Konstatin Kisin - 10 reasons Trump won - simplified explanation for non-US citizens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlFTLhei7J8
Winston Marshal - ignore the "libtard" and gloating; Winston has been ruthlessly attacked by the left for years and this video is not his normal tone; pay attention to the examples of where the left used Trump soundbites out of context to try to paint him as the next Hitler
https://youtu.be/d254zOhdEA8?si=F9WQV0f1xGlZEkqw&t=85
Kevin O'leary on Fox News - talks about why small business owners voted for Trump due to fears Kamala would tax unrealized capital gains
It's clear from the message what the grandparent post opinion is, there's no need for understanding the right, the conclusion is there already and it's that the right wing voters are:
> uneducated and poor
This narrative about the right voters has been there since at least the nineties, only for the left to wonder why dialogue dried up.
Then the left drops the ball on big ticket issues, and people move more and more to the right, while fringe right positions become normalized.
Oh well, if it weren't for those pesky uneducated voters!
Where it breaks down for me is when you move into the plan for fixing those problems. You can't just reduce the funding of government institutions and assume there's some motive to re-optimize for efficiency. That might work to some degree in the business world where there's a profit motive, but on the public side of things the people that are abusing the system for personal gain aren't going to optimize to provide services more efficiently. They're more likely to optimize for more personal gain as the expectation of failing institutions becomes normalized.
Eventually, I think you end up with government services and institutions that are even less efficient per dollar spent because the solution for trying to improve them doesn't seem to have any plans for accountability. So I think people are voting to effectively de-fund government services and institutions with the misguided promise of reduced tax burden and increased efficiency, but what they're going to get is equal spending, less services, and more people benefiting personally from the shift in policy, especially if services start using more private sector vendors.
For example, some of our education funding in Canada has been cut massively due to the perception of waste, which is true to a point when you look at administrative bloat, but the cuts always impact the front-line people providing services and miss the administrative layer where the waste is occurring. That makes the ratio of waste even higher and people are left wondering why nothing works.
I might be wrong, but I think all you're going to do with a broad mandate to "gut everything" is to create an opportunity for self-interested parties to usurp government funding for personal gain when the goal should be to increase accountability and efficiency.
Loosely related, a massive problem we have in Canada is that front-line workers have been completely eliminated from the decision making process. Everyone I know can look at things done in their workplace and identify mistakes and inefficiencies that are the result of administration that lacks real world experience. For example, they built a prison in the city where I live where they put (sewer) drains inside the cells. Every single prison guard that you'd ask would tell you that's a mistake because the prisoners can plug them and flood the cells. That's the result of arrogant administration thinking they know everything.
My last point is also part of the reason I think people voted for Trump. I wouldn't because I don't think his solutions are going to improve anything, but a lot of people believe the system is broken because they personally see mismanagement on a daily basis and it's done by the people getting paid the most.
So I get why the messaging is appealing, but I don't understand why people think some of the proposed solutions are going to work. Maybe someone can explain to me how having Musk "do what he did at Twitter" to public institutions is going to provide better services to the public.
I really couldn't find much reason. So many Trump supports were just interested in "salt mining" from Harris supporters. The few issues I could find were
- he'll fix inflation/the economy (he absolutely won't)
- he'll mass deport immigrants (not a sympathetic reasoning for me. Also mass deportations are expensive; see the above point)
- Racist remarks about Harris (that's not even worth talking about)
- "This is a response to identity politics" (to put it in the least racist/Sexist/transphobic way).
- Oddly enough, nothing on Gun control. Maybe I didn't look hard enough.
So there's maybe 2 legitimate reaosns (no matter how misguided I feel about them) and a lot of hate. And then dismissals of any worries from opponents. It was honestly tiring how many "but Trump doesn't support Project 2025" I've heard.
The most legitmate dismissals of Harris came from "she wasn't voted in". Which yes, I actually do agree with and did not support at all. But we're well past the point where general elections are "pick the least bad candidate". Some issues about Israel, but I'm not going to pretend that wasn't always a bipartisan issue up top and that both sides in government are walking on eggshells about that issue.
-----
So yeah, my experience trying to find some truth below the ocean of feelings came down to "There's nothing inspiring about trump except that he didn't fuck up like Harris". There's no platform, just chaos and hate.
Maybe there are some smart conservatives offline that have actual legitimate points, but I don't have access to that and I suspect many of their arguments are simply economical (they want tax cuts for them and will vote that way. Selfish, but a very honest and reasonable point in an individualistic society).
I'd love to hear otherwise, but I'm not convinced HN will be much different from the dozen other platforms I checked. It seems to be all "vibes". vibes in weird ways and very dangerous ways.
I think it's really that simple in a lot of cases. There are of course many other layers and nuances, but I think trying to dig into the specific policies, rhetoric, and character of each candidate can miss the forest for the trees.
I could be wrong but I don't think 72 million people went out and voted for Trump because they carefully compared both candidates and decided that they preferred Trump on all of the key issues, or because they like or approve of Trump as a person, character, or candidate.
In fact his approval and favorability polling is still below 50%.
People held their nose or stuck their head in the sand on the parts of him they find unfavorable, and pressed the button for "change things" because they don't like how things are currently going, real or perceived.
Just like they did in 2020 when they felt like things weren't going well and voted to switch things up.
People who follow politics a lot more know that "let's try the other guy" comes along with a lot of other baggage and issues and policy, but that's a lot to think about and try to parse through in a world full of people yelling opinions, and I think a lot of people just look past them.
And you claim the democrats didn't push class divide by basically deriding and ignoring a huge part of the American population that supports Trump or might vote for him? Note that he made massive gains with latinos and even with the frican American community. That says a lot about who felt which party was ignoring them and pushing its own sort of class divide with rhetoric that didn0t take many of the things these people really give a damn about into account.
Pray tell too, what exactly are the specific interests you think they voted against? And how were the democrats addressing them?
After such a high popular vote in his favor, saying in effect that he won only because those who voted for him are a bunch of ignorant fools is exactly the sort of foolish tendency that made his opponents lose.
Maybe it won't be a snakes ate my face moment. Trump is hardly an unknown. People voted for 2016-2020. That's what they want. No snark needed
Almost every single Harris ad I saw was about how groceries and housing was too expensive. Two of the 3 pillars of her campaign were about price-gouging on staple goods and increasing access to home purchase. How was the issue not acknowledged?
As someone who leans quite left (and voted 3rd party in a deep-blue state), I can completely understand why many traditional Democratic voters didn't turn out (and why many Republicans despise the Democrats enough to presumably vote against their interests as you pose).
The largest issue for me is that I cannot support genocide. The "I'm speaking" (to protesters) was repulsive. The culture of "if you don't get on board it's your fault if democracy dies" attitude of the Democratic party was just as fascist sounding to my ears as anything they claimed the Republicans have in store for the future. I personally can't fathom how any person that aligns with my view of the world would basically take the stance of "genocide doesn't matter, toe the line". For me personally, two parties that aggressively support continue apartheid conditions and genocide are both against my interest so profoundly that where they differ on issues is irrelevant.
Furthermore the Democratic party has increasingly come to represent a very anti-democratic institution. Biden was promised us as a one-term president to get things patched over while new leadership was established. Then the fact that he was clearly increasingly incompetent was hidden until it was embarrassingly too late. But oddly, it was not too late for a primary, where Democrats could choose a candidate, but we didn't get that. And yet, when mentioning any issues with the mass murder of children you are told to "shut up and get in line".
Finally, Biden didn't deliver on any of the meaningful promises he made. Nothing happened to improve abortion issues while he was president, his track record on climate was just as meaningless and awful as any Republican, children still sat in US detention centers separated from their parents, corporate interests still take precedence over the rights of workers just as much as with any Republican.
While I am nervous about another Trump term, I fail to see how the world was so much brighter under Biden. The Democrats have become the party of "shut up and do as we say because we know better" with no objective improvements in the issues I care about when they are in office, which is impossible for me to get behind.
The idea that one particular party is owed my alliance no matter what atrocities they support is fundamentally authoritarian which in-itself is a principle I do not abide by.
Given your logic, all is permissible so long as we have one party we can point to and say "they're worse". Which is what leads to as situations where both parties continually move away from the interest of the people. I have far more respect for people who deny there is a genocide, as opposed to those that see it and actively choose to ignore it.
Also what is "would be"? Harris and Biden have been presiding over and supporting the current genocide. I have a hard time imagining it being truly worse during a Trump administration. At the very least mainstream Democrats can allow themselves to oppose genocide now that it no longer interferes with the aims of their party.
It continues to boggle my mind that liberal Democratic will endorse and support genocide without a moment's hesitation or reflection.
Trump's encouragement to 'let Israel finish the job' seems worse.
In a way it's like a significant number of Americans feel the same way. The people who elected Trump, then Biden, then Trump again.
Dreading it on one level but also looking forward to the entertainment of a watch a slow motion train wreck. If he actually follows through on promises like mass deportation and forcing Ukraine peace that could get intense.
Anyway, our descendants will hate current generations for what we have 'achieved' with the only place we can realistically live en masse for next 1000 years at least, almost all in in past 20 years, I'd say rightfully.
But as long as their stocks are up many folks here properly don't give a fuck. Tells you something too, don't put automatic morality into folks just because they have above-average intelligence, selfishness is a very powerful emotion from which none of us is completely immune from.
Under a continued Biden regime or a renovated Harris regime the climatic trajectory was similarly in overshoot. Like if you pay attention to what scientists, or even just general NGO representatives are saying... You should know that we are far off the rails.
Id encourage you to read the world meteorological organization's report from just last week; we are no where near what is manageable for a stable and prosperous future for our descendants. The climate has absolutely destabilized and we now have left a dismal future laced with intermittent catastrophe. Our generations greed and myopia means we have also left a momentous task to our descendants who might seek to try and restore the planet to equilibrium. Trump or Harris at the helm --it makes no difference-- the ship is going down.
Future generations will inherit a ruined biosphere, food insecurity, resource wars, etc. Humand can obviously mitigate tha somewhat but there's not a single political entity in the US or perhaps even the West as a whole that is currently engaged in doing so.
Environment aint just directly co2 or temperature raises, its everything. And everything is connected.
Just because the ship has sort of sailed it doesnt mean giving up and ignorance is the right course, especially when vuewed on really long term scale
The very first step here is to phase out extraction of fossil fuels. Kamala Harris was not going to even stop fracking, which is by far the most environmentally damaging extraction, let alone phase out drilling.
Basically no state/country nor any politician is going to save us. Currently it's up to regular people to work on building a better world, restoring the biosphere, coming up with ways to adjust our manner of living towards a sustainable course and one that will be resilient to catastrophic climate events and even social upheaval.
Instead it seems a lot of people want to just cast a ballot and then forget about it, but this will be a fundamental lifestyle change, and it's going to involve sacrifice.
Perhaps that was the problem with the messaging from the start, it didn’t appeal to people’s selfish nature enough.
No, no it has not. It has been about a multitude of subjects like the oceans and forests and preserving habitats from human interference. Humanity mishandling those has consequences for humans, but that has historically not been the crux of the message.
It has never been about “floating rocks” either, but the life in it, nature as a whole.
Both the candidates were in favor of a continuation of the petroleum based industrial society that will inevitably collapse in on itself.
In fact an argument can be made that this election and it's result are a symptom of that.
This is such a bullshit way of thinking. No one snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche. "But China…", "But India…" is not an excuse for not giving a shit. I hear the same arguments over here in Germany, and they're usually coming from the "I don't want to change" crowd.
Also the state that has more renewables than any other state voted for Trump.
I think that this is one of the most incorrect, and, what’s more, plainly and obviously incorrect things I’ve ever read. I am almost at a loss for words when I read it.
Are we going to pretend that people would have adopted EVs anyway in the west without Tesla? Did you think we would just abandon the entire western auto manufacturing infrastructure and start driving BYDs? Did you forget what the auto industry looked like before (and during, in the early years) Tesla?
This is like saying that he doesn’t have a good sense for building orbital rockets. The guy has basically only done two big and meaningful things with his life and attacking the #1 carbon emission source is the bigger of the two.
Attacking cars as a carbon emission source would not mean killing an HSR project on purpose. It would mean building public transit.
Anyway EVs aren't special. Every major car manufacturer has them now, and the PRC makes shitloads too. Elon Musk probably beat the market, but it's not like his designs were genius - they lacked critical, simple safety features for example. Need I truck out the stories of people slicing their hands open on the cybertruck frame?
As for orbital rockets, that doesn't really have anything to do with climate change.
Also, I think your idea that cars themselves are the problem is probably incorrect. Decarbonization isn’t primarily about reducing overall energy use per person, although you can possibly deflect with the argument that it requires both that and also clean energy.
In any case, American culture and cities are car culture and cities, and even if you could do the impossible and magically deploy tons of HSR between every metro in the US it wouldn’t make people stop driving. Any solution that requires first rebuilding the whole country and replacing its whole population with people who don’t want to drive a large vehicle to the grocery store is obviously a nonstarter.
Tesla accelerated the electric car market several years, that's for sure. But nothing more than that.
The most important development for the feasibility of electric cars has not been automotive innovation (not the powertrain, the motor, the wheels, the interior or whatever), but battery innovation.
And battery innovation (i.e. cheaper, lighter, more capacity, better heat management, better durability) has been ongoing regardless of automotive even existing as an industry.
This has been the driving factor for the electrification of cars, not any one car company but the battery industry. Tesla simply was the best first mover.
https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Battery-cost-dec...
EVs are growing, and will continue to grow, for reasons unrelated to climate.
They are the superior product in nearly every way. Regenerative braking is a huge objective improvement. The acceleration and torque control is a huge improvement. The lack of maintenance is a huge improvement.
The only downside of EVs is range and charge time, and both of those are being actively improved.
Elon deserves some credit for joining on to Tesla in 2004, long before these benefits were clear, and for being at the first company to really demonstrate these benefits in reality with the Roadster in 2008. But I do not think the existence of Tesla accelerated the adoption of EVs by more than a couple years.
The Model S was released in 2012. The Nissan Leaf was released in 2010.
China is 30% of global emissions in 2023. India is 7%.
You can't get one country to stop all, so you have to get everyone to cut as much as they can.
But the point being made isn't to emphasize the importance of everyone collaborating on cutting emissions. The point being made is that we may as well not cut back because someone else might not. It's especially disingenuous to bring up India when they emit less than the US does (and especially on a per-capita basis).
> You can't get one country to stop all, so you have to get everyone to cut as much as they can.
Exactly, but the US accounts for 11% of emissions for 4% of the population. Maybe they have more fat to cut than others.
KH was also pro nuclear.
In other words, it seems to indicate pretty strongly that no matter how you vote, climate change is going to destroy us.
It's difficult for many people in America to accept that the "climate change" narrative is primarily a propaganda tool and wedge issue to rally votes, and that the DNC doesn't actually care about "solving" it. Just like abortion.
Two things are true: climate change and reproductive rights are genuine issues, and they are also weaponized for political nonsense. People need to be away more skeptical around these debates and stop getting so angry/depressed about them (which is the goal of those groups trying to manipulate you through powerful emotions).
It's clear that Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords and famously wants to start up a massive amount of drilling for oil.
Whereas recent democratic cabinets banned certain oil drilling, dedicated the US to the climate accords, installed large subsidy programs including one that prevented Tesla (fully kickstarted the electrification of the entire automotive industry indefinitely) from going bankrupt, and just recently launched the IRA which is the biggest climate change prevention investment ($3 trillion) in the history of the world, prompting the EU to follow with a similar program to compete to attract green investments and innovations.
There is simply a massive policy difference between the two parties here. And showing a graph of world emisions that have kept going up in the decades prior to mainstream climate change awareness, is grossly misleading. For one because it says nothing about US policy. Two because it happened prior significant climate change policy and a divergence between republicans and democrats on this issue. And third because without frontrunner countries there is no way that you can ever overcome the tragedy of the commons issue with climate, because India/China are certainly not going to make investments if the US doesn't and fucks the climate anyway. We can't all use that excuse, certainly not if you're the richest and most innovative country.
Climate change absolutely is a technical problem and not a political one. It's about the cause and effect patterns of actual weather phenomena, and has nothing to do with conflict resolution within human societies, or anthropocentric psychosocial rituals.
We don't really have the technology to purposefully engineer macro-scale climate patterns, and we absolutely do not have the technology to secure wide-scale cooperation among vast numbers of people with different value systems and incentive structures. We've never had that.
Where do you get the idea that politics has, or has ever had, the ability to do anything of the sort?
> There was a last chance to do it right around these years
You're not getting it. There was never any chance to do it. You might as well be arguing for sacrificing goats or reciting ritual incantations. There is no political solution to climate change, and there never was.
Peace and enforcing laws are now negatives to Democrats, that's why you lose.
Trump promised to deport all the undocumented migrants. All of them. That's roughly 10 million people.
How would you, within 4 years (he is famously a man of his word and we can count on him to accomplish his campaign promises within his presidency), find and then move 10 million people, and to where would you move them?
What does it look like to move 10 million people against their will? What mechanisms would allow for this?
I have an idea, but I'm curious your alternatives:
First, to find them, you could create a federal bounty program. Rat out illegals, get 100$ a head. Well, that might lead to rampant suspicion and neighborly misbehavior... somewhat exploitable too since you can get ICE to kick your annoying neighbor's door down by claiming they're harboring an illegal... not ideal. Maybe instead give NSA blanket wiretapping access to root them all out? Well, now they're listening to everything everyone says, but hey, anything in the name of freedom!
Regardless, awesome, now we've got ICE kicking down doors and dragging screaming families into the street. Part 1 accomplished. They load them into paddywagons and take them to local jails. Oops, those filled up within the first five days of the program. Now what? Stadiums? We're using those. Walmart parking lots with UNICEF tents? Sure, but what's to stop them from simply running away? Fences. We need lots of fences, and lots of UNICEF tents. Cut in some latrines (jobs!), run some plumbing, done. We've got some great staging areas.
Obviously, we should centralize these, right? We don't want to just take over every walmart parking lot in the country. Instead, while we negotiate with mexico and some other countries about how we're going to dump 10 million people over the border, we'll park them in several centralized locations, preferably out in the middle of nowhere because nobody wants a concentra--- sorry, undocumented migrant staging area, in the middle of their town!
That's a lot of people to move, 10 million. A greyhound bus fits, what, 30 people? 50? That's too many busses. We need trains. We can build the undocumented migrant staging area in remote areas with train access, just add an offramp straight into the camp- sorry, undocumented migrant staging area. Fix up some cattle cars, jam the people in there, gorgeous!
Oops, mexico told us to fuck off and won't take these migrants, now what? We can't just let them loose after having stuffed them up in there for a couple months, can we? I guess we can just keep them in there a bit longer while we try to negotiate with a couple other countries...
This sounds like the good version of America, right? With the screaming families being dragged onto mass transit and shoved into unicef tents? The alternative (aka, status quo for decades) is just lawlessness.
They believe that with these two major policies in place, most of the unlawful aliens will self-deport, and just considering human incentives on an elementary level, yes most of them will self-deport.
https://x.com/juandr47/status/1854199336860590416
Are you saying she's lying?
I agree with you that conservative voters often put their own thoughts on the words of their candidates. "Well he wouldn't actually..."
Today Trump said he would use the military to do mass deportations.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2nrg4deyjo
Can you help me understand how you square his words with your belief that actually he won't do this?
Most illegal immigrants are only in the US for economic reasons. Don't give them any welfare, make hiring them actually illegal and punish the companies that hire them. When this happens, many of them will just go back to their country.
Then if somehow their countries refused to take in their own citizens, they can just be sanctioned, or stop being given foreign aid by the US.
The only reason you believe that mass deportations are impossible and would cause an apocalyse, is because you really want it to be true.
https://x.com/juandr47/status/1854199336860590416
Are you saying she's lying?
Today Trump said he would use the military to do mass deportations.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2nrg4deyjo
Can you help me understand how you square his words with your belief that actually he won't do this?
The EU can't let Russia "win" as it would set a precedent. If the US withdraws their support, the EU will have no choice but to ramp up theirs, meaning funneling money to the military complex. Double or triple that if Trump goes through with his NATO defunding/withdrawl threats. This could easily destabilize the EU economy, cause internal friction, provide fertile ground for nationalism and, ultimately, lead to the fracture of the EU. Now recall Trump's cordial alignment with Putin, which will undoubtedly encourage this sort of development, and it all starts to look outright scary.
However the world let the annexation of Crimea slide in 2014 and that emboldened Russia. Let them chop off a piece of Ukraine now and that will embolden them even more. After all Finland was a province of the Russian Empire before the revolution of 1917 and parts of Poland were under Soviet's control prior to 1941. And that's without going back into middle ages. Lots of places to take back.
In fact, it won't even really be the voting citizens of the USA who make any decisions, because when red/blue splits 50/50 it isn't "tyranny of the majority" anymore, it's tyranny of luck.
Re: your taxes - it'd be prudent to look beyond short-term effects and consider what different scenarios would lead to in the long-term. The EU had no choice but to help Ukraine to resist. Consider where things would've been now if they didn't.
If Germany had any strategic autonomy left (which they don’t, they’re just a US vassal through and through) they would do a second Rapallo, maybe this time also involving China, at that point they’d still have a chance to put their economy back on track.
Best bet is to find a way to build up states that can defend those rights and concentrate people there. In response to the evisceration of the federal government, set up equivalent agencies in those states that can do those jobs. The rest of America should be abandoned.
Either way, it doesn't make sense to spend effort where it's not making a difference.
EDIT: Another part of this idea that I struggle with, is that we shouldn't ask people who aren't accepted to stay in places where they aren't accepted. They deserve rights. They should go to places where they can get them, and we should get them out of the places that don't respect them. And doing that, which I think is the moral thing to do, leads to what you're describing.
Appreciate your thoughts.
I would not though, because you have every right to want to self-govern. Good luck!
> “If transgenderism is false—as it is—if men really can’t become women—as they cannot—then it’s false for everyone,” the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles said at CPAC. “If it is false then for the good of society and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/cpac-transgenderism-speaker-...
I think the exact opposite solution is better: blue every state you can by undoing "the great sort". We will learn more that much of the division is media amplified, and that at the core of it, most humans want the same few things. This guy called Maslow even arranged these needs in a hierarchical framework.
This is fall out from democrats disastrous covid policies. Well deserved fall out.
What?
I’m not American, and in theory I appreciate your positive messaging, but realistically it doesn’t seem like you do have half of the voters or the power behind you.
I hope this finally stops blind democrats from saying crap like “this is not who we are” and “when they go low, we go high” and invoking American exceptionalism and crying for God to “bless” your country specifically. Don’t be surprised nationalists won the day, this is who you are. You had an excuse in 2016, but not this time. You made your bed, and the worst part of it is that it affects the rest of the world so meaningfully. You fucked up. Again. Maybe try changing strategies a bit? If you keep turning the other cheek while the other party is punching you in the face, all you’re going to get are more bruises.
¹ I don’t have any data, this is observational, and I would welcome being proven wrong.
(And before you say that the other side would do it too, even Trump, that seems to show total support for Israel at least keeps talking about how the entire thing needs to stop asap. No such urgency from the Biden administration, at least that's not what their actions show as they keep providing even more material support by the day).b
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-israel-g...
What are your thoughts and level of concern for the Ukrainian people in the near future? Do you believe that Trump is going to bring that conflict to a close agreeably for the people of Ukraine, or will he follow through with his promise to let Russia "do whatever the hell they want"?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/10/politics/trump-russia-nato/in...
And in any case my point was more that it is funny to see people talk about how one side only thinks about their rights and not those of the others and how their side has more compassion and empathy. While actively campaigning for the candidate that has been completely supportive of Israel for the past year. Using the reasoning that hey, foreign policy is one thing but at least Biden is better for "us Americans". That to me sounds exactly like thinking about your own rights first, at the detriment of those of all the people who died and suffer from what Biden's administration has enabled.
Problem is, this is the best way to increase engagement because it gives the most people the most compelling content. So this will never change.
1. Eliminate anonymity by requiring real names and profile pictures attached to usernames. This humanizes users and encourages accountability, as attaching a real name can act as a natural filter for behavior.
2. Introduce a cost for downvoting to make it a more thoughtful action. This could involve a quota based on account age and karma, or my favorite option—having each downvote cost a bit of karma or an upvote on one of your own posts.
3. Discourage bot accounts by requiring a hard-to-obtain token, like a verified phone number, which is straightforward to implement and would reduce low-effort accounts.
4. Higher barrier to entry to join an online community. This doesn't parallel how communities work IRL. You need social credit to join a community.
They don’t want to understand why so many people see the appeal of Trump but not the Democratic Party. They are so caught up in whatever their personal ideological take on some fringe issue is that they miss the big issues and the popular support for change away from the status quo on those issues.
I hope this is a giant wake up call that causes them to clean house. The current leadership and strategists are clearly horribly disconnected from the average voter, and they should be replaced by a team that actually enfranchises its base by pushing for robust primaries (unlike this year), without putting a thumb on the scale (unlike 2016).
You can't win with a backroom of overeducated analysts putting together a "platform" of issues that they feel like will appeal to the median voter, then trying to shove a pre-screened, crappy establishment candidate down everyone's throats.
The best way to figure out what people want to vote for is to hold an actual vote.
They don't like that eggs went up in price so they elect the opposite party. They think Trump will bring prices back down because he's a businessman, even though his tariffs will be hugely inflationary.
I'm not sure what kind of an honest DNC conversation would be able to address this.
Also your view that dumb voters led to this is counter productive and insulting. It is what I am seeing in almost every reddit post as well. “Well people are just too dumb to know what they need”… yeah ok.
Harris didn't really push this narrative as far as I can tell, but unfortunately some of her supporters do(and the media outlets they run).
Or perhaps the Trump voters actually believe he can somehow lower grocery store costs, though to me this seems like it would require some real mental gymnastics to believe, or deep ignorance.
Everyone seems to be laughing at centrists nowadays, ya know the "enlightened centrist" meme, but it's the only truly secular position today.
The left remains stubborn in persecuting even an ounce of independent thought (or any thought that goes against the established dogma) on topics related to gender/race/identity and dismissing people with different opinions as "bigots". And then they wonder why people simply stop expressing their opinions loudly and opt to express them via voting instead.
And then when the voting results come in, they double down: "I can't believe 50+% of the population is RACIST, SEXIST, BIGOTED, UNEDUCATED, STUPID!"
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, really.
Both sides are guilty of not being nice to the otherside, and calling them scum. That seems to be the problem right now, we've stopped listening to each other.
"I believe our differences are merely political , and that I should not suffer any opprobrium for my political positions. If I do suffer insults for my positions, that intolerance is problematic".
I generally agree with your view that we should not be vilifying each other over political differences. The disconnect, I think, comes from one side asserting that all positions are merely political, and therefore up for debate, while the other feels that some positions are beyond reproach. An alternative of the above then becomes:
"I believe acceptance/rejection of $OUTGROUP is a mere political difference, and that I should not suffer any opprobrium for my rejection of the outgroup, or my political support of platforms that include rejection of $OUTGROUP as an explicit or implicit plank. If I do suffer insults for my position, it's that intolerance that's the problem, not my merely political views on $OUTGROUP".
which feels less generous to write, but closer to how I read it.
What would you like to say to someone listening?
It’s not “anti-science” to say gender is fundamentally non-binary. Yes, reproduction is very binary but you don’t stop being a man or woman if you become sterile.
Biologically, gender is determined by a dozen of various factors during the child’s development. All of which can go wrong. Especially now that we are surrounded by so many hormone disrupting chemicals.
How is it so hard for people to imagine even the possibility that the development of the brain can be affected towards a different gender than what your genes or genitalia indicate? Biology is not a perfect machine. Not even remotely.
And is it so incredibly hard to acknowledge that it’s easier to fix the appearance of your genitalia and some letters on some paper, than trying to force your brain to rewire itself to a different gender than what every neuron and synapse of their brain has been wired for during development? If you actually spend a minute really listening to a transgender person it will become very clear that switching gender isn’t something they do just because it’s like.. you know.. kinda fun and exciting to be a different gender. No. Not at all.
Tech people especially, should recognise that “binary” is an illusion. We say that bits are binary but anyone that has worked on chips or read about ECC understands that it’s not how physical bits actually behave. Biological gender is similar.
Honestly, that so many people on all sides still don’t see this is a worrying sign of societies lack of empathy. We don’t want to spend even a little bit of time to understand other people. And yes, to circle back, for the left this means they should truly understand and speak to young men in the working class. Sure they have some nice words about supporting unions and such… but it’s not believable.
It is:
1. the selective outrage judicial system that corrupted the trust in the process , the judges and the prosecutors. Not only towards Trump, but towards his close allies and supporters
2. It it the Covid response that forced people to get vaccinated to get a job (talk about bodily autonomy)
3. It is complete disregards for immigration law, importing into US workforce, families and criminals illegally. Causing hardship to US citizens
4. It is the visible immoral US stance on using Ukrainian lives in an unwinnable territorial war, so that US could 'weaken' Russia, while also enriching the military-industrial complex
5. Yes, it is the economy (inflation, lack of stable income, where people have to work multiple jobs to pay rent and to buy food).
6. It is a complete disregard for a family unit, parental accountability and control for mental health of young kinds. Adoption of transgender surgeries for the kids, having public schools push racial self-hate, demoralizing kids identities.
7. It is support for on campus violence against american Jews.
8. It is remarkable encouragement for transgender to compete, and even violently attack (or hurt in competition) females.
9. It emboldening the South American gangs in crossing borders, child trafficking, extortion.
10. it is distrust in 2020 election process, and the judicial refusal to actually review the cases brought in front of them.
Different 'categories' of voters were deeply disturbed by different points in the above. But the collectively -- it is clear that the problem why Dems lost is exactly in their anti-constitutional, immoral policies and constant lies by the propaganda machine and their 'experts' (that Trump is guilty of something, Russian interference, mRNA is safe ... etc)
Trump received a mandate not just to address one of the above points, but to address all of them and forever through strengthening the word of the Constitution via detective, preventative and corrective controls.
Trump voters are not casting a protest vote, how much ever now it is going to be retconned as disinformation, stupidity or anti Gaza vote, the reality is they fully expected to win if not democratically then by force.
*Which also happen to be a guy that needs a 'get out of jail free' card, that Trump can offer
Due to how Twitter works I think it generally better reflects how people are feeling, especially these days with many filters removed.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ohio-police-dispute-new-allegat...
But I googled around and found this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbjuctKts9M
Unfortunately, there is no confirmation that it's actually cats on the grill, or that the cats were someone's pets, or that the grill belongs to a Haitian immigrant, and the video says it's from Parkwood, Pennsylvania.
I really wanted it to be true so that I had something to believe in, seeing as Trump doesn't have any policies for me to believe in.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
It is quite depressing to see so many people take low information media, make very consequential inferences from it, and then share those inferences as fact. Humility is indeed a lost virtue.
Dialect*
I then asked: "I can name 10 good things about Biden / Harris, can you do the same for Trump?" They couldn't say 1 positive reason that the ~ 75million voters are supporting Trump.
It's a good self-test of your bubble. Could you make a sound argument in favor of the opponent? If not, then you haven't spent enough time trying to understand the context.
This is one example where ideology becomes a mechanism of coercion to transfer wealth from the large majority to a very small group of people.
I've never been more ashamed to be American.
The democrats keep throwing up these lame/hated candidates (Harris this time, Clinton in 2016) whom they appear to assume will prevail, because, Trump.
And so faced with a choice of bad vs bad, the result ends up being quite close and unpredictable. As my daughter says, the first female US president should be someone actually good.
Blame the system, not the voters, maybe.
Its literally 50/50 split.
50% of Americans DON'T want this.
Ita a quirk of democracy, but talking about 'Americans' wanting this, when the result is entirely a coin toss.
And one weighted towards repiblicans by the way their state system works, giving the smaller states a dispropotinate say.
Same thing happens in the UK. A fairly small percentage of the UK voted for Labour and yet it was 'a landslide'. More people voted for Jeremey Corbyn than Kier starmer, but one is apparently 'out of touch' and the less popular politician is somehow a 'genius'.
It's such a bizarre rhetoric that has no basis in reality, just electoral technicalities.
But yeah.. roughly half the country doesnt want him
Germans are human too, it can happen anywhere.
At the time, in Germany, lot of people didn't vote, and lot went with the flow. Doesn't make it right then or now. That's the point, Germans were human, and it happened. Can happen here.
And, Trump did promote Project 2025, until people looked it up, it became un-popular, then he distanced himself.
They have to figure out their needs there and satisfy them.
Its crucial.
- Harris skipped the traditional primary which reinforced to many independent voters that she was appointed by the ruling class of the Democratic party; US voters are extremely tired of feeling like the political "elites" have more control than the actual voters
- Democrats gaslit the American people for too long, claiming President Biden was not in mental decline; this created a lot of open questions about the inner workings of the Democratic party that were never addressed head on by Harris's campaign; to many independent voters, this left them feeling like Harris might be more of a political puppet than a qualified leader
- Harris's campaign ran primarily on restoring Roe v Wade (abortion rights) which is a false promise; it was clear she would not have the necessary Senate majority to codify a new law; many liberal and independent voters were annoyed at this attempt at emotional manipulation; this was a critical campaign mistake
- When Harris was trailing in the polls, she went on the attack against Trump with ads and chopped up sound bites instead clearly stating her plan for the country in longer form interviews; this left independent voters with a lot of open questions about her policies and plan
Ultimately, Trump won the popular and electoral votes on more of a referendum against the Democrats political playbook. Most Americans are tired of being talked down to and gaslit. And yes, Trump does this as well, but he won the perception battle.
The main takeaways on what needs to change in American politics to restore some sanity in future elections:
1. We need an overhaul in traditional media (or new media) to restore trust in sources of facts; all American traditional media is incredibly biased at the moment, leaving our politics up to the whims and misinformation of social media
2. We need a 3 party system; this is a long shot, but it's the only reasonable way to enforce accountability for the Democrats and Republicans since traditional press is failing to provide a balance of power; for the last 20+ years, elections have mostly been against the other candidate instead of for policy plans or candidates
I am also absolutely vindicated in my opinion that "journalism" (the mainstream media) are cancers upon society. The polls fucking lied and the "journalism" was the real garbage.
And yes, I voted for Trump and the Republicans as an Oregonian. No, my vote didn't count for his EC win, but I don't care: My vote still helped deliver a mandate that the Democrats and their policies are not acceptable.
So, Trump tends to get underrepresented in the polls.
At any rate, the polls showed that there was a dead heat, so this really came down to the margin of error which has historically somewhat favored Trump.
Anonymous TV exec: "If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they're not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely.
A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form."* The southern border is non-existent. Say what you want about Trump, he actually secured the border where literally noone before nor since has done so. It was very nice actually seeing value in passports, green cards (residency status), and citizenship.
* The military industrial complex is utterly abhorrent. Ukraine needs defending, Israel has a right to defend itself, both should win. Neither makes it okay for us to trickle resources to them to keep the wars going but not so much that it ends so we can keep trickling resources, because the resources trickled are replaced by new resources produced by the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense. Sincerely fuck this noise, my tax dollars are not fucking blood money and I am tired of seeing America partaking in constant and neverending wars one after another.
* The lack of conviction in policies. This was especially apparent in Harris's election strategy where she ultimately ended up saying anything and everything in a desperate bid to garner more votes. Sincerely, that is not how voting works. I vote for someone because I agree with what they say and do; Democrats don't say or do anything other than call Trump Hitler and Republicans Nazis and Americans either deplorables or garbage. I don't have time to waste on that nonsense.
* The refusal to nourish and, if required, protect our industries from foreign entities with extreme prejudice. No, CHIPS Act does not fucking count. Everyone in public office with one possible exception has pissed away American excellence and drive through policies that do not favor America. There is a very real reason that Make America Great Again resonates so much with Americans.
* The inequality and unfairness. In the land of the free and the home of the brave where all men are created equal, bullshit like forgiving of student loans after-the-fact is preposterous. What does that say about people with real financial and life discipline? Nothing good, that's for sure. That is not how we nurture the great Americans of tomorrow; we should reward being responsible, not punish it.
* DEI (Diversity-Equity-Inclusion). As a Japanese-American, I am classified as an Asian and a minority. I loathe DEI because it is literally racial and gender discrimination and I am squarely in its crosshairs. I firmly believe that all men should be judged on the quality of their character, not by the color of their skin or the type of their genitals. I firmly believe that meritocracy is the foundation of an abled and healthy society, and Trump and Republicans align with that philosophy.
* High taxes. Democrats are the party of big government, and candidates like Harris always speak of redistributing wealth. I believe in meritocracy, and consequently I believe that the fruits of someone's labor is strictly theirs and only theirs to enjoy as they see fit. I refuse to vote for such redistribution policies, regardless which side I might end up in that supposed redistribution.
* The attacks on free speech and expression. By far it is the Left who have pursued agendas censoring speech for no reason other than they do not like it. This expands well beyond just America and I despise it, both because I firmly believe in the 1st Amendment and because that bullshit literally ruins my fucking day as a simple consumer of mundane entertainment. Trump and Republicans are champions of free speech, so they will get my vote even on just that alone.
I can keep on ranting, but this comment is probably long enough already. Basically the Democrat Party and Leftism simply do not resonate with me, and that only gets worse as more time passes. I still consider myself a centrist with both conservative/liberal and progressive/authoritarian opinions across a wide variety of subjects, but the Democrats just keep moving lefter and lefter that I've ended up on the Right despite not moving at all.
Then don't. Because it really doesn't have any substance or significance. At all.
The thing is, you're reacting to these signals as extremely overblown caricatures, as being way, way bigger than they actually are, as if they're hugely important and should somehow factor into the decision of what party you should support.
First, as for saying Trump is Hitler, or Republicans are Nazis -- while I'm sure that happens on some dark corners of Reddit (which has no relevance to anything, and isn't worth a second of your time anyway) -- mainstream Democrats (meaning the ones actually running or office) do not, and you simply will not be able to find any instances of them doing so. Yet, in your universe, it seems a huge, huge thing that you apparently think happens all the time.
As for Biden's remark -- it was obviously stupid, but the guy is just as obviously in the early stages of clinical dementia. I've had people in those phases in my family as well, and it breaks my heart to think of some of the things they said in their final years -- but that was the disease talking, not them. Seriously, when you hear that news item, your gut reaction should have been to have some empathy with the guy. And not to think of what he said as having any kind of significance at all in terms of your future or the direction of the country.
Just another instance:
The southern border is non-existent
Of course it isn't -- that's just an emotional distortion, and a rather extreme one at that, completely disconnected from reality. It's simply an empty catchphrase, that some politician (or some other random pundit) whipped up to make you afraid, and angry.
And yet it's the very first item on the top of your agenda.
And I didn't: I voted for Trump and Republicans who at least waste less of my time.
>as for saying Trump is Hitler, or Republicans are Nazis ... mainstream Democrats (meaning the ones actually running or office) do not, and you simply will not be able to find any instances of them doing so.
Excuse me?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8R4S4S8jhA
I'm not going to bother finding more because my Youtube recommendations are fucked up enough as it is.
>As for Biden's remark -- it was obviously stupid, but the guy is just as obviously in the early stages of clinical dementia.
He is the incumbent POTUS and Harris's direct superior, that makes it even worse than when Clinton called Americans a basket of deplorables.
>Of course it isn't
There is a very sharp difference between Trump and Obama/Biden/Harris regarding border control, and as far as I'm concerned I want whatever Trump was doing back. We are the only country on the planet where proper border security is argued as a crime against humanity, and I'm sick of that.
You may want to look at the definition of the f-word, and how it differs from the N-word, at some point.
"Someone or something which I do not like."
[1]: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodwinsLaw
>A real invocation of Godwin's Law is really an accusation of poor debating, as it amounts to accusing your opponent of comparing you to an atrocity so evil as to be non-debatable, which is not only very rarely a fair comparison, but also is very insensitive to real-life victims and their descendants. Usually, it's seen as an act of desperation, in the sense that you've run out of better arguments.
It's just an internet meme - designed to be, you know, cute and funny.
Try your local library instead.
Whatever the law might be called, the result is the same: The vapid use of words as fallback insults leads to the words inevitably losing any valuable meaning.
Kelly called Trump fascist invoking Hitler, Harris called Trump fascist in kind, Democrats called Trump and Republicans racists/sexists/rapists/fascists.
As a reasonable man, all I can take away is that you guys don't like Trump and Republicans and everyone who sides with them. If that's your mojo then that's fine, but those words are otherwise worthless as far as I'm concerned. Please stop violating Godwin's Law and make an argument worth discussing instead.
Or have any bearing otherwise on what Harris said in that context.
That's why by the book Genenerals who worked with him in his first term described him as a Fascist.
These are the shiny boots polished brass types who tie their shoelaces consistantly and don't stray into chiral knot variations.
They didn't call him a Nazi nor Hitler as he is neither a Nazi (although his father was an American Nazi supporter) nor Hitler .. but he is a Fascist.
How to say you've not been in a border state in the last decade, without saying it.
The southern border is non-existent
It's completely vacuous. Pure semantic garbage.
The end result is the same as well.
Who was the last president that didn't lie?
The majority of the country was telling them "We are having change anxiety after Obama and we are having distrust in institutions after Covid". So what did they do? Cling to the same power structures with a dead man walking, doubled down on gender politics, devolved internally into morality based foreign policy shout match and the cherry on top put an uncharismatic non white woman as the candidate. At every step of the way they very eloquently and academically explained why they have the right solutions while completely ignoring the emotional state of the nation.
All they had to do was bring a calming white man that is not in cognitive decline that would reassure the nation that everything was going to be alright. That the America they know and love is here to stay.
You may don't like that this was reality, that your progressive views are more "right" than that, but it is. So now enjoy being factually, morally, academically correct with trump as the president with control on the congress. What a joke.
Biden came after Trump.
> All they had to do was bring a calming white man that is not in cognitive decline that would reassure the nation that everything was going to be alright
What motivated people is inflation and border crossings.
Exactly, Yeah! He was the white man not in mental decline that said that everything is going to be alright.
> What motivated people is inflation and border crossings.
Yes, these are some of the issues that needed to be addressed instead of gender politics and foreign policy.
What is the disagreement?
I guess congrats to Fox, because focusing on it all day every day worked. The average joe thinks that's all the Democrats care about. It's extremely transparent when someone says "gender politics" what media they're consuming.
Why did Trump then get votes?
Nobody is confused as to why people SAY they support Trump, people are confused that you can show someone who supports Trump objective evidence that he hurts them, works against his wishes, etc, and they will support him harder.
The "backfire effect" doesn't replicate, but boy IDK if we can call two elections anything more than an adequate sample size.
If Gender politics is such a nothing-burger that the president shouldn't care about it, why did they vote in the party who is enthusiastic about hetero-normativity? Why did so many republicans devote airtime and debate time to talking about the double digit number of trans people in sports?
Isn't this what people said after Clinton lost in 2016? Hindsight is 20/20
Part of the problem is that they didn't explain anything. Even in friendly interviews, the best kamala can answer when asked for specific is a big word salad that can be summarized as "Trump is evil and a danger to democracy, vote for us". Saying you have a plan and shitting on the other party for not having one is not the same as having a real plan and communicating it properly.
I think Harris 2024 is the worst campaign I've ever seen in modern American history.
This made talking politics with my social circle difficult. Don’t shoot the messenger. This was not the time to run a risky candidate. I actually think Harris ran a decent campaign, much better than I thought she would, but I don’t think she had much of a chance. I remember when Biden dropped out several groups came out saying that if the DNC didn’t give Harris the nomination, that they would consider than to be a betrayal and that they’d lose their support. It was frustrating to see them so focused on what was “right” or “fair” when the stakes were so high.
The crazy thing is that we already went through this in 2016. We had people protest voting against Clinton. It didn’t work. And yet we seem to have been ok letting unyielding idealism sabotage important elections.
That said, I think a huge problem was Biden’s ego and his inability to stick to his campaign promise of being a one-term president. With him dropping with only a few months left, democrats didn’t have many options.
Trump is a known quantity - people know what they are getting with him and have made their peace with him being how he is.
People expect more from Democrats. Harris would get dinged for saying things that Trump says, by the same people who are fine with Trump saying those things.
If that seems irrational and hypocritical, well, that's how people are, regardless of their politics.
Another model of how to think about the candidates is that human beings make decisions based on how the person or thing in front of them makes them feel - and afterward they come up with post-hoc rationalizations as to why. Even smart people do this. To some extent, we're all lying to ourselves about this.
So it makes sense that this time around both candidates ran campaigns focused on emotions, instead of policy specifics.
1 - Other countries in the world have taken advantage of the US
2 - Illegal immigrants have changed the country for the worse and are taking jobs
#2 in particular has been framed as being racist. There IS a good deal of racism mixed in there, but the truth is that low skilled illegal immigrants DO compete for many of the same jobs as lower-skilled Americans.
None other than Bernie Sanders said as much about the subject right around 2007. His stance at that time was that we needed to do something about illegal immigration specifically to protect the jobs of American workers, but then later he changed his tune to fit in with the rest of the party.
If you address the majority of people's concerns and worries, they'll vote for you.
When I order food delivery, get in an Uber, and drop off my laundry at the wash and fold I want an under-educated American!
That uber driving might be living in their car but at least they are employed right??
It's called living in a city, I don't own a car or have a laundry machine.
There are tens of thousands of Americans who are forced to live in Trailer trucks or from their car who often do those sorts of jobs.
They just want an honest living and do not have the opportunities to get higher college education to land well paid white collar formal jobs.
That uber job is often their way to save up for their truck driving license so that they can move to a decent wage to get his/her kids a nice christmas gift, nutritious daily meals for their kids and other emotional needs.
To them, seeing their jobs being taken up by illegal immigrants for lower wages, no payroll taxes to pay, etc. is a very very very real issue to them and a zero sum game being played against their life.
Why aren't people talking about this and doing something about it?
People rent out DoorDash and Uber accounts for 20% of the income from people that can't sign up themselves.
> #2 in particular has been framed as being racist. There IS a good deal of racism mixed in there, but the truth is that low skilled illegal immigrants DO compete for many of the same jobs as lower-skilled Americans.
There is only one group for which that is true -- men without a high school diploma. Otherwise, immigrants are generally taking jobs that Americans won't do.
Case in point, picking produce at farms. The last time they cracked down on immigration, a lot of those farms had to spoil a lot of crops because no one would pick them.
Because the pay is terrible. Start paying well and plenty of Americans will want the jobs.
Working a low skilled job like fast food should be enough to pay for college so that it is possible to lift yourself up out of poverty.
We have created a two tier system and the educated class just makes excuses about why the system has to work the way it does today.
They did that with VP Walz, but it did not help. Their policies are the problem.
Especially since we had 3 assasination plots on Trump. It's quite possible he won't live the end of his term and not because of his age.
The limbic system won.
When enough people are hurting from the status quo voting for "sensible" policies of soft reform isn't going to cut it. At some point you need to blow up the existing system so you clear out the rot.
This immune response might be costly to the nation in the near-term but the hope is when it's over it will have also have destroyed the infection.
When it's put in these terms I can begin to relate more with the appeal of Trump, and while I'm not personally convinced he is a fascist, I do get why people say that. I can be nervous and unhappy with the result, but also acknowledge that the US needs significant change and voting in Biden or Harris was never realistically going to bring that.
There's clearly something wrong with democratic party. They're no longer appealing to the working class they claim to speak for and instead their primary supports now seem to be suburban white-women and the college educated metropolitan class. Today they're also supported by the media establishment, war-mongers like Dick Cheney, most billionaires, Hollywood celebs and pop-stars. Given this it's really no surprised we smart well off people on HN don't like Trump and quite like the sensible status-quo Harris promised.
I hope this immune response doesn't kill the host and I hope something positive comes out of all of this. We should take comfort in the fact that the US is the most resilient democratic nation on Earth and Trump probably won't be alive in another decade. Those who worry about an actual fascist up rising probably need to relax a little. The great risk over the next few years is probably just geopolitical stupidity and we've seen plenty of that in the last 4 anyway.
This is some really low-tier fascist apologia, in my opinion. Fascism isn't an immune response, it's a cancer. Once active in the host, it tries to sap it of whatever resources it can to enrich itself. Rooting out fascism has, historically, come at great personal and political cost to the countries that manage it.
You argue on the basis that from "If A then B" it follows that "If B then A" and that's fallacious, of course.
I'm from Spain and even to this day we hear old people saying that "life was better with Franco". I think it's more about a need to have a homogenous society with very clear rules and boundaries.
The limbic system always wins.
"The mind is always the dupe of the heart." (La Rochefoucauld)
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." (H. P. Lovecraft)
The Democrats would rather lose with a neoliberal+unpopular candidate than win with a popular candidate. Because they serve similar corporate interests as the Reps. Only with a completely different Culture War shtick than the Reps.
That you frame this as being “factually, morally, academically” correct is funny—what justice does the Dems fight for? Not Palestinians. Not the average American. Just well-off women (now white or Jamaican) having “their turn” as the commander in chief.
As a "white" man (no more white than native Americans are "red", Chinese are "yellow", or Africans are "black"), I take offence at the suggestion that skin color or gender should be a defining characteristic to determine who should be the US president (or anyone else in power).
Charisma is a different story, but boy, if Trump is the benchmark for what counts as having charisma, we're in even bigger trouble than I thought.
> You may don't like that this was reality, that your progressive views are more "right" than that, but it is.
I guess we'll see in the next 4 years.
He most likely has dementia, and we will be under a President Vance before 2026.
But he still won. I'm disappointed but not surprised.
You can clearly see that Kamala won due to all the illegals voting for Democrats. Oh wait.
I'm making rapid plans to get the fuck out of this shithole country, and as far as business goes, no known Trump supporter will ever get my handshake.
I keep hearing people say that sort of thing in my country in similar situations and yet they never do it.
Plus, as a self-employed business owner, I need health care, and I'm not confident that Obamacare will survive the next administration.
You can get US-like outcomes (or worse) on the NHS with the waiting list, or you can get good health care on time with private health insurance. However, you have to pay for the NHS (via National Insurance and higher income taxes) either way on top of private health insurance.
Quality of life and life expectancy/hospital outcomes like Cancer 5 years survival rate, stage of diagnosis are generally worse or equal in the UK to the healthcare the majority of Americans receive. The UK stats are on paper equal or only slightly better on a population basis, but strip out people in the UK with private healthcare or look at it regionally and you will see the sad truth that the NHS has pretty bad outcomes. As in our left wing politicians in power are calling it broken. It is very bad. Really really bad.
If you take out people on private healthcare, there is little difference in outcomes, and you'll be paying the same at the end of the day, just in the UK, without sufficient coverage, options to pay massive sums for the top treatments are often not available in the first place.
Most of the tax begins at $80k+ and then $110k+ yearly income but not so much wealth from my understanding.
PS; The Dutch government may reverse the negative expat changes, especially regarding the special status for capital gains from outside the country in the coming years. And check out Germany. They may also shortly set up a scheme.
It will take her years because she does duolingo for 5 minutes every day and speaks a bit of Dutch with me.
But given by how her progress goes, I'd say it'd take 6 months if you go intensely about it.
Dutch is close to English in vocab.
And by the wealth tax you mean box 3? I don't know how other countries do it but as we currently have it, I find this way more chill than the US. You don't need to log your trades, you don't need to care about capital gains. You'll roughly pay 1% about your net income.
If you want to avoid that a bit: buy art in your house that's stable (if I recall correctly, I'm not a laywer) and your house is your primary residence. So any money that you put into that doesn't get taxed.
We'll change soon to a capital gains system probably anyway, a few years tops, so this point is probably moot.
Again, I'm not a laywer or financial advisor. I sometimes read up on these things, but I'm not razor sharp on it.
Your kind of ignorance is so tiresome. It's one of the best arguments for doing away with democracy altogether.
This is exactly the attitude that pushes people apart. People on both sides do it and it really brings me down.
It's worth re-reading Goebells primarily because his understanding of this psychology is what made Nazi demagoguery so devastatingly successful. Any attempt by a party to attack the demagogue without directly addressing the elephant in the room (the growing class of working poor) is not only destined to fail, but destined to fail badly. If I hate you - really hate you - I don't mind copping a few painful blows if it means I get to see you bludgeoned to near death. Vengeance is an incredibly powerful motivator. People trying to lump all of Trump's supporters as Nazi's are making a grave mistake and refusing to see the forest for the trees. Just as most Germans in WWII were not Nazis yet supported Hitler, so too with Trump. Latinos, blacks, gays and women all voted for Trump. Don't assume they're all stupid. When I hate you, I'm happy to burn in hell if you're there with me.
Of course, this is a simple generalisation and there are lots of "sub-reasons" (the bro-vote, the foot-gun Democrat advertising - "he doesn't have to know!", etc). If the Democrats had chosen Bernie Sanders as their candidate back in 2016, they would've had eight years in power. It's no coincidence that Bernie had a lot of support from those that otherwise voted Trump. They felt that he was real and was really concerned about them and would really do something to assuage their pain. Now? Now they're just mad - "enough is enough".
However, anger is not sustainable for too long and all demagogues eventually come undone because once the heat of anger is gone and you look around and realise things are worse than ever - well, that's when things can REALLY get dangerous.
Not that you are not correct in many aspects, but wasn't inequality sort of part of whole US setup and 'american dream'? Back to good ol' days when poor were poor and a largely invisible part of society.
For an european eye US is setup on inequality by principle, which does a lot of good and bad. When looking at resilience and strength of economy that Europe can never ever dream of reaching, I'd say bigger good trumps (eh) those evils but I have only very limited view. In Europe even big success is mild compared to how far in US things can grow into. Complex topic this is.
1: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-allies-...
Nazi ideology doesn't work well as a comparison in my opinion, because Weimar Germany was crippled by reparations, hyperinflation, mass unemployment, an acute world economic crisis and traumatized from a devastating war.
The US is nowhere close to any of that, it's doing pretty well all in all.
There are a number of people who feel they're doing pretty shittily right now, no matter what people's metrics say, and "no you're not" is not a particularly constructive response.
I'm not an economist, I have no detailed explanation to offer for this disconnect, but I personally know a number of people outside of tech who are not fiscally irresponsible, but are struggling to reliably keep food on the table without consuming their savings - most frequently because they have some health condition that necessitates costly things, and their pay at work has not kept pace as cost of living increases have happened.
So I have little trouble believing people in similar straits could vote for someone who made bigger swings about "I know you're hurting".
This also simplifies things for them. Instead of the myriad of real problems in the world, conservatives can concentrate on only a few, all of which have simple rationales and simple solutions.
https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/low-unemployment-stati...
Many make this mistake. The stock market is thriving. Some people are thriving. Many people are not. They are stuck in low wage service jobs. It’s not about unemployment.
In general, Trump will benefit from the recovery of the last several years. It's unfortunate that many people don't understand how this stuff works.
Your description reminds me a lot of a book called "The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Packard, which I recommend as a distinctly uncomfortable read in the same vein.
The Democratic party has left a lot of people behind and their only choice is to turn to the other party, in the hope they will help. Yes, it's not logical given the facts on the ground, the other party likely won't help them, but the other party is saying they will help. And that's the important thing.
Why did the Democrats leave people behind? It's the perception of "wokeness" and the feeling men have of being marginalized. A lot of men feel emasculated by the state and direction of our culture. And those men who feel this way are not college educated, so they are looked down upon and they mainly have service sector jobs. In other words, they are being left behind in the great economy they see everyone talking about. The jobs that created the middle class (manufacturing jobs of the last century) have moved elsewhere, and they feel they can no longer support their families in the way their parents did.
A lot of us here are not feeling that pain. I don't. But I see it out there and there are a lot of them. Trump won by a larger margin than he did in 2016.
Think about this: the Democrats avoided primaries in the last 3 election cycles. That told a lot of people: we don't give a fuck about you.
Others have said it here, but I'll repeat it. If Bernie Sanders had been the nominee in 2016, we would have likely had 8 years of Bernie and no Trump. Bernie Sanders was the only candidate in 2016 that resonated with the pain people were feeling, and those people who voted for Trump would have (mostly) voted for Sanders.
Can you elaborate on this, because it's a sentiment expressed a couple times in this thread, and I'm not sure I get it?
> young men feel they cannot take care of their family. They can't afford a house, primarily.
I don't think this is particularly gender-exclusive, but absolutely one of the largest problems the younger generations face. How are we going to raise a family, buy a house - hell, just live a decently comfortable life?
> Men go to college at a much lower rate than women. Because of that, those men make less than their female counterparts (who went to college).
Men feeling threatened by women who make more than them or are smarter than them seems like something that needs to be worked on individually rather than socially.
> And one of those things is the dating apps, which for many men is a terrible experience.
Well, dating apps were a terrible idea from the get-go, but hasn't dating always been a nightmare for most men for most of history? I don't disagree that there's aspects of using dating apps that could cause some self-esteem issues (for both genders, I will add again) but wouldn't that also apply to dating 20-30 years ago?
I get where you're coming from, but I think there’s more to it than just individual insecurities. Society as a whole still pushes the idea that men should be the breadwinners, so when they fail at that their worth (in their eyes as well as society's) just plummets.
Even though people say that the idea of the male breadwinner is outdated, these expectations are still baked into how we think about success and relationships.
As an outsider to American politics, the stark loyalty to political branding is remarkable. It amazes me that "make America great again" is considered by some to be a toxic slogan. There's nothing stopping the Dems using the exact same phrase, but with their different approach behind it. Everyone wants America "great", it's how you get there where differences emerge.
What hope does the "united" states have when they can't even unite behind a fundamental objective of making the country great? Maybe it's Hollywood's fault. Years of Good vs Evil stories has us viewing the world in Red Vs Blue. Is the fight necessary for existence?
Do you think there's even one person in America who likes both Harris & Trump, and wishes them both well? Or are those people considered unworthy of respect?
Their egos are fragile, they're afraid of women, LGBT, people who don't look like the default Caucasian stock and so on.
This is why they elect idiots who don't educate them and instead play their fears because he shares so many of them.
With very few exceptions I've never met people there who outwardly seemed like they'd like someone as a leader who habitually lies and tries to usurp democratic institutions for personal gain.
What the hell is going on there guys? Are you just voting for the person who promises the most "interesting" times, for better or for worse?
JD Vance hopefully can 25th Amendment the Trump before senile behavior wrecks the office. But I'm worried that Trump stays in all 4 years and does irreparable harm.
25th Amendment powers have never been used before. So it's not clear how far Trump will degrade while still holding onto power.
That's the preferable option to letting Vance near the presidency, sadly.
More like a Fortunate Son who's an adulterer, felon and burried his ex wife somewhere in the backyard.
I think that this election almost definitively demonstrates that trans issues are not important to the voters.
Or abortion, or misogyny, or social justice, etc.
There was a big turnout, after all.
> I think that this election almost definitively demonstrates that trans issues are not important to the voters.
I don't know about the politics of your state, but in mine over half the ad campaign of the Republican senator who just won was focused on transgender issues. His losing Democratic opponent did not touch that issue.
> Or abortion
Statewide ballot measures aimed at abortion rights succeeded even in many states where Democrats lost.
Then maybe the Dems shouldn't have run on that as their major platform?
I mean, the message "Elect Me Because $ABORTION_RIGHTS" is pointless if the states are going to get their abortion rights anyway.
I think the name-calling really hurt them.
Calling half the voting population bigots of some type just makes that half dig their heels in to give you a bloody nose.
If your main priorities, when running in a political race, does not match the main priorities of the voting masses, it's easier to change your main priorities than to change the main priorities of the voting masses.
For a long time now, the Dems have been trying to change the priorities of the voting masses instead of aligning with them.
They are so used to preaching at their voter base ("This is what a real man is, not what you think it is") that they forgot what the aim of running is - to win.
You can't change the world by losing.
Their primary goal should have been to win. The primary way to do that is to (ugh) pander to the voters' will.
It's because they are so out of touch that we are seeing the result that we see. Politicians that are disconnected and disengaged from the voting masses deserve to lose.
This was also the biggest problem of the Remain camp pre-Brexit.
It was too easy to label Leavers as stupid/racist/xenophobic, and that was a huge mistake.
Pretty sure this would work with "Trump" instead of "Brexit".
What do you want racists to do? Not vote? They're gonna vote for somebody after all.
As I pointed out in a different post, trying to shame people into silence doesn't magically change their vote.
Unfortunately, when you are going to call every Rep supporter a racist with no evidence other than who they voted for, they are going to stop answering your polls honestly.
Still not gonna change their vote though...
Going back to the original quote, you need to see that it's not calling all voters a particular thing. There's a simple Venn diagram, one circle of racists inside a larger circle of a particular block of voters.
Educating people out of racism, and removing racism from your society, will change votes as racism is only one aspect of a person's beliefs.
They already know, they don't care, because that specific belief is not rooted in reason or rationality.
> Going back to the original quote, you need to see that it's not calling all voters a particular thing. There's a simple Venn diagram, one circle of racists inside a larger circle of a particular block of voters.
> Educating people out of racism, and removing racism from your society, will change votes as racism is only one aspect of a person's beliefs.
I somewhat agree with the first part[1], but vehemently disagree with the second: I don't think that eradicating racist thoughts will move the needle on who gets elected, as there are, IMO, simply too few racists around to influence an election.[2]
[1] IOW, I don't believe that education will change a racist's belief, but I do see value to society in eradicating discriminatory stereotypes and discriminatory actions, of which racism is merely one.
[2] There aren't even enough racists to form a party of their own, so I doubt that them moving from red to blue is going to be any difference from statistical noise.
I dunno how relevant it is to say "Well, Trump gets away with it" because he stayed on message with his name-calling: the economy. Calling someone a communist is just a hyperbolic way of saying that they don't care for the economy.
OTOH, calling half the voting population stupid has nothing to do with the platform the politician is running on.
I mean, as stupid as it sounds, something like "They're coming for yer guns!!!" is still platform-relevant, while "They're threatened by strong women" isn't.
I guess the takeaway is that targeted and on-topic insulting works but random digressions into personal attacks that have no relevance to the platform don't?
* Voters approved measures that would protect abortion in their state (with the exception of Florida, which only got 58% out of the 60%) needed. Said voters did not consistently vote for Kamala Harris.
* Another set of voters thought Kamala Harris was too progressive, and had no opinion on Donald Trump
* But at the same time, in local elections democratic candidates generally sweeped the ballots
I think ultimately the presidency is just an election purely on the basis of 'vibes' and whatever is directly in front of you. It doesn't matter if you can achieve your promises nor do said promises even really matter. And people vibe more with the reality TV president because they've already forgotten 2016-2020. Maybe Trump directly crashing the economy will be the thing to snap people out of it, maybe not.
A woman who worked at the hotel I was staying at had never visited the centre of the city the lived in, because she was afraid of being "knifed". This was Dayton, Ohio. Downtown Dayton is lovely.
A colleague who appeared reasonably intelligent and competent absolutely did not believe that Evolution occurred. I explained that this while this view might be common in the US - and it is - the rest of the world mostly considers this settled science.
Religion is absolutely far too influential a force in people's lives. This is decreasing, but it's still problematic I believe.
The Armed Forces are idolised. Airports have special lines for service personnel. You get to board early if you're in uniform. This is almost unique in the world, to the best of my knowledge.
When your border is wide open allowing millions of people in each year, you don’t care as much about the political circus.
When your grocery bills 3x, you don’t care as much about the loose speech.
My reading is that people vote with a punishment mindset. Aka the only way to punish Trump for his horrible term was to vote for Biden. And the only way to punish Biden for his bad financially term was to vote for Trump.
He happened to be at the wheel, when COVID hit, and that did all kinds of damage. His handling of it was clumsy.
Biden was at the wheel when we had high inflation (because we fixed the COVID slump with free money). I think the dems did a shitty job with our borders, and that hit him.
Check back in 2026, to see what people think.
https://giphy.com/gifs/season-5-the-simpsons-5x2-3o6Mbtdd7dh...
He has already won. 277 votes
If it's anonymous, we might be surprised. I know a number of HNers personally in my life, and they'd never admit to voting for Trump here or to anyone in their day jobs.
Fully agree.
Admitting you supported Trump on HN is suicide.
But then more than half of the country voted for him, so I guess ... do the math, even if HN's participants are biased blue.
Voting based on perception, not facts, especially given Trump's overall character and abhorrent track record, is going plunge us further into far right extremism. Enjoy.
* Weak, deceptive, evasive candidate
* Entitled attitude in the party
* Unknown people running the party. Still.
* Full embrace of cray cray ideologies, rejection of meritocracy
* Disengagement and withdrawal from free discussion forums
* Using X to talk only about sports. Looking at you, Gruber
* Constant ineffective, ignorant, and ill-informed trolling of their perceived opponents while unwittingly creating new ones
* Disingenuously labeling the other side as "garbage" (said by Biden, and he is President, not a jerk racist comedian)
* Assuming and never questioning the assumption, that people voting for a bad candidate love that candidate.
* Taking the low road
* Hiding Biden's incompetence, then, when caught, letting him stick around
* Accepting the notion that one can negotiate a peace deal with Hamas
* All the other things people are pretending were the only problems: the economy, immigration, etc. which genuinely also were problems.
There are a lot of things the Democratic party had going for it. They really snatched defeat from the jaws of victory:
* The Republican candidate is one of the worst people you could possibly imagine for the job.
* He is (I believe) a rapist, for god's sake
* He's nearly as demented as Biden
* He lies even more than Kamala
* Anti-woman is an understatement
Democrats have to ask themselves, who is running our party, and for what ends? I don't think they know. I don't even recognize what they are now.
It's not the economy, stupid. It's the trolling, the disengagement, and the entitlement. They are off-putting.
I've just seen pictures of Trump, Elon Musk and Dana White celebrating together (and being celebrated)
The signal being sent is that this is what masculinity and winning looks like.
And I wish the politics would move towards less vitriol. It's just sad how both parties are so dug in with their opinions. I'm sure there could have been reasonable discussions with regards to eg economy and immigration where the concerns of the large portion of the population had been seriously addressed.
Being practical isn't a fault, in fact one of the things I think Mr Trump got elected. We'll see does it translate to reality but he definitely has ideas.
'Concepts', he has 'concepts'. You'll hear about them in about two weeks time.
I though personally believe this was mostly just Covid & immigration fallout and not really tied to Trump per se. Could have been almost anybody with those talking points with a sprinkle of charisma and they would have won. Assassination attempt helped probably as well.
Rupert Murdoch?
So consider the following perspective. We've endured Trump once, with mediocre results. The world didn't end, and meanwhile he did not accomplish much of what he promised while putting on a clown show. But this time, I'm optimistic about the potential for our country for the first time. Not because of Trump, but because of some of his likely cabinet appointments. Elon Musk in particular.
Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, our government is headed for a debt crisis. Things will get slowly worse (inequality will increase while the government devalues the dollar to service its debt), but eventually, the crisis will come to a head and the government will be unable to service its debts without a massive devaluation ala Argentina, Weimar Republic, etc. We got a small taste of this after the pandemic response.
There is no conceivable way that an ordinary politician from either party could dismantle or even slow the growth of the immense bureaucratic rot bleeding our country dry. Nor can Donald Trump, as evidenced by his failure to "drain the swamp" last time.
But one of the few people who could is likely to get a major government efficiency appointment.
That's what I'm optimistic about. Not Trump, but the fact that he is now surrounded with competent people with good ideas. Prior to him being elected, a true national debt reckoning was inevitable at some point in my lifetime. Now, there is some non-negligible chance of pushing it past my lifetime or reversing it altogether.
This is bad if you are not American or it hurts some sense of fairness you might have, but objectively it's probably good for the US.
This labdslide Trump/Republican victory feels like the first glimmer of hope ever since mankind has been sliding down one slippery slope after the other since 9/11.
Trump has assembled a truly kickass team. If Musk and Kennedy actually get to be able to pull off what they have planned, the entire world will become a significantly better place.
- The US will hold Bitcoin - other countries will follow, we will be one step closer to having a new global reserve currency that cannot be abused as an economic weapon by the big bully in the room. The potential for global peace is finally in reach. - Seed oils will be banned or at least villified - Childhood vaccines will be banned or at least made optional - The entire demonic trans movement will be cancelled, confused children will no longer be mutilated - Academics will be able to speak their minds again, actual science can be conducted again - Americans will eat and export the best beef on the planet, and it will be shown to be hugely beneficial for human health and for the environment - The entire climate hysteria hoax will collapse - our children will no longer have to live in baseless fear of the future.
This is just from the top of my head. If the deep state doesn't finally succeed in another assassination attempt, the US is going to rise again as an indisputable super power.
That is a hilariously stupid take. Bitcoin is useless as a currency, it can't handle the transaction volume, it costs too much per transaction, and the environmental damage from the amount of power it uses is immense. This is just braindead cryptobro pie-in-the-sky dreaming.
> - Childhood vaccines will be banned or at least made optional
Also a braindead take. Childhood vaccines prevent kids from being made seriously ill, disabled and even dying from a host of nasty infectious diseases. Antivaxxers really are clueless.
1. She's one of the least liked candidates in history. The Democrats haven't run a real "change" candidate that could cross the aisles since Obama. Hillary was already widely disliked and sank herself with the "deplorables" comment. Kamala did exactly the same with "Nazis, Fascists, Dictators, White Supremacists, etc". It's all I heard and it came to a point I started feeling attacked exclusively for my race. It was difficult at this point to listen to what little policy she actually had: most of it sounded exactly like the last 4 years. To put the cherry on top she also couldn't even poll well among her own constituents until Biden bowed out and she was decreed the pick by the DNC.
2. The top polling issues were immigration and the economy. Neither issue Kamala really addressed outside of some feel-good statements like free money for homes and somehow passing a price cap on groceries. She made no statement no immigration and even went so far as to say she wouldn't change anything from the last 4 years. Trump on the other hand did very well laser targeting these issues and pulled moderates and even democrats as a "lesser of two evils".
3. The constant bleeting on about felonies, "rapist", etc made it seem to most average Americans that the court cases were simply lawfare designed to punish Americans for not voting for Hillary. Trump in this case was just a sacrificial goat.
4. The weaponization of the FBI against parents protesting school board meetings, the seemingly intense focus on so-called "right wing violence" even after living through the George Floyd riots, etc was distasteful to a lot pro-police Americans.
5. The media is decidedly left-to-far-left leaning. What this means is the majority of major news outlets, Youtube, Twitch, TikTok, Music, Movies, etc all preach "the message". This oversaturation of the progressive message, paired with many moderate Americans thinking progressivism has gone too far, likely contributed to it. Further, it likely contributed to lower Democrat turnout as they were already claiming victory in August.
6. You can't salvage a campaign by having movie and music stars endorse you when the average consumption of this media is at historical lows. You can't salvage a campaign by bringing Obama out as The Closer.
7. And finally for me, the strong "pro-women" policies are distasteful for me. Not because I hate women, but because there's decades of data showing our school system, government, and policies are failing young boys. I cannot in good conscious vote for a candidate who will not do anything to help men's issues at this point. I can't vote for a candidate who wants to enshrine gender-specific constitutional changes. Particularly, evening the playing field for boys in school, removing affirmative action, and instituting an equal "male abortion" rule that will help tip the family courts back to even. If we want equality we should strive for true equality. I want true equality.
It's weird that you don't realize how many other problems there are which your media sources are not talking to you about, and which you might otherwise find concerning. It's a big world with lots of problems, but you're presented with a few and told that these are the only ones you need to care about. It makes things simpler, but who knows if you might be worried about the wrong things? I guess you may never know.
Just by polling, Kamala Harris seems to be about as popular as Donald Trump, and it really comes down to partisanship.
Polls historically lean left and many Trump voters are afraid of retribution and do not talk about their vote. I am one of them - to everyone I told them I'm voting for Kamala. Mostly because I don't want my car tires slashed, job lost, or house or family harmed. Then I walked into the polling both and voted R straight down the ticket. The 2020 riots have shown the left is capable of great violence and the mass media shaming people and placing them into buckets of "racist", "sexist", etc will make polls be decidedly wrong. This is once again a demonstration of the total lack of accountability the left has.
>but you're presented with a few and told that these are the only ones you need to care about.
I don't care about the rest of the world. I care only about myself and my family. If this is controversial to you I'm sorry. I have no intention to be a "good global citizen". I have found the idea to be abhorrent. What goes on some far off land I don't need to care about. I don't need to be constantly aware of every nuance of every microcosm of society. If it works for my family and me I vote for it - simple.
> I think Fox News, right wing talk radio, and right leaning podcasts are the core problem
MSNBC, CNN, NYT, TYT (which should've been demonetized like infowars) have been lying to the public for 8 years. Nearly everything they've said hasn't come to pass and it's primarily just Op-Eds disguised as news. "Anonymous sources" once again providing misinformation and incitements of violence that very clearly had a hand in creating the two failed assassination attempts. There is no nuance, at least no more nuance than Fox or NewsMax, and to say so reveals your own hardlined biases.
Women still face rampant discrimination. I get that it doesn't affect you personally, but to take it so far as to be offended is really distasteful to me.
This is the crux of right wing ideology. It's all about "me, me, me". So, when Trump lavishes praise on you and promises you your heart's every dream, how can you resist? It's all about you, right?
When you grow up in a system that taught you from birth that you are a problem, a demon, a "danger", uncontrollable, etc you'd understand. When you've watched men be destroyed by the lop-sided family court system and divorce law, or have no sexual freedom when it comes to whether or not you want a child you'd understand. Masculinity of any flavor is demonized unless it caters specifically to "raising women up". Men occupy the most dangerous jobs, die earlier, and suffer the most in terms of suicide and lack of proper mental health resources, and are forced into a draft because of their gender. Is this equality you can stand for?
I'm offended the left preaches "equality" but doesn't actually believe it. I am personally tired of it. I am tired of feeling like a demon for simply existing. I am tired of having to uphold obligations that formerly had benefits, but now have at best negative benefit. At the very least with the right-wing I know exactly what I'm getting.
This isn't "me, me, me" it's ~50% of the population being actively railroaded literally from kindergarten to death by far left policy swinging the pendulum all the way to the other side of inequality.
> Women still face rampant discrimination
Is that why they are leading men on almost every happiness, work, and school metric? Or are the men suffering because "patriarchy hurts men too" or whatever nonsense they say now. I can tell you "the patriarchy" isn't the reason men are dropping out of society. Not by a long shot.
We have relevant examples of discrimination against men today. Trump voters are vile, white, male, homophobes and sexists. This is the message our boys are hearing. Does it sound appealing to anyone but a consummate masochist? If leftists continue to drive a wedge between the genders the R's will continue to win.
Donald Trump disgusts me, but it feels to me like he at least authentically represents a viewpoint.
Making the main character and his brother hispanic is not "the same" as the game, especially when the remaining straight white non-hispanic men in the show are absolutely awful.
Or take the US version of The Office, where the one Christian character is a running joke, an awful person with terrible takes not meant to be taken at all seriously. Can you imagine how it would've gone over if the one black or hispanic character on the show was just a running joke?
Democrats were the party of the little guy - the minority, the immigrant, the working class. That worked pretty well for them.
Democrats were in support of civil rights. That was the right thing to do, even though there was plenty of opposition. It cost them the south for at least a generation. They knew it would, and they did it anyway. Good for them.
Then they saw abortion as the next "civil rights" issue. They keep framing it that way: "a woman's right over her own body". The problem is, the people who oppose abortion rights don't hear anything in that but an attempt to hide the issue. A fetus is not the woman's body - it's a genetically distinct individual, and anybody who's taken junior high biology knows it. The issue isn't about the woman's right over her body, it's about the woman's right over the fetus. And all the "a woman's right over her body" talk, to opponents, looks like an attempt to sweep that under the rug and ignore it. "But they want to control our bodies!" No, most of them don't. They want you to not kill the fetuses. It has the same result, but a different motivation.
The Democrats have always been in favor of immigrants. They became the party in favor of illegal immigrants. But immigration hurts the working class, which the Democrats also claim to represent.
Lately the Democrats have become focused on gay rights and trans rights. Look, trans people shouldn't be beaten up and killed for being trans. No question. But here's the problem: There are a large number of working-class people who at best don't care about trans people, and at worst are actively hostile. There are a large number who oppose abortion on moral grounds, holding the life of the fetus as a higher priority than the woman's body. Now, if you're the Democratic Party, what do you do?
What the Democrats did is decide that such working-class people were moral lepers, and demand that they convert or face cultural extinction. This has been going on for a couple of decades. "Clinging to guns and religion". "Deplorables". "Garbage". The Democratic Party really despises such people, and it keeps coming out.
Well, it turns out that despising the people who are a big chunk of your voting base, and demanding that they convert, doesn't make them feel like you're their party. Talking down to them doesn't make them vote for you. It just makes them feel that you've abandoned them. And you have.
And it makes them angry. And here's Trump, harvesting their anger.
The Democratic Party has always had difficulty with holding the different elements of their coalition together. What they've done lately is assume they could ignore one of their largest ones, that it would always support them no matter how much they despised it and insulted it.
If your reaction is to deplore how horrible the majority of voters are, you're still not listening. If you want to win elections, you'd better start listening. There are people out there, people that you claim to represent their interests, and you're despising them instead of listening.
You were doing OK until you got to this part.
I agree the democrats have long been screwing the pooch with the "pro choice" messaging extreme, but you're taking it too far in the other direction. Abortions past viability [outside the womb] are generally highly illegal in even the most "liberal" states, because that would indeed be murdering the fetus.
What the religious fundamentalists want is for everyone to have to pretend that a non-viable fetus, likely suffering from genetic defects, is actually a person (with a "soul" per their beliefs), for as long as can be done until the life of the mother is finally threatened. They are of course free to push this narrative to their own communities, but making that regressive anti-scientific regime the limit for "medical care" available to everyone is utter dark ages insanity.
And once again, I do completely agree with the overall point about the democratic party being a general failure - in both messaging and concrete policy. But I'm also not going to focus on this too hard right now because they're not the ones who actually pulled the giant self destruct lever. Responsibility where responsibility is due.
If a person were to read the newspaper, they would figure out that Trump is a pathological liar, but most don't read a newspaper, and even among those that do, a lot of people read for confirmation rather than for understanding.
A lot of people get their information from Fox News, right wing radio, or right wing leaning podcasts. These information sources direct your focus to things which will make you angry about the things they want you to be angry about, and ignorant of things which maybe you should care about.
The most important things which we can all do is to take back control of our own focus and maintain our sense of curiosity and a dash of healthy skepticism. Ask why someone is trying to get you to focus on this or that. Ask why they never mention these other issues which may be equally or more important. Question your own biases and assumptions from time to time.
If Trump's brand of pacifism means negotiating with Russian terrorism, then it's not peace but the cuckolding of a nation and millions of people that lived through a period in time when the Soviets were actually a superpower. Peace when Russia is down and begging for violence would be an imbecile's decision.
Are we supposed to sincerely acquiesce to the demands of a humiliated nation that turned a "special military operation" into a blood feud with hundreds of thousands of casualties?
Because he's nothing of the sort. He's an isolationist (more or less), which is a stance designed to look like pacifism but in fact is very different, and has all kinds of negative side effects, one of which is that it ultimately leads to war, or tolerance of things worse than war (and which is always fake populist stance anyway). See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy)
Seriously - remember when he said he would "make Mexico pay" for the wall he wanted to build? Exactly how do you think he would "make" Mexico do that? Is that a "pacifist" stance?
Or is he just making stuff up, to blow smoke in your face and push your buttons?
In the interview, which took place on Sept. 11, 2002, Stern asked Trump directly if he was for invading Iraq.
"Yeah, I guess so," Trump responded. "I wish the first time it was done correctly."
That would be quite helpful indeed.
Why can't it be true that many people voted stupidly? As a third party to Brexit, it was apparent that many people voted stupidly.
--
edit:
In my opinion, it's very simple. I became a one issue voter after one of the candidates tried to obstruct the process (violently), the last time. That's antithetical to America. It's ironic because it's the type of thing that happens in the "shithole countries" that we're so focused on keeping out (I say this as a person who thinks immigration reform with strong structure is long needed).
Rewarding Trump by giving him the keys is stupid if you can even muster the courage to say you believe in anything America stands for.
I’m taking a shot in the dark here but I’m guessing they voted R themselves, we can all portray ourselves to be objective in comments when we really aren’t. This happens a lot on social media, especially the faux-smart part.
Democracy only works when voters are informed.
Since most people in the world aren't informed nor wants to be informed, are you saying democracy doesn't work in the real world?
Shortly before the Brexit referendum, Scotland had an independence referendum, where the Westminster government was in favour of the status quo - and they had a great deal of success by deliberately not figuring out what independence would mean.
What currency would an independent Scotland use? What will happen to their military? What about healthcare, and education? EU membership? What share of the UK's national debt would they take on? Who will get citizenship? What will the border look like? Nobody knows! So a yes vote was a scary leap into the unknown with many unsolved problems, while a no vote was safe and predictable.
After the strategy succeeded in the Scottish independence vote, Cameron decided to repeat that success with Brexit - not figuring out what Brexit means was a deliberate strategy intended to boost the remain campaign.
In my opinion, it's very simple. I became a one issue voter after one of the candidates tried to obstruct the process (violently), the last time. That's antithetical to America. It's ironic because it's the type of thing that happens in the "shithole countries" that we're so focused on keeping out (I say this as a person who thinks immigration reform with strong structure is long needed).
Rewarding Trump by giving him the keys is stupid if you can even muster the courage to say you believe in anything America stands for.
For young men, who doesn't feel that the Democrats are offering them a world view where they are valued at all, why should they vote Democrat? Maybe at some level they realize that Trumps policies are worse for them in some ways than Harris'. But when Harris loses despite Trump being such an awful candidate it sends a very powerful message to the Democrats: you can't just keep ignoring a huge portion of the population and make them feel like they're not valued in society.
People put self-worth above almost anything else except self-preservation.
It doesn't change how it feels especially in online spaces where minorities vent publicly where before it has been private, and I can understand that, but that seems to be the only difference. GOP messaging successfully took "everyone is doing worse off right now" + "look at these Democrats throwing inconsequential scraps to minorities" and convinced people it was causal.
For example I've seen people saying they were going to vote for him because he'll stop undocumented immigrants from eating pets in Springfield OH. No one has been able to find any evidence of that.
There are also the people who say they will vote for him because he promises to get rid of some specific government service or program, and it turns out from their other comments that this is a service or program that they depend on but don't realize it is the same program.
Going the other way, there are people on NextDoor who I've suspected were a bit stupid long before I saw them in any political discussion. E.g., people going on about contrails being the government spraying us with chemicals or the new electric meters rolled out in this area over the last few years will make us sick because of their remote read capabilities (but the ones they replaced were also remote read--apparently they never noticed that they never saw a meter reader in all the years they had it).
Whenever one of those people later posted something that did say how they would vote it almost invariably was for Trump, and it would be for reasons like the ones above.
This suggests that while there might be reasons for a non-stupid person to vote for Trump, he also captured a big fraction of the votes of stupid people. That I think is one of the biggest difference between Trump and other candidates from both parties. Trump might be the first to actively court the stupid vote.
The example you gave is an interesting one, because it's a situation where a very real concern--the public resources of small communities being stretched beyond their limits because the federal government refuses to enforce immigration law--was deflected by the media to something ridiculous. ("Brown people are invading our towns and eating our cats!") People voted for Trump because they saw through that kind of tactic, and they're far from stupid for doing so.
Vance did later admit that this was just a rumor, and then encouraged people the keep on spreading it.
BTW, the immigrants in Springfield are there legally, which is another thing Trump has repeatedly lied about.
The big thing though is that they people I'm talking about who base their support of Trump on things like the eating pets things live in areas where there are not many immigrants (legal or illegal). They personally are not seeing any problems immigrant related.
All their information on this comes from Trump. And most of their information on every other issue. And even if they finally are convinced that he lied on something they never question anything else and go try to verify it.
And that's why I would consider them to be not quite up to par in the thinking department.
I am for democracy because everything else is worse, but that doesn't mean I need to delude myself that "the majority is always" right or some nonsense like that. Yet the latter seems to be an increasingly common talking point, I've noticed.
There are many democratic nations on earth, many variations on theme.
Churchill today might note that US democracy is the worst form of democratic Government being structurally doomed to spiral into a two party K-hole despite being setup by people largely vehemently opposed to party politics.
Perhaps worst is overstating "old", "tired", "dated", "failed to scale", "doesn't encourage representative government".
It's not a choice between one form of democracy and authoritarian Stalinism. There's a far broader chice between many forms of democracy - some of those that embrace plurity of choice and reject unlimited legal bribery by very small very rich vested interests might be worth a look.
> Literacy levels: 54% of adults read below a 6th-grade level, and 20% read below a 5th-grade level.
This is the reality in America. The education system failed these people. Trump is merely taking advantage of that. He understands that logical arguments aren't necessary, merely emotional ones that appeal to how downtrodden and forgotten these folk feel. If he can make them believe that building a wall and/or deporting immigrants will get them their jobs back or that tariffs will bring manufacturing back to America that is more important to winning an election than truths or reality.
He won fair and square, the election -is- a popularity contest, not a competency contest.
People who were naive enough to be misled do undoubtably exist (I know a couple of otherwise intelligent people who massively regret the brexit thing) but I don't think they are the majority.
It’s just a “only in the US” kind of thing.
The most striking aspect to me is how blatent and brazen trump is with his lies, how fake he is, and how so many can't see it or just don't care for some reason.
He pretends to be religious of all things, he so obviously isn't and couldn't give a damn, but pious people of all people should care about honesty and respect, at least in the public sphere.
It's a natural fit for conservativism. What is conservatism if not the fear of change? And when you're afraid, you want a strongman to lead you, someone who takes pride in our military and law enforcement. Someone who shows no fear, who has swagger. It's also a perfect fit for someone like Trump who would as soon lie as breathe. When you're conjuring terrors, truth is just dead weight.
Kamala didn't run on hope and change. She ran on fear, too. She tried to beat Trump at his own game with none of the advantages of his shameless distain for the truth or a Republican Party and media ecosystem at home with fearmongering. She aped his disdain for immigrants and opposition to China, but of course her main bugaboo was Trump himself. Despite widespread dissatisfaction with our nation's current circumstances, she offered only stasis, while Trump offered revolution.
Non-college graduates know they're getting fucked. Trump says immigrants and China is to blame. Kamala has nothing to say. She could point to the billionaires, the tax dodging corporations, the thriving defense contractors, the predatory medical insurance and pharmaceutical companies, the monopolies bleeding consumers dry in every corner of the economy.
She could paint a vision of affordable healthcare for all, an end to medical bankruptcy, an end to college debt, a thriving green energy blue collar economy, free early childhood education, a guaranteed jobs program, a universal basic income.
She could acknowledge the people who feel left behind and say, "I hear you. This is what I'm going to do for you." Instead, her cries of fear just assured those folks that Trump really was going to fuck shit up fighting for them, that the people who sold them down the river are shaking in their boots. Of course, Trump isn't actually going to make their lives better, but he promised he would, and that's more than Kamala could be bothered to do.
Doomscrolling, doomposting ... weren't those words born in the social media world?
Negativity attracts attention. Negativity makes money on the Internet. Ironically, here on Hacker News, there is probably a sizeable cohort of programmers and managers who opened this Pandora's Box for the entire mankind.
I don't blame them; they didn't know how the brave new world would turn out. But this is just one of the many consequences. People perceive the world as worse than it actually is. Because all they see on their smartphones are bad news and anxious takes.
What you're talking about is already happening. Every fourth or fifth comment in this thread is already blaming the left for making the right what it is.
[edit] if you want root-cause for how we got here, look into media ownership laws in the US, and into the Citizens United court case (check out the 5-4 podcast for a fun/horrifying take). Single entities can own unlimited reach of media, which didn’t used to be the case, as recently as the very early 2000s IIRC, and Citizens opened up unlimited corporate spending in elections, with exactly the implications you’d expect for e.g. foreign spending on US elections. Er, I mean, the actual root cause is kinda the system of elections the slave states pushed into the constitution, if you wanna go way back, but the proximate cause of the current political landscape is that.
Oh, he's also a misogynistic, convicted felon that spews lies. This is partially our view in my bubble, if I had to say it entirely I would get flagged lol
======
Example: I casually commented at the gym that I thought Trump would win about a week ago and went into a very long conversation/debate with several people in the gym.
I asked each of them to show me their filter bubbles... once I had explained it to them. 2 Spaniards, 2 Andorran, 1 French guy. The general consensus seemed to be that Trump was a major step back socially and would pollute the environment, not care about climate change, etc.
Their information came from traditional news, Instagram/Tiktok and one from Reddit/HN/X. The only one that was even open to hearing my views during the conversation was the guy who read Reddit/HN/X. Everyone else had their minds made up.
Today at the gym, I had the 2nd part of this conversation with 3 of the guys that were there this morning. The general take away that the guy who read Reddit/HN/X summed up is one of: "Europe has yet to reach "peak tolerance" where it appears the US is already there." This realization was came to due to the issues of immigrants in both Spain/France who don't assimilate which was a hot button issue for them.
I kinda agree with this sentiment. I think that Europe (at least the part I'm in) doesn't seem to have a great immune system for people who abuse the system and generally punishes tall poppies both socially and economically. The US is completely different, tall poppies are celebrated and if you fail or get sick you have no safety net.
For me the difference in world views is best summed up by what people are focusing on. Climate, equality, and tolerance are the key issues I see pushed heavily in Europe... I see this as stemming from the "tall poppy" syndrome that is prevalent in both Spain/France. In the US, people care about other things and are generally focused on things that directly impact them. That is what this election was about. Less focus on perceived injustices or injustices of the past and more focus on making the future better with something different.
Is Europe a great place? For sure... but it has wildly different problems and world views than the US does. I think it is hard to appreciate that until you've bene immersed in both cultures long enough.
In general, I'd just say there is more nuance to everything than our brains can handle. My little mission has been to try and bring back nuance into the conversation. Black and white thinking is lazy. Nuance exists, find it and challenge your filter bubble.
I'm excited to see how this casual gym conversation continues.
Tail tu tab lene ata jab tumhare bacha LGBT ghar may late. Shukar karo bach gayae
Pakistani Diaspora agar Genocide aur LGBT enabler say hamrdari rakhta tu unsa bara beghairat aur kanjar koi nahi, un k baghair tel ke danda dia jye ga
I am not American but my country has suffered due to Biden policies
The people that attempt this were incredibly bad faith i.e. for example equating Hillary's "[Trump] knows he’s an illegitimate president" which is calling out shady voter suppression tactics and the fact that Trump did not win the popular vote with the staunch denial of the 2020 election result by Trump to this day and the organisation of a (failed) plot to remain in power.
Fox News, Twitter, Facebook etc have really done a number on the US (and the rest of the world to some extent). The lack of regulation of these companies have brought us to the Post-Truth world we're living in now.
Our company, US based, thinks this is bad enough that we have contingency plans for his presidency.
Nobody actually voted for the Dutch PM.
After watching it enough at play, you understand.
There's absolutely a sovereignty problem with the EU, which is not necessarily fixed by getting out because the lobbyists can pay the politicians no matter what.
And yes, the EU has a sovereignty problem. However, that is by design, as the member states wish to keep control. It's certainly not my preference, but with the current political climate it won't change.
My problem is exactly that it removes sovereignty and citizens of each country have a weakened democracy and representation because of it.
The capacity to effect change is extremely low thanks to both parliamentary systems and the supranational EU.
The EU has some convenient things that one can benefit from, so people don't care to have the other conversation (or are simply authoritarian).
What do you mean precisely? And what would be your suggestion to improve things?
We all know Putin is not interested in stopping where he is.
I've seen some articles about Trump admin Minsk III and that he'll threaten Putin with blah blah if he doesnt sign up. Its a long shot but we'll see.
I want the EU to really take this seriously. Ramp up arms manufacturing to supply Ukraine will send a message that Ukraine will keep fighting until Russia implodes.
Tim Pool went from being an #OccupyWallStreet Berniebro to one of the biggest US conservative commentators after he saw brown people in Sweden. The Ron Paul crowd (who pretended to be "socially liberal & fiscally conservative") posted borderline "white genocide" conspiracy theories about what was happening in Europe.
Brown people in Sweden is "an invasion".
Russia invading Ukraine is merely "self-defense against NATO enlargement".
Don't let them pretend they are just isolationists. They explicitly support Russia because of the "white christian" racial identity politics they actually align with.
I can see how Europeans are particularly put off by President Trump. His trade and NATO policy requires Europe to uphold their end of the bargain, right or wrong, as he sees it, and increase trade with their US ally, which is not necessarily what Europeans or globalists want.
Do you have a source for this claim? Covid did end up causing salary increase I know, but we can hardly attribute that to the president
Wage Growth:
Obama: Modest but steady wage growth, particularly from 2015 onwards. Real wage growth averaged 0.5%–1.0%.
Trump: Stronger wage growth pre-pandemic, with real wage growth averaging 1.0%–1.5%, but the pandemic and high inflation in 2021 dampened these gains.
Inflation:
Obama: Inflation was relatively low and stable, averaging around 1.3%–1.5%.
Trump: Inflation was low until 2021, when it surged to 5.4%, outpacing wage growth.
Real Wage Growth vs. Inflation:
Obama: In the later years of his presidency, wage growth generally outpaced inflation (2015–2016).
Trump: Wage growth outpaced inflation until 2021, when inflation surged and surpassed wage increases.
That said, I also don't think my specific claim is commonly disputed by the other side.
BTW I don't see Europe in good shape either, even when I would prefer to live there for other reasons that are not connected to business at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
I hesitate to even mention Kissinger who was effectively an autonomous nation-state during the carpet-bombing of Cambodia.
This is non-withstanding the fact that WW2 was effectively a result of punitive measures and economic destruction following WW1 (a blueprint for the post-Charlie Wilson's Afghanistan if you will).
The causes of WW1 however - bad faith alliances during the right-wing rise of imperialism, militarism, and nationalism - look to be back in play in the North American Continent.
Europe had hundreds of years of plundering the rest of the world. WWI happened because Germany wanted a piece of the pie too, and the other, more established powers didn't want to share. None of that had anything to do with American Exceptionalism.
And, yeah, America's not perfect. We got thrust into the role of being a global superpower after the second time Europe tried to blow itself up. The other option was the USSR (who did their own share of empire building).
In Europe, president's power is much more limited, there are more political parties and one party winning elections doesn't immediately change the country's policy to everything, even winning parties need to consider opinions of other parties. So overall country's policy more closely reflects the average opinion of the whole population instead of just the currently ruling party. Changes are much more slow and gradual and a single leader change doesn't immediately affect that much.
Politics are boring as they should be.
Biden was openly hostile toward my home country (the UK), and was a dead end when it came to negotiating the free trade deal we should be aiming for now we're free of the EU.
Trump, and the Republicans have more love for the UK than the Dems have shown, although this isn't reciprocated by the current UK regime, which allegedly attempted to meddle in the US election https://theconversation.com/what-us-election-interference-la...
At the end of the day I want to see a strong and safe USA, because the US is our #1 ally. The markets have responded very well to the Trump victory, and I believe that the world was a more stable and safer place under Trump than it was under Biden. If Trump can complete his Abraham Accords he will be remembered as a remarkable peacemaker in the Middle East.
I suspect most people haven't even heard of the Abraham Accords, because the mainstream media is so weaponised against Trump.
The union members ended up voting for Trump.
American unions are a joke and should never be pandered to.
For the sake of my kids I’m glad we live in a blue state, so we might be somewhat insulated from the immediate consequences. Even then, I’m glad I’m a gun toting liberal and have the means to defend myself against those who wish me and my family harm.
You're just being dramatic because you think everyone who voted for Trump is stupid.
Try taking a different tack. Maybe over 50% of the country is not stupid and don't wish you harm? Your family will be stronger if you try to understand your fellow man.
I’m just listening to what you say and believing that you really mean it.
I'm supposed to think my fellow man has made any attempt to understand me? I'm not supposed to be afraid after they support someone who has said they want me gone??
I'm a white man in America, the most powerful country in the history of the world and I'm considering fleeing this place like a f*king refugee - it is obscene that I'm in a position to even be considering such a thing.
Trump has never said he wants you gone. It's simply not true.
It doesn't, it shows a majority reject major narratives that have been used. Part of that rejection of the idea that an authoritarian regime just came to power.
If you are worried about violence, consider the origin of the assassination attempts.
Agreed. The winner of the popular vote yesterday had only 27% support of people in America, not anywhere near a majority.
On the other hand, the left media created hoax after hoax that are thoroughly debunked by the left-leaning fact checkers like Snopes. Obama still used the Fine People[1] hoax on national TV last week. The DA in NY charged Trump for "In July 2020, the Trump Organization received an appraisal with a value of $84.5 million, but on the 2020 Statement the Trump Organization valued Trump Park Avenue at $135.8 million."[2] But isn't that what practically every home seller does? We estimate how much our properties are worth, and the band sends out an appraiser? To me, that's just blatant law fare.
For all I know, only evil states like Soviet Union and China (before 1978, at least) used morality, misinformation, and identity politics to control their people. Such states deserve a big middle finger up their you know what.
[1]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/
[2]https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/tto_release_properties...
You are a one issue voter. Your one issue is the right to post deepfakes.
Enjoy the circus over the next 4 years. It's what you wanted.
As for hoaxes, conservative media has been highly effective at this (to the point where Joe Biden had to repudiate the FEMA hoax after the hurricane).
Regardless of ones feelings towards the Orange Man and his voters (over half the country!) you shouldn't be able break HN ToS and get away with it. So either moderation efforts are being overwhelmed (hats off to Dang) or HN is heavily politically biased from the userbase to moderation team.
If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Which doesn't seem too bad in terms of everyone getting an outlet to process things one way or another, and keeping the rest of the front page clean.
Cautiously optimistic about: curbing government spending, reducing illegal immigration, protecting unborn lives, restraining Iran + proxies, continuing economic growth
Nervous about: Ukraine, additional inflation caused by tariffs, ongoing political polarization
It has nothing to do with medicine because there isn't a doctor in the world who would willingly let a patient die when they could have treated them - unless they believe they will end up in jail for it - which is exactly what is happening - and that blood is on your hands for defending this absolute crap.
[1]: https://people.com/texas-teen-suffering-miscarriage-dies-due...
Secondly, Trump has never called for a federal abortion ban, nor, in fact, a state abortion ban.
Thirdly, there are currently exemptions in ALL states that protect abortion if it is a life-saving necessity for the mother. Trump has never proposed removing these exemptions.
Rove vs Wade was overturned because of a right wing stacked supreme court, which has nothing to do with the sitting president. Unless you think the executive has control over judicial decisions?
Trump is enabling all sorts of backward thinking ideology to fruit, directly or indirectly.
I think the Dems will continue to lose elections if, in their hysteria, they attibute bad things to Trump that had little to do with him.
If the Dems and their supporters care more about the Two Minutes Hate against Trump than creating their own positive vision of America, then they'll continue to lose.
Americans are a positive and patriotic populace. That's why Trump's "Make America Great Again" messaging resonates with them.
You're implying that unless the major left wing party kow-tows to the emotional needs of extreme right-wingers, then they should be allowed to destroy the country because mummy wasn't nice to them?
How about actually focussing on improving things instead of crying about every little thing.
That timing is all about how long it takes a lawsuit to work through the system to reach a stacked court.... not so much who was President when it finally was resolved.
increased taxes, as per evident of the UK government switch to labour
reduce illegal immigration:
shortage of labour for mundane jobs, as evidenced by the UK brexit. We now don't have farmers to do the jobs that we all hate
protection of unborn lives
abortion aided to the protection, so now expect a baby boom crisis. Your daughter gets pregnant, now what? You have to fork the bill of either supporting or child care of others.
economic growth:
You rely on china for everything, when was the last product you looked at that had "made in the usa?
What is there to grow upon? AI/ML? CyberSecurity?
Can you elaborate on this one? I don't agree with most of your takes, but this one I just didn't understand.
This includes scrapping budgets for Scotland, Wales leading a dominance in the London tax haven and sabotaging anything else progressive.
So, we've finally extinguished the conservative party with a left wing party, labour who are suppose to fight for the people but in return have just released the budget report where by instead of cutting spending they're going to increase national insurance, work taxes from next April, cut public services of schools, healthcare and pensions all in the name to get us out of this "black hole" including draining further Scotland and Wales because with increase spending.
So instead of actually tackling the issue they want the same pie that conservatives had and their slice too.
* reducing illegal immigration - mass deportation is a fantasy. in reality trump will not do much about it.
* protecting unborn lives - yeah, more women will die instead. good job.
* restraining Iran + proxies - yeah, Putin is a best buddy of Iranian leaders and Trump will be in their company too.
* continuing economic growth - trimp policies will lead to recession.
* Ukraine - it's utterly fucked.
* additional inflation caused by tariff - on spot. companies will not hesitate to gauge pricing more than necessary because of tariffs.
* ongoing political polarization - it's not just polarization. It will be on the edge of the civil war when Trump will order shoot protesters.
as the grandson of two concentration camp survivors: I'd call that a nightmare and I don't think it's so far from reality you'd hope for.
The majority of women are not enthusiastic about his plans on that front either
The way to restrain Iran is to put reasonable sanctions on them, then negotiate terms for removing those sanctions. An international group (the US, China, France, Russia, the UK, and Germany) did that over Iran's nuclear weapons program and it resulted in an agreement that would have delayed Iran from getting nuclear weapons for at least a decade.
Then Trump was elected and a couple years later and over the objections of China, France, Russia, the UK, Germany, and the EU unilaterally withdrew from the deal and imposed even harsher sanctions that had been on Iran before.
So we ended up back to where we were before that deal, except with Iran knowing that if you make a deal for sanctions relief you can't trust the US to keep it, and so they have figured out other ways to get by with the sanctions in place. And the US is not Spinal Tap...when sanctions at 10 don't work it can't turn the dial to 11.
Yea it can. It did that to Iraq.
Institutional trust has collapsed, and the public is desperate.
Yes, "it's the economy, stupid" - but economic perceptions are reflective of that desperation, and of how far voters will go to express it.
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There are a million individual failures that add up:
- An economic and judicial system that protects the rich at the expense of the poor, to the point that no one of any political persuasion is the slightest bit surprise when rich guys get off scot-free.
- The normalization of snake oil, MLMs, conspiracy theories, etc., which enhance the perception of institutional failure even when institutions are functioning (e.g., antivaxxers). This includes deliberate misinformation from a very effective right-wing propaganda apparatus, beginning with Fox and continued through the present day; I think this apparatus is a very important factor but it's one Democrats have no control over.
- The almost naked contempt for the lack of well-being (particularly economic well-being) among the public from many laissez-faire politicians of the Clinton-Bush era.
- The post-9/11 apparatus that led to the Iraq War, which obliterated trust in neocons/hawks as an institution (paving the way for an alternative wing on the right, whereas the left has had no comparable failure [possibly until now] to clean house on the left).
- The 2008 financial crisis, which intensified perceptions that we were getting screwed and generated the Tea Party and Occupy. The Tea Party became MAGA, while Occupy has no similar vent on the left (thanks largely to the fairly transparent sidelining of Bernie Sanders, the heir-apparent of that movement).
- Outsourcing, particularly of manufacturing. Beneficial overall, perhaps, but looks like an institutional failure from the perspective of workers whose towns evaporated. That's part of why the Trump movement started with those towns and expanded outward: they were the nexus of a discontent that has continued to grow among the electorate.
- The relentless enshittification of nearly everything we do, use, or consume. As I was waiting for results to come in, I was watching a YouTuber play video games, and he was talking about how every fast food place sucks now relative to how they used to be. Not election-related at all! It's just so pervasive in the zeitgeist that it's a normal discussion topic. And everyone can name stuff that's gotten worse in their daily lives because someone's trying to milk it for extra cash.
- The increasing alienation of workers from their work, and especially from doing work they feel has any moral value. I wrote more about this a while back at [1]
- A pervasive sense of societal decay, brought on by...well, everyone's got a different theory, but everyone can feel it. Almost no one actually feels better about life right now than they did ten or even twenty years ago, with the possible exception of queer rights (and as a queer person, I can tell you I certainly don't feel like things are going well, and I wouldn't have felt that they were even if Harris had won). I think there is substance to that (see [2]), and because it's vague and nebulous, it's incredibly easy to assign to whatever cause you want.
- A lack of belief that success even can be done without being corrupt. (see [3]) A lot of Trump supporters are fully aware that he's nakedly corrupt and lies all the time, they just think everyone is and that he's at least lying and corrupt "on their side".
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When the public is in this state, it has a legitimate grievance. The social contract between the working class and the elite is, roughly, "make sure my life is OK and I won't burn the place down". Well, the elite failed to hold up its end of the bargain, and failed to listen to many cries for help (among other things, during 2008), until people got desperate. So they decided to burn the place down.
People often wonder how Sanders-Trump voters existed given the apparent policy conflict between the two. Well, I was almost such a voter in 2016 (I would not be now! I'm ashamed to have ever considered him), and I can tell you where I was: it's not (just) about policy, it's about disruption. If you feel like things are going badly for you, and no one will listen or offer you help (and might actively sneer at you when you ask for it), you start asking yourself if you have anything to lose by going nuclear.
And this isn't just a logical judgement, either. To be ignored and suppressed is humiliating. It makes you feel impotent - choice of word very intentional - and that seems to hit male voters rather harder than female ones. There's a reason Bannon found a lot of Trump's initial younger base of support in gaming communities: it's not much different than someone raging in a League of Legends match because someone else is feeding and that's making you lose. Your pride is being damaged because someone else (in your perception) screwed up. You're a great player, it's all their fault, so your pride is unbesmirched.
Voters do care about democracy, contrary to this result. A lot said they cared about it, and a lot of people who voted for Trump said they were concerned about Jan 6. But people won't care about someone else unless they feel like they're taken care of for themselves, and principle comes after basic everyday needs for most people. And that goes double when you're being asked to defend institutions that (you feel) have completely betrayed you.
The same goes for, say, social justice. It's not that voters don't care in a vacuum, it's that it's at a higher tier of their hierarchy. Yes, hardcore racists, sexists, etc do exist, and are a problem, but what makes Trump powerful is that he co-opts populist rage into bigotry. When he talks about DEI, it's not "boo black person in power" (keep in mind, much of Trump's base enthusiastically voted for Obama), it's "that person took a job that you should have had because Democrats care more about diversity than they do about you". That works for the people who are explicitly racist, but it also works for the people who feel like they've been robbed and are looking for someone to blame. And the latter can become the former, especially because it sets them up for being called racist when they feel they aren't (somewhat correctly, in my view, but not in theirs).
-----
Was the inflation of the last few years bad? Yeah. But it was also everywhere, and it wasn't that bad in the US relative to the rest of the world. An electorate that was interested in listening to any sort of explanation would have probably been persuadable on that point. But the electorate has had their problems explained away one too many times.
Was there a problem at the border? Yeah. But it was clearly not a problem of our own making, and not as simple as "put up a wall". And an electorate interested in expert opinions and complex solutions might have believed that. But when you feel like you're being screwed in a thousand ephemeral ways, it's easy to point a finger and say "Biden gave all your money to immigrants".
Despite the fact that I'm probably leaving the country to avoid what I expect to be attacks on people like me, I don't think voters are actually all that much more conservative. The administration will be, and their power will be almost wholly unchecked, but voters weren't. Abortion measures passed last night in some really red states. So did minimum wage hikes. Dobbs has been wildly unpopular.
Harris outperformed Biden by wide margins among the wealthy, presumably because of Jan 6. But she got blown out among the working class by an even wider margin - a working class that cannot own a home, or afford healthcare, or expect a good stable career, and who might be automated away entirely at any minute.
Trump isn't the answer to that (he is more or less a walking institutional failure himself, one that is causing a cascading collapse of other institutions), but Democrats have, so far, largely failed to acknowledge the problem at all. And so they could not present a compelling alternative.
I'm not sure Democrats can actually solve this problem. Institutional failures are being driven by a lot of non-political forces, and if you care about policy, some degree of institutionalism is inevitable. And worse, addressing systemic issues runs fundamentally against American individualist values. But I think that's the nature of the problem they're dealing with, and one they better figure out quick.
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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41977655
Given the proclivities here on HN I fully expect this message will not be well received. I urge left-leaning visitors to read it, stop and think before the natural emotional reaction.
What you lack is real exposure and knowledge of Latin American history and politics. Everything we see the Democratic party push for and do in the US has already happened in Latin America dozens of times over the last century. Pick a policy and you will find a country in LATAM that has done it, if not many.
The result? Utter destruction. LATAM is a time machine for the US. You can rewind history and see how every single policy being pushed by the left will end. And the results are not pretty. My own native country, Argentina, was absolutely destroyed by this ideology. It went from one of the top economies in the world to something like 150 spots down the list.
Poverty, destruction, massive unemployment, crime, intense lawfare, political prosecution, etc. You will find this in Argentina's history and that of most nations in LATAM. And the link to leftist/socialist rule is indisputable.
As things hit rock bottom LATAM has been waking up. El Salvador is one example of this. And Argentina is now on it's way with Milei. Sadly the uninformed masses have to hit rock bottom before they understand that the people they have been supporting them only care about political power and not about their lives.
Eventually reality vs. fantasy hits you hard enough that you cannot react like robot and keep supporting the same criminals that got you to the point of pain, misery and despair you find yourself pondering about. It's like being 30 meters down scuba-diving and your air tank suddenly going empty. There are realities you cannot ignore. And that's how Milei finally got elected.
The problem with the American Left is that you are all utterly ignorant of the history of so many nations where everything your party and politicians do and proposed has been tried and failed. The fact that a Bernie Sanders or AOC are not summarily laughed off the stage says volumes about the ignorance of the people who vote for them.
I am happy that Trump won. Not because he is the most ideal candidate. We can talk about how flawed the US process is that we usually end-up with two choices everyone hates. That's a different discussion. Whether you know it or not, what the Trump win represents is the US dodging the destructive forces of putrid leftist ideology that has destroyed so many nations.
No, he is not Hitler or a fascist. Stop it. You have never lived under such regimes. You don't know what the hell you are talking about. As a teenager in Argentina I was held at gunpoint (as in multiple machine guns, with one pushing against my back) by military police in Argentina. What crime did my friends and I commit? We went to the movies, then to have some pizza at a restaurant and were walking home late at night. That's it. They slapped us around and took our money. Again, don't use terms like "fascist" like you know what the fuck you are talking about, you have no idea. Any immigrant who has actually lived under these ideologies thinks you are ignorant and stupid.
My first-level filter when thinking about supporting a politician is:
Would I hire this person to run a cookie baking operation?
Simplistic, yes, however, it quickly gets to the core of the issue: Most politicians are just that, politicians, and know nothing whatsoever about making even a microscopic economy run. They know nothing about the consequences of their actions and have no exposure to them at all.
A simple example of this was Obama and Obamacare. He passed a horrible law that caused incredible damage. He promised --dozens of times-- that your existing plans and doctors would not change. My family's health insurance evaporated. We were forced into the ACA. Our cost when from $7,800 per year to $28,800 per year. Yes, you read that correctly. Our deductible also went from $3,000 per year to over $9,000 per year. And yet, none of the politicians who supported this abomination have to live with the realities of effectively destroying a family's economy as well as generational wealth.
For our family that represents being robbed to the tune of $210K every ten years. When one considers investing this on an ETF, we are talking about millions of millions of dollars over, say, 30 years. Destruction at this scale should be criminal.
The other problem with the ACA is that it pushed tens of millions of people into programs that, by law, require that their medical expenditures after 55 years of age be recovered. That recovery can include a lien on whatever assets they might have. Once again, destroying generational wealth.
And yet, Obama, a person who nobody in their right mind would hire to run a cookie baking operation, is living large, has suffered no consequences for his incompetence and deceit and is a multimillionaire many time over.
Another example of this is the utter destruction that the artificial raising of the minimum wage has caused. Financially-challenged and ideologically-brainwashed voters supported this. The result was that people lost their jobs, had their hours cut and everything they buy and consume is so unaffordable that their higher minimum wage has less buying power than their status quo ante. What's worse, it is causing irreparable damage to businesses and further losses to outsourcing in multiple industries, including manufacturing. Bravo. Ignorance is sad to behold.
On to Harris.
Incompetent as can be. The worst candidate Democrats have seen for decades. Once again, as a first filer, nobody in their right mind would hire this person to run a cookie baking operation. Race and gender have nothing to do with this. She is utterly incompetent and does not know what she is doing.
Her ideology is putrid and would have damaged the US beyond recognition. The US would not survive another four years of this, much less four years going farther into the putrid left.
You think you are suffering now? Inflation is too high? Once again, you have no clue what the fuck you are talking about. The population of the US is up in arms about 20% inflation. Meh! Try 250% inflation! The US would descend into civil war. Yet, that's precisely what happened in Argentina (along with many years well above 20%. Here:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/316750/inflation-rate-in...
Again, the policies and politicians you support are DESTROYING this nation. You don't know it because you are like the proverbial frog slowly being boiled and you are utterly ignorant about the world outside the US and their various histories.
If we remained on our current path, the US would probably find itself in an unrecoverable position in another four years, certainly in eight. If you actually took the time to study, learn and think about this, you should come out with two conclusions: Trump voters saved your ass and gave the US the best probably for a turn-around (even as late as this is). Second, you should realign your flawed thinking, support the change and perhaps even thank your Trump-voting friends for saving this nation from an almost certain disastrous path.
Well, like I said, I firmly suspect the HN crowd will not receive this message very well, hence the throw-away account. If I am able to make just a few people truly rethink their fake reality, mission accomplished. I do not want to see the US turn into Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador and the dozens of other nations destroyed by leftist ideologies in many forms. That requires a voting population who is educated about how this has affected the world. We don't want the far right either. That is now where we are today. At all. If you care about your life and that of your family, kids, etc., you need to educate yourself, leave ideological indoctrination behind and understand reality. We were 30 meters down and air was about to stop flowing. We now have a chance to surface and live.
If you got this far, thanks. I hope you are the type who is willing to reflect and understand.
Do you know about Evita in Argentina? Probably not. You think you know because you watched a movie or musical. Silly goose.
This goes back to when my parents where young. Evita sent trucks full of bikes, refrigerators, appliances, etc. into poor neighborhoods to buy votes. Vote for her, get an appliance. Where did those appliances come from? They took them from "the rich", causing damage to manufacturers and destroying jobs.
This was one of the many obvert ways in which they bought votes. People fall for this because they are desperate. And people are desperate because the left wants to keep them there, needs to keep them there.
I think this observation is attributed to Gloria Alvarez: The left love the poor so much, they multiply them.
The strategy is simple: - Keep them poor and desperate - Do not solve their problems - Blame the other side for their condition - Toss gifts and promises in the every election - Win elections - Make sure they stay poor and desperate - Ignore them until next election
That's the playbook. This has been done across LATAM history so many times it's sick. And, yes, it works. Because you will always find people in every population who are desperate and uninformed enough to not be able to think past their current condition. Very few people make decisions with a ten+ year timeframe. This just happened in Argentina with Milei because people hit the bottom so hard they had to wake up and understand reality.
Harris promised "appliances" to people in the form of $25K gifts to buy homes, free entry into the US and a path to citizenship and a whole host of horrible policies I don't have time to repeat. So, yes, once again, as the LATAM time machine shows us, these things will drive a percentage of the population to cast votes in favor of the candidate sending trucks with appliances into their neighborhoods to buy their votes. And they will do this without realizing they are contributing to the destruction of their society and economy until they understand they have been in water that is about to boil the entire time.
Oh yes, and, of course, the other thing the left has done throughout LATAM's history (and Evita was no exception) is to control the media. If you control the media you can brainwash the shit out of people, as some of you are here in the US.
Of course, here the media are not officially under government control. This has been accomplished through outright indoctrination at our universities. As a result, a large majority of the people who work at media organizations are leftist ideologs who will happily support someone as dangerous and incompetent as Harris because they can't think past their indoctrination.
The messaging take-over by the left in the US was not done by force, like in most LATAM nations, it was done through shit ideologically-slanted "education" at our centers of "higher learning". I really hope Trump has a plan to slam these organizations (media and universities) hard. We need to fix this problem and do it quickly because it takes years for people who have not been subjected to indoctrination to emerge from university and join society.
Meanwhile, anyone who ever been to developed Europe or Asia can attest, that although far left by American standards, average Joe has far greater quality of live; heck even Canada has affordable healthcare which is such a big problem in the US.
Be careful, your ignorance is showing.
On a more serious note, you clearly don't know what you are talking about.
"People of passion". Give me a fucking break. So, Latin Americans are emotion-driven robots. Great. Stop getting your fake facts from movies and leftist media for goodness sake.
> Milei if far right, and as big an idiot as your lefties.
Your ignorance makes me want to vomit.
Go live in an environment with 50% unemployment, massive government overreach and 250% annual inflation (after years of crippling inflation). Then come back and read your comment to understand what you sound like.
Quite a few of the Hispanics who vote on the left are low-information, low-education voters who can be bought with fake giveaways, not realizing they are shooting themselves in the foot.
At the end it is always a matter of education. In the US, it is a matter of our educational institutions of "higher" learning having descended into becoming centers of indoctrination. I went to university in Argentina for engineering. We studied engineering, not the bullshit socially-twisted, time-wasting courses universities force students to take here in the US.
My oldest son attended a top university back east for CS. He burned a year of his life in the aggregate taking bullshit courses having nothing whatsoever to do with CS. They also forced him to take classes on Marxism where they romanticized the ideology. How? The made it the only class available, and if he wanted to graduate that was the only choice from here to eternity. I don't even want to imaging what they do to liberal arts students. It is truly despicable.
I don't know whether what the democratic party or the GOP is proposing is good or bad for the people. All I know is we used to have a country where you worked overtime in dangerous unsafe jobs, for a pittance, and now we don't owing in large part to leftist policies. It doesn't mean it's an automatic communist revolution. However it does seem that both parties right now need elite backing to have a chance at success, which means the incentives are in their favor on either side, which can't be good.
The problem with isolationism is that everyone else gets to do their thing without your input.
As can be seen in Africa now, if America doesn't intervene then Russia or China will - there's no nice safe forum to criticise such actions in Russia. Sri Lanka - poor old Tamils got "sorted" with Chinese help.
Then the US oil price will go up no matter how isolationist it tries to be. That will hit people's pockets.
… goes on to suggest that the US is getting involved for everyone's good, then…
> Then the US oil price will go up … hit people's pockets.
states one of the few reasons the US political system really cares about these places in the slightest.
Iraq...well they might not be too happy but I bet their neighbors insisted on Hussein being sorted out.
etc etc.
It isn't noble, it's practical. The US protects countries that supply oil to it. Korea turns out to be an extremely important ally and part of the world economy....etc.
I lot of Iraqis are very happy the US intervened, even though IMO it was a terrible move for many reasons (starting with the BS about WMD). The sunnis that supported Saddam didn't like it of course, but the other groups he oppressed were happy about the US invasion.
It's supporting Israel's genocide right now, and would have continued to do so whichever candidate won.
It's arming Saudi Arabia to help its war in Yemen.
It killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, and armed the Taliban before that (back when the USSR was also killing Afghans by the hundreds of thousands).
It participated in the coup against Iran's last democratic government (together with the UK), re-installing the deposed Shah (he was later deposed yet again, but this time by fundamentalist revolutionaries, instead of the democracy that had replaced him last time). Before the revolution, they the Shah with the start of nuclear tech, which formed the basis of the current Iran nuclear program. They then supported Saddam and had him attack Iran, before later losing control of him as well.
Now, the root cause of many of the worse issues in the Middle East is in fact not the USA, but the British Empire, which drew most of the insane borders of Middle East states that are causing problems to this day. But the USA proudly took on the mantle of main meddler in the region in the last 50-70 years.
To give this some context: Iran-Iraq war, where US didn't really participate, scored 1m-2m deaths.
And of those killed in the conflicts, overwhelming majority were killed by the locals, in order to further some local ideology, gain some local control etc.
Military, I'd imagine, US may be directly responsible for some couple thousands deaths, maybe dozens of thousands. But that's it. US has absolutely no reason to waste troops and ammo on killing a bunch of nobodies in ME. That furthers no military or political goals. Even if you believe that US is colonial / militaristic or whatever other sticker you like, US is pragmatic in what it's doing. There's just no point in killing many people. It's a waste of resources.
Also, you obviously have never been to ME, and have no clue of what's going on there right now. The idea that Israel is somehow performing genocide is, again, laughable. Yes, they don't care about how many people in Gaza will die. But that's it. They don't care. The Israelis want the deplorables behind the fence to stop launching rockets at them. If that means that the civilians will die behind the fence--so be it. Genocide is when a state kills off everyone belonging to a particular group, no matter what that group does. Israeli military nor police nor any other force has no programs of exterminating Gazans. It's just not useful, there's nothing to be gained from it. And it would've been a huge investment in terms of paying salaries to the force hired to perform the alleged genocide, to organize the logistics around it etc. It's truly bizarre how someone can come up with such b/s ideas and never have a reality check.
The same, I imagine, goes for Saudi Arabia. They don't want the deplorables from Yemen to shoot at their oil drilling installations. They don't care about the lives of the people on the other side of the fence. In fact, they probably don't see them as people at all. But they don't care enough about them to organize a genocide. That's just too expensive, unproductive and wasteful.
As for Iran, you are missing the point: US has interests in the area, that's why they choose to side with this or the other political / social group and support / oppose some groups. They aren't responsible for what those groups want or do. The Iranian revolution happened because people in Iran revolted. Not because US organized it.
The Iran-Iraq war was supported by the USA, who armed Saddam as long as he promised to attack Iran, to try to take back control of, or at least punish, Iran after the Islamist revolution.
> The idea that Israel is somehow performing genocide is, again, laughable.
This is not just wrong, it's not even debatable today. Every single international organization that has analyzed the situation, from the UN, ICC, ICJ, journalist organizations, NGOs, even medical orgs: they all agree that a genocide is happening there. All senior Israeli officials (president, prime minister, defense minister, finance minister, and others) have said that they intend to punish the people of Gaza for October 7th (collective punishment is a form of genocide). I can find quotes, all from Israeli media or their own Twitter accounts, I had a collection of them once. Plus, they have destroyed every single hospital, university, and high-school in Gaza. They have forced the entire population to move from the North to the South, and then kept attacking them there as well. There is no other name whatsoever for what Israel is doing than genocide.
> They don't want the deplorables from Yemen to shoot at their oil drilling installations. They don't care about the lives of the people on the other side of the fence.
The war is about more than that (those "deplorables" are Iran aligned, a traditional enemy of SA). But it's irrelevant: the problem is that we know they're killing people quasi-indiscriminately (though nowhere near the wanton destruction that Israel unleashed in Gaza, especially in terms of leveling all civilian infrastructure), and yet the USA is still arming Saudi Arabia to facilitate this. So, the USA bears at least some responsibility for the deaths of all of those Yemenis.
> The Iranian revolution happened because people in Iran revolted. Not because US is organized it.
Sure, the Islamist revolution was not caused by the USA. But the coup against Mossadegh, the one that re-installed the US and UK puppet Shah, was indeed organized by the CIA. You had Iran go from a despotic king to a democracy, and then the UK and USA conspired to bring down this democracy and re-install the despotic king. And then proceeded to arm this king, including trying to help him build nuclear weapons. When the people rose again against the despot, the second time they were more radicalized than the first time, which has now made Iran one of the most dangerous countries in the region - including a nuclear weapons program that the USA helped start.
Every single hand-picked organization you mean? The organizations that act on identity politics of being Muslim / Arabs and wanting to trample Israel for religious / identity reasons you mean? Yeah... that's about right. The rest can be explained by Israel being a US ally, when it's not for the fact that Muslims just want to slaughter Jews if given a chance. The countries / governments that campaign against Israel do it so that they can stick it up to the US, but in the way they don't directly confront the US, because they are too scared of the repercussions.
> have said that they intend to punish the people of Gaza
And? Where's genocide in that? Where are the concentration camps, the gas chambers, the paramilitary force guarding the camps and executing prisoners? Where's all that? Yes, of course they want to punish people responsible for Israelis' death. Why wouldn't anyone? Do they send them in droves into gas chambers? -- Absolutely not.
> collective punishment is a form of genocide
Really? By whose definition? What about riding in a sled and saying ho-ho-ho? Is that a form of genocide too? Gazans are being collectively punished by denying them work permits in Israel. Is that a genocide? If so, then I have really bad news for you...
Ultimately, Gazans are the culprit of Gazans' problems. They started this war. They had dozens of off-ramps to stop it. They could surrender any time they want, and their beloved infrastructure would've been spared. They have a death wish, and Israel doesn't feel like stopping them from throwing themselves on the bayonets.
As for colective punishment, I did make a small mistake. This is "just" an explicit war crime, not a direct proof of genocide. Of course, it easily leads to genocide if you feel that an entire people are responsible for an attack perpetrated by a few dozens of terrorists. After all, if all Gazans are responsible for October 7th, doesn't it just make sense to kill or at least harm all of them, per this deranged logic?
Just like like if someone said "Israelis and all Jewish people deserve to die for the crimes committed by Israel's military against Palestine" would be a demented war criminal and instigator to genocide. This is exactly what Israel's leadership is saying, only it's about Palestinians as a people and Hamas as the army instead. And it is just as deranged and disturbing and frankly disgusting.
> Ultimately, Gazans are the culprit of Gazans' problems. They started this war.
Another historical misguided statement. Israel has been occupying Gaza and not allowing it to be recognized as a state, or to control its own borders, for decades. Every year, even before this war, for every Israeli killed by someone from Gaza, Israel has killed two, three, sometimes even ten Gazans (and the balance is sitting at 45-100:1 for the current invasion, not counting all of the mass rape and torture and other crimes committed by Israeli soldiers against detainees). The people of Gaza are not allowed to leave the country unless approved by Israel, not allowed to import or export anything unless approved by Israel, and not allowed to be recognized in any international organization. The same is true of the West Bank. Additionally, in the West Bank, Israel is taking more and more of the Palestinians' lands and settling colonists, who often attack nearby villages as well.
This "war" did not start on October 7th. It started decades ago, and Israel has been the aggressor throughout.
Edit: same person as simiones for personal reasons, not an attempt at dogpiling or anything like that
> "Israel has been occupying Gaza"
Nope. Left in 2005.
> "not allowing it to be recognized as a state"
Not allowing how? All Israel asked was a declaration of willingness to live side-by-side with Israel, without hostilities. Are you saying that's too much for Israel to ask?
> "or to control its own borders, for decades"
There are two sides to every border. Israel controls the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border.
> "Every year, even before this war, for every Israeli killed by someone from Gaza, Israel has killed two, three, sometimes even ten Gazans (and the balance is sitting at 45-100:1 for the current invasion, not counting all of the mass rape and torture and other crimes committed by Israeli soldiers against detainees)."
This is not a game. You don't aim for equal numbers. Israel is going for dead or surrendered Hamas militants, and Hamas is going for dead Israeli civilians. The Israelis are better at it. That doesn't make them wrong.
> "not allowed to import or export anything unless approved by Israel"
Yes, because they kept trying to import arms, explosives, and rockets. Look up the Karine-A affair. Apparently, given what happened on October 7th, the control is likely not strict enough.
> "in the West Bank, Israel is taking more and more of the Palestinians' lands and settling colonists"
Sounds like the Palestinians' top interest should be to get a deal struck as soon as possible that forces Israel to remove the settlers. Like they did with the Oslo accords in 92', until Arafat was found to be straight-up lying to Clinton, negotiating with Clinton and Rabin in the morning and directing terrorist attacks in the evening.
--
Leaders of western nations are not generally allied with Israel because they particularly like Jews. They are allied with Israel because Israel is the historical homeland of the Jews, a full democracy with democratic values (...for now), and the most successful decolonization project in history; and it has from day one strived to make peace with any willing country, while successfully defending itself from numerous assaults by its neighboring countries, the Palestinians, and the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies.
This is not a war, it's a one-sided genocidal invasion, part of a decade-long war. There have been periods of ceasefire in this war, but it is the same conflict that has lasted for decades.
> Nope. Left in 2005.
Nope, they are still controlling the border (see below) and periodically bombing Gaza, keeping records of every citizen of Gaza, rationing power and water, etc. That is an occupation, even if there aren't Israeli troops constantly on the border.
> All Israel asked was a declaration of willingness to live side-by-side with Israel, without hostilities.
This is completely facetious. Netanyahu has been very clear that there Israel will not allow a two-state solution, long before the October 7th attack. He even explicitly supported Hamas's stay in power [0]:
> For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.
> The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Here is a quote from him directly [1] about his vision for a Palestinian state, where he is asking for infinitely more than a commitment to not attack Israel:
> “[A]ny final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians would have Israel controlling security – overriding security responsibility in the area west of the Jordan.
> [...] “And I said, you’re right. But – I don’t know what you’d call it, but it gives them the opportunity to control their lives, to elect their officials, to run their economy, to run their institutions, to have their flag and to have their parliament, but we have to have overriding security control.”
I think it's obvious this is not a serious proposal that any state would accept. It also happens to be almost exactly one of the things Putin was asking of Ukraine, widely viewed in Europe and the USA as an absurdity.
> Israel controls the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border.
Israel controls all sides of the Gaza border, including Gaza's border with the sea. Even the USA wasn't allowed to bring in medicine and food to Gaza over boat unless Israel approved it. The Gaza-Egypt border is nominally controlled by Egypt, but Egypt has long agreed to follow Israel's requests on who and what is allowed through there.
> Yes, because they kept trying to import arms, explosives, and rockets.
Which they should be allowed to do, if you are claiming they are not under occupation. Every free state in the world is allowed to import weapons.
> Sounds like the Palestinians' top interest should be to get a deal struck as soon as possible that forces Israel to remove the settlers.
The Palestinians shouldn't need to reach a "deal", since the settlements are fully illegal under international law, as recognized even by the USA.
> Like they did with the Oslo accords in 92', until Arafat was found to be straight-up lying to Clinton, negotiating with Clinton and Rabin in the morning and directing terrorist attacks in the evening.
The Oslo accords were a sham. There is nothing about a Palestinian state in the Oslo accords. Israel's leaders had no intention whatsoever to commit even to a vision that would eventually lead to a Palestinian state under numerous conditions. Arafat kept negotiating, but at some point this became apparent. Was he fully committed to the process? No. Was the process ever plausibly going to lead to any good solution for Palestinians even if he had been? Absolutely not. The Israelis were occupying Gaza at the time, and busy settling the West bank. They were adamantly opposed to any kind of third party monitoring or enforcement of any term that they would agree to: who would be foolish enough to sign something like this? Here is a good article on the overall process and how one-sided it was [2], written by one of the US negotiators who was present.
> They are allied with Israel because Israel is the historical homeland of the Jews
Most Jews that founded Israel had lived for hundreds of years, more than a thousand often, in various places in Europe. Israel is about as much their "historical homeland" as Rome is the "historical homeland" of the Spanish. Calling the most clear modern example of colonization a "decolonization" project is preposterous. There were hundreds of thousands of people who had been living in Palestine for generations, who were displaced to make room for the Zionist project. Initially, this was done mostly peacefully; only later, after the British took and then ceded control of the territory, did the forceful removal of Palestinian Arabs start, to make room for the new state of Israel. And then the colonization of this state by settlers from all over the world.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/01/middleeast/netanyahu-pale...
[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/13/oslo-accords-1993-anniv...
3,000 Gazans crossed into Israel on October 7th. Not dozens. Also not close to the entire population of 2.1 million.
Nobody is talking about killing or harming all 2.1 million. In fact nobody is talking about killing or harming any civilians at all. The only dial the Israelis can turn is how much effort they put into avoiding civilian casualties - and by effort, I mean sacrificing Israeli soldier lives instead of air force munitions and/or missing opportunities to target militants, which then leads to these militants attacking Israeli civilians.
Hamas consistently uses the Gazan population as human shields. Israel is already leads and bounds ahead of any other armed force with the lowest ratio of combatant to civilian death ever in an urban setting. What's happening in Gaza is a calamity, but I'm not sure any other nation would handle it better in Israel's place.
You just keep using the words, but you don't understand what they mean...
Now, were there war crimes committed by IDF during the Gaza war? -- Yes, and some were punished for that, while even more were claimed. This is a nature of any war. Were there more crimes than in any other war? How do you even measure and compare these things?
As I lived through several wars, I can tell that Israeli wars, at least from my perspective as a bystander, are very mild in terms of cruelty towards both combatants and non-combatants. This is not a unique Israeli virtue. In general, wars waged by well-to-do countries are less cruel to the opposing side simply because soldiers growing in well-to-do countries are not exposed to the everyday violence as much as their counterparts in poor countries. They are brought up in an environment where human life has intrinsic value, where critical thought is encouraged and so it's harder to brainwash a soldier into a mindlessly cruel machine.
Now, my childhood in Ukraine had seen this, for example, beside other multiple such incidents: on my way back home from school my mom pulled my hand hard in order to get me to walk faster. Before that, I've heard voices of some youth cursing and taunting someone. I also saw some guys kicking something in the mud, but it was too dark and too far to see what that was. Next morning there was a makeshift fence erected by the police around that place, and the school sprouted rumors that a bunch of alcoholics / homeless people were mauled to death at that place.
This was during peace time. And this would've been a typical fate for the homeless / drunks, unless hypothermia got them first. Very rarely would anyone get in jail for that. Imagine now people like that being drafted into the military. First Karabakh war, for example. Or Chechen wars. These were real torture fests. Both sides deliberately looked for more painful ways to kill the opponent. And they made little distinction between combatants and non-combatants. People who signed up for the military were driven by the idea that they will be allowed to kill and torture legally even more so than by money or status.
The horrors soldiers routinely commit in poor countries eclipse anything you could dream up in your wildest dreams living in the EU, US or another wealthy place. Does this mean that war crimes committed by IDF shouldn't be prosecuted? -- Of course not. But you shouldn't infer from there being war crimes any sort of intention on the state level, nor should this be any kind of supporting argument to claim genocide or any other such wide-reaching policy. Putting things in perspective and in proportion: if Gazans were instead fighting Russians, there wouldn't have been any Gazans left in about two months since the start of the war. And it's not unique to Russians. Bet you, that if they wanted the same kind of fight with Egypt, they'd be similarly dying in much larger numbers.
And this isn't even because of the calculus of achieving military objectives. Poorer armies are both more cruel and more crude, while valuing the lives of their own soldiers less. Poorer army would both need to expend more ordnance per target (accidentally missing / hitting unintended targets) and having more vicious soldiers abuse the population being invaded.
> Israel has been the aggressor throughout.
You couldn't be more delusional / ignorant about the subject.
Here is article 33 [0] of the (Foruth) Geneva Convention (emphasis mine):
> ART. 33. — No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
> Pillage is prohibited.
> Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.
Here is a summary of more international humanitarian law on the matter [1]:
> Rule 103. Collective punishments are prohibited.
> Were there more crimes than in any other war? How do you even measure and compare these things?
> As I lived through several wars, I can tell that Israeli wars, at least from my perspective as a bystander, are very mild in terms of cruelty towards both combatants and non-combatants.
> Putting things in perspective and in proportion: if Gazans were instead fighting Russians, there wouldn't have been any Gazans left in about two months since the start of the war.
This is all entirely wrong. We can even compare directly, as there is currently a Russian invasion in Ukraine in parallel to the Israeli invasion in Gaza. After almost two years, there are approximately 11 500 civilians killed in Ukraine, of which ~650 are children [2]. There are ~43 000 total killed in Gaza, of which at least ~20 500 are civilians, including more than 13 000 children [3]. Note that the population of Gaza is about 19 times smaller than that of Ukraine (~2.1 millions in Gaza, ~38 million in Ukraine).
And these are just direct deaths from the war. While Russia also has an appalling record of attacking and deliberately targeting healthcare facilities in Ukraine, Israel has destroyed every single hospital or clinic in Gaza. Russia has killed ~234 healthcare workers in Ukraine in two years of invasion [4]. Israel has killed ~765 healthcare workers killed in Gaza, in just one year of war [5].
> You couldn't be more delusional / ignorant about the subject.
Look just at the amount of people killed every year in Gaza vs Israel before this war. Please tell me how Gaza has been terrorizing Israel, when in every single year, Israel has been killing many times more people in Gaza then the terrorists have in Israel [6]. Several human rights organizations have called Gaza "an open air prison" before this war, including this UN special rapporteur [7]. In fact, I challenge you to find a single human rights organization that has done work in Gaza who doesn't consider what Israel is doing to be deeply oppressive.
[0] https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-...
[1] https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule103#F...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293492/ukraine-war-casu...
[3] https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaz...
[4] https://www.attacksonhealthukraine.org/
[5] https://media.un.org/unifeed/en/asset/d326/d3268585
[6] https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
[7] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-occupation-...
No, denying work permits is not a war crime. You took the quote out of context and have no clue what it refers to. No country owes it to another country to provide their citizens (or non-citizens in this case) with work permits. There's no crime in cancelling work permits. But it is a punishment. Similarly, when a country enacts a policy of tariffs on imported goods, visa restrictions etc. They apply indiscriminately to all the citizens of the country against which the measures are applied, yet these aren't even crimes, let alone war crimes!
To sum it up for you: not all punishments are crimes. Thus a collective punishment doesn't have to be a crime, let alone a war crime. Being collective rather than individual changes nothing about the nature of this relationship.
> Pillage is prohibited.
Pillage of what? Gaza is a downtrodden hellhole. Life there is destitute and miserable. Unlike you, I've been there. There's nothing Israelis want from that place. There's nothing Israelis could possibly use from that place. It's a huge ghetto dumpster, revolting in every respect.
I've been to Gaza because I worked for a grocery store in Ashqelon, and we used to deliver some produce from there. The cabbages and the cucumbers to be specific. They were awful. Nobody would buy that stuff. My understanding was though that this must've been some coverup for buying weed or similar. I was too low on the totem-pole for this info to be shared with me. But, even if it was weed, it wouldn't be coming from Gaza! Lol. It'd be coming from Sinai, transiting Gaza.
> Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.
What does this have to do with cancelling work permits? Nobody owes Gazans work permits to begin with. That was a humanitarian measure to try and get these people to see the light. No sane Israeli wants to employ Gazans, but the government tried to encourage this cross-border employment in hopes to sooth the tensions. Guess that didn't work well. In Hebrew, the expression "Arab work" is similar in spirit to "Chinese quality" in English. If your house is falling apart months after renovation because the workers stole concrete, painted over spots that should've been removed prior to painting, put the breaker room under the leaking sink -- that would be described as "Arab work" (even if not performed by Arabs).
This results from the almost ubiquitous attitude among Gazans employed in Israel, where they'd do as little and as bad of work as possible, just to stick it up to people who hired them. Kind of similar to how black slaves sabotaged their work for white masters in the US etc. Except Gazans aren't slaves. They were given these jobs as a means to help them accumulate wealth and possibly develop some better understanding of their neighbors...
> After almost two years, there are approximately 11 500 civilians killed in Ukraine,
Again, you are pulling your numbers out of your rear. Mariupol alone suffered close to 30K civilian casualties. But Ukrainian reporting is honest, unlike that from Gaza. Ukraine doesn't have the means to count their dead. And they don't disguise their projections, even though they might be very close to reality. Unless they can actually find the body and establish the cause of death, they don't report it as death.
Also, Ukraine can fight and it protects its own citizens. And it has a very good reason: Russians will not hesitate to torture and abuse its population. Gazans cannot fight. Their strategy is to bleed on the enemy, and they go cry to the international community about how bad their enemy had beaten them. Also, Israelis don't torture the enemy, at least not systematically the way Russians do. And I say this because I served half a year in Israeli military prison in Tzrifin. It's not a five-star hotel, but if I were in a fight against Israel, and my situation looked dire, I'd go to the prison again. It sucks, but it's livable. Also, in my first month in Tzrifin I was in the "alef" division (that's the place for the soldiers who want to return to service and generally obey the orders etc.). Alef would be sometimes sent on the guard duty to Makhaneh 16, which is the military prison for the terrorists. At least was at the time. And, yes, it's a prison, it sucks, but it's nothing like Russian prisons...
In a similar situation, but against Russia: I wouldn't hesitate to shoot myself. The depravity and torture performed systematically by Russians is on a completely different level.
I didn't say that refusing work permits constitutes collective punishment. The mass destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including, again, all hospitals, high schools, university, most schools, kindergarten etc. constitute collective punishment in a form that is a clear crime under the Geneva conventions. See the ICJ finding of plausible genocide if you want to see this from actual international law judges, not some rando on HN.
Thanks for the lesson in anti-Arab racism among common Israelis though. And for confirming that Gaza was already a miserable ghetto that no one would want to live in under the "benevolent" Israeli occupation.
Anyways, here's another example, which was in the news right now. Dutch Muslims attacked Israeli soccer fans. This is an example of collective punishment because people who probably have nothing to do with what's going on in Gaza have been beaten, ran over by cars etc. in a fit of collective punishment.
And while this is definitely a crime, it's not a war crime, because it wasn't committed by soldiers and the Netherlands and Israel aren't at war.
In contrast, Israel is at war with Gaza, and all of the actions I am discussing are official military and government actions. Cutting off the supply of power and water, cutting off food and medicine, deliberately bombing civilian infrastructure: these are all explicit actions taken by Israel as retaliation against the civilians of Gaza in a form of collective punishment, as their leaders gleefully proclaim internally. And they constitute undeniable war crimes because of this.
Hopefully in time the ICJ will receive enough support from the EU to actually prosecute this obvious violation, though my hopes are slim: the pressure from the USA to shield Israel from international law is immense.
But later you demonstrate that you have no effing clue, not even the basic outline of what can possibly qualify to be a war crime. And this was the whole point: you don't understand what the words you are so eager to use mean.
Now, while people at ICJ aren't impartial in this case, they aren't as dumb. So, this is why, for example, they only charged Netanyahu and Gallant with war crimes. Even though, for example, Smotrich would be a lot more fitting their obviously politically-motivated narrative. And the reason for this? -- A technicality! Only a military person can commit a war crime. Netanyahu and Gallant are military, and that's why they are on the file, while Smotrich or any other minister isn't (and couldn't possibly be, because that'd be just too much to laugh at).
So, you saying "government actions [...] constitute undeniable war crimes". Is just an example of brain rot. You literally don't understand what a war crime is. A civilian, no matter how ruthless, no matter the extent of their actions, cannot technically commit a war crime. It's impossible by definition, in the same way how triangular squares aren't possible. War crimes have "war" in the names specifically to separate them from other kinds of crimes based on the criteria that they are committed by military. That's the whole point of the term.
And, similarly to how you have no clue about the language you use, you have no clue as to what happens on the ground in Gaza, who's responsible for what kind of bad stuff, the extent of it etc. You are just regurgitating the talking points you've learnt from people who you feel politically aligned with, but you have no practical way and no motivation to figure out the true state of events. And, you'll continue to believe whatever makes you feel more comfortable with the group of people you want to be associated with, no matter what anyone from outside that group would tell you. So, convincing you is pointless. You need to at least be ready to try to figure out why people might disagree with you, but you are still miles away from there.
And in relation to who is biased or basing their views on some obscure and highly biased sources: it's probably the side of the conversation who is denying what, again, every single international organization who has sent people in Gaza is saying. There is absolutely no debate from any credible source that what is happening in Gaza is wanton destruction on Israel's part.
People set a database to track those, given sheer amount: https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-databas...
Kind of different from a popular government that prepares for years and executes a massacre
You have quotes from Yoav Gallant (then Minister of defense) like "I am saying here to the citizens of Lebanon, I already see the citizens in Gaza walking with white flags along the coast... If Hezbollah makes mistakes of this kind, the ones who will pay the price are first of all the citizens of Lebanon. What we are doing in Gaza, we know how to do in Beirut.".
You have quotes from Isaac Herzog, President, like “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could’ve risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime.” .
The ones from Netanyahu are somewhat more metaphorical/veiled, but for example "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible", which is a reference to a passage in Deuteronomy where the Israelites are instructed by their god to "blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven".
While all of these people are extremists, they are also in charge of the country.
It says that if Hezballah chooses to fight the same way Hamas is fighting (i.e. by hiding behind civilians, occupying civilian infrastructure) then the civilian death are going to be high. This warning is very much warranted because that's exactly how Hezballah fights (by putting their ammo stockpiles in civilian infrastructure, by launching rockets from civilian areas etc.) I.e. in other words, it's saying to Hezballah that if they think that hiding behind civilians will give them any kind of tactical advantage, they may forget about that.
Imagine what outcry there would be if Iran came out and said the same thing, warning the civilians of Israel to distance themselves from the IDF, lest they become collateral damage.
It is a threat, alright, but it's only realistic to say that if Hezballah is where it is, then these citizens of Lebanon are held hostages by Hezballah, so they shouldn't have any illusions about what is going to happen.
But no, it's not Israel who is going to kill them. It's Hezballah. Metaphorically, Israel is the train coming to the platform, while Hezballah is the guy who pushes the other guy on the tracks as the train approaches. Citizens of Lebanon being killed in this way have to thank Hezballa for their fate. This is the point of the message.
In the trolley problem, the IDF chose to direct the trolley towards the Lebanese citizens in order to spare the Israeli citizens, and this is what it's telling them. Hezballa is the guys pushing the trolley.
> Imagine what outcry there would be if Iran
Iran are scumbags who say plenty of much worse stuff on regular basis. Nobody would notice this particular statement because that'd be just Tuesday by Iranian standards. There'd be no outcry because people get used to the way things are, even if things are bad.
Because it makes it a threat against the civilian population of a country.
> But no, it's not Israel who is going to kill them. It's Hezballah. Metaphorically, Israel is the train coming to the platform, while Hezballah is the guy who pushes the other guy on the tracks as the train approaches. Citizens of Lebanon being killed in this way have to thank Hezballa for their fate. This is the point of the message.
This is a completely silly argument. The people bombing you are the people killing you. That they claim to have some higher purpose is irrelevant. Hezbollah at best presents a minor threat to civilians in Israel, claiming that they are an existential threat that would justify scorching the civilian population of an entire country is ludicrous.
Let's also not forget that Hezbollah itself was formed as a defense force trying (and eventually succeeding) to drive out the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon. So, by your own logic (that I don't share), we should say that it's "actually" Israel who is responsible for all of the deaths that Hezbollah caused, since Hezbollah's formation is a consequence of Israel's previous attack on Lebanon. It's like a trolley problem: Hezbollah chose to direct the trolley at Israeli soldiers and citizens in order to free the Lebanese tied to the tracks - but it was the IDF pushing that trolley in the first place.
Wow.
I'm all for sitting back and watching the leopards eat US faces, I do like a little schadenfreude, but other parts of the world are going to be negatively affected too as is well documented.
We kinda need them to keep Russia from going haywire
Here's something I did about his PAC data collection https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41148139
Here's about Trump targeted ads https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41887642
— Aristotle, Politics
The man thinks for a moment and then says : "I've seen a lot of trouble in my life, most of which never happened".
We can all now think of a million ways in which Trump will be a disaster.
I predict that bad as he will be, most of what we now worry about will not happen.
The reality was that Trump's unpredictability and Machiavellian approach to diplomacy put a chill on many of America's global rivals.
With the Abraham Accords, Trump brought the Middle East a step closer to stability. And despite some rhetorical silliness with North Korea, the situation on the Korean peninsula was more stable under Trump than it became under Biden. Regarding Russia, I feel Russia waited for the election of Biden (a decrepit, predictable leader on the World stage) before invading Ukraine.
Regarding Russia, I may be wrong, but I think Putin's judgement of the situation was so insular, based purely on everyone agreeing everything would go just fine and no one thinking for one second about what might go wrong and what to do if it did, that Putin's assessment of the situation was not meaningful.
https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-20...
There was a blip with the sweep though which is also interesting - https://polymarket.com/event/balance-of-power-2024-election?...
They were wrong by about 3 points nationally, which is a normal error.
Anything else would have been surprising.
Are student exchanges still a thing? Maybe we need more of that.
I live there, happy to discuss if there's interest!
Once there I realised it's an amazing place. Lovely people. Peaceful and quiet. Good rule of law and stability combined with kindness (you can trust the police here.) High tech. Beautiful nature. Very clean air. Lots of forest. Big enough to have a big city; small-town living if you want.
It's very business-friendly and I started a company here. Then, married an Estonian, so I guess I'm staying here now :)
I think the biggest barrier for young Americans is getting through the paperwork. The EU doesn't make it easy to immigrate (legally). You generally need an offer of employment in hand.
Same with Brits moving post Brexit vote, finding the German environment difficult to do business in.
Really, Europe needs to be able to capitalise on whatever amount of talent flight from the US happens, instead of … whatever the fuck they are doing currently.
Harris avoided any conversation that wasn’t heavily edited.
He’s old, it’s not unexpected. I think he got a huge pass with Biden being in office, which was in retrospect a bad decision.
He should have moved aside far, far sooner.
* tried to remove trump from the ballot on Colorado * triple digit amount of filings from the justice department against a political opponent * refuse to remove rfk junior from the ballot
Democracy and rule of law like... covering up the mental decline of a sitting president, foreign leaders lying to the American public saying Joe Biden is fine, only for him to finally expose himself so badly live on TV they jettison the man off the 2024 ticket while leaving him in office? Then imposing a candidate by fiat?
January 6th was absolutely a constitutional crisis, but it lasted less than a day. The cover-up of Biden's mental state was a multi-year constitutional crisis that still has not been fully acknowledged.
When there are two competing harms you fall back to things like who is going to put more money in my pocket. This is 100% the dem's fault.
This is not dems leadership fault. Many of the complaints that "oh they didnt do X or Y outreach" for example, are just strange, given that people OUTSIDE of America were well aware of Dem policies.
Hell, the Dems ditched their candidate, to put forward a better candidate, against all conventional wisdom. A bold and honestly decent move.
They communicated through word and action, and it still made no difference.
(You can't talk for all of Europe.)
Even Boris Johnson didn't mange all that mess.
This will send the wrong signal to Putin, and prove his model of acquiring buffer areas around Russia actually works - next on the list are the Baltics, and Moldova perhaps.
I'm going to be in the trenches as soon as they get ideas about Finland - and you do not want that.
We have no business relying on the US anymore. They are too far gone. Their political rhethorics are polluted by Russian propaganda. (Just look at the rest of the comments here...)
It's time to get busy defending ourselves. Time for a war effort that doesn't involve merely wearing flag pins or doing cute street protests.
We need to be funding our own defence. We need to be sending actual troops in Ukraine, not just weapons. No more of this sidelines bullshit.
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, signed by Belarus, Khazakstan, Ukraine, Russia, the US, and the UK, obliging respect for signatories' borders and sovereignty, territorial integrity, economic security… is also what put Ukraine into the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
And what happens when Russia invades again after a few years with a revitalized military?
Regards, an European.
(Serious question, not a European)
https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/10/11/frances-emergen...
- declining GDP
- higher (st?) energy prices across the board
- dependency on the US for energy and defense
- unelected EU government
Example: I heard the leader of the West Coast Vintage Computer Club remark, recently "Well, the problem is the Department of Education! We need to get rid of that!"
We really do need a rebuild of the Civilian Conservation Corp, which built out massive infrastructure in the US. Not Potemkim style infra like ghost cities, but infra that is needed and useful. Bridges, dams, solar and wind, dikes, etc. Paired with effective economic and trade policy and you get a golden age for a few decades.
People contributing to the economy and building infrastructure results in a lot of knock on benefits.
I am simply unsurprised by the result. It was obvious for a long time that he had a good chance of winning and appealed to a lot of people. The result is likely going to show him winning the electoral college and the popular vote. Sounds like democracy doing its thing.
As an apolitical person, I've been pretty down and worried about the near future for the last 15-20 years in this post-truth society. The more science and data we have, the more we throw away the rational and retreat into our own emotional blind spots and dark psychological hang-ups. Across the board.
But this too shall pass.
It seems like it absolutely is the US's problem, albeit indirectly. If Russia gets the outcome it wants in Ukraine, they'll have access to rich mineral deposits, vast quantities of grain, and nuclear power, boosting their economy and their status as a rival world power to the US. It will signal to Putin that he can be aggressive towards other neighbouring countries with little pushback. The war has resulted in a growing alliance between Russia, Iran and North Korea which is altering global military power dynamics and not in the US's favour. Also, China is watching what's happening with eagle eyes to determine whether to invade Taiwan, which would definitely escalate the US's engagement.
- Wisconsin
This scheme was in at least 7 states, but focused on Georgia. Although the government was already out looking for a repeat of it, Trump's illegal dealings seem to have been actually effective this time (at least for now, legal challenges in some states are apparently already being filed).
Trump repeatedly discussed via Truth Social and via multiple speeches and interviews that he was planning on doing it again, and had things in place to do it again. Trump also has multiple legal hurdles (a convicted 34 time felon, and facing another 54) that he still has to deal with.
We have no clue if he's been elected President, we don't know if he can serve (the issue with the disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment was never handled; the Supreme Court merely ruled that they can't keep him off the ballot, a very narrow ruling), and we don't know if he is going to be serving from a prison cell (since he cannot pardon himself).
What I don't get is why there are so many pro-Trump/anti-American puppet accounts on HN, especially ones that essentially claim Harris lost because shes a woman and/or because her message was one of facts, inclusion, and moving forwards instead of feelings, exclusion, and moving backwards.
She "lost" because people are bigoted, racist, and self-sabotaging and Trump resonates with them. She also "lost" because some states seem to have been lost by merely thousands of votes, and I know for a fucking fact some Democrats did not vote this year because she wasn't a 100% perfect ticks-all-the-boxes candidate for them; somehow Trump being convicted of being a rapist and also the ongoing issue with him having had sex with a 13 year old in 1994 wasn't enough for them.
If Trump becomes the revenge quest protagonist he claims he wants to be, every single Democrat that didn't vote this year, you may not deserve this, but you certainly did this to yourself (and by extension, to all of us).
I'd also like to thank dang for his hard work, I've been seeing a lot of the outright insane comments become dead, and I appreciate that.
> I've been seeing a lot of the outright insane comments
I've seen a few myself!
In that time, the DOJ announced that they are withdrawing the legal case against him and his participation in leading an insurrection against the government on January 6th. Unfortunately, this means many questions will forever remain unanswered; in a system of law, not one of justice, it only matters if you are convicted of a crime.
He may, in the end, get away with it.
As for naked hatred? Sure. If you're a sexist and/or a racist, and you don't register as a Republican and claim to be a Democrat, yeah, I ain't a fan of you. Else, whatever, go enjoy your Constitutional rights and make sure everyone else also has theirs, anything else you do isn't my business.
It deeply concerns me from a human rights perspective and also on a personal security level because I live near Taiwan.
I've also felt the impact of disinformation and conspiration theories spreading from the US to my country and I fear it's only going to get worse.
Examples?
What should concern you is your singular belief in propaganda that powerful entities care about human rights over their own interests.
For me, living amidst riots and have friends/family caught up in war zones has swiftly altered my views. There's goodness no doubt, but the powers that be, once they breach, won't be mucking about.
That means a new plant starting up every 3 days. Any slower and it's not enough. This was data from a couple of years ago as well. We're never going to get close, even if Elon himself is modern jesus.
I can't find the source, but it was in a video presentation by Kevin Anderson, a senior research fellow at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
400 nuclear plants isn't actually that many in terms of numbers, but constructing them is an enormous task.
I'd imagine most people can see past origins and skin colors, especially when it's such a shaky argument. You don't support someone just because their mom were born in your country 70 years ago
She hasn't really embraced that, although being raised by her indian mother and presumably closer to her than her Jamaican father, she hasn't her visited her ancestral village or come in her official capacity or been part of any major India - US initiatives.
Indians like diaspora who actually embrace their identity, there is comparable example with Rishi Sunak, his achievements was celebrated because he made the effort to connect, although Indians(in India) would disapprove of his and Tory policies around immigration.
Biden and his administration, meanwhile, just conveniently ignored the whole country. He only visited because he had to for the G20 summit, and talks were lackluster.
Looking at how the incentive structures are laid out, it's clear there's no incentive to be honest to normal people. They need the advertising dollars to exist, and we are suppose to trust big pharma's enormous advertising budget doesn't impact the business decisions at media companies? That's just big pharma, who else is playing the game?
There's no medical test to diagnose depression, all you can do is observe behavior and talk about it
Seeing bad behavior and lies over and over, decade after decade erodes trust and reveals the kind of people they are, if it was some radical group with no real power there would be less concern, but they have a tremendous amount of money and influence
They also shilled for Trump relentlessly, without pretense. But that's beside the point. The left should accept that they no longer represent the aspirations and priorities of the mainstream or even of ethnic minorities, and the right should stop with the underdog charade. They've swapped sides. Of course, neither side will make that admission anytime soon.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_media_endorsements_in_t...
Articles like these are predictable and a meme
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/05/presidential-election-newsp...
The bias is calling him an agent of russia, a fascist, a dictator, a nazi, and a threat to democracy for 8 years
It's calling him crazy about Hydroxychloroquine and then 6 months later saying the same thing
The bias is blatantly miss quoting him with what he said about Liz Cheney
The bias is only fact checking one candidate in a debate
The bias is associating a trump rally where Israeli flags were flying in MSG with a nazi rally in the 30s
The bias is suggesting that we are suppose to think he wants to put his daughter in a gas chamber who converted to judaism
Then there's the work of Robert Epstein: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Tes...
So who is saying you're supposed to think that, actually?
And you actually think they're important enough to pay any attention to?
It was just a bad strategy in every way: it reduced their odds of winning the election, and if they were right it won't matter because there will be no election. If they were wrong, then they burned a whole bunch of credibility pushing what turned out to be a conspiracy theory.
And if both parties are conspiracy theory parties, the moderate voter can't use that as a razor.
In any case we're entering the find out phase.
My point is not that they're wrong and Trump won't successfully end democracy (I think the odds are low but non-zero), my point is that the strategy blew up in the DNC's faces and should have been identified as a terrible plan from the start.
Being a Cassandra is not a winning playbook. Being able to say "I told you so" is small comfort, and that's the package they chose when they decided to make themselves look crazy to the electorate. If they believed democracy to be in danger the correct move was to nominate an electable candidate last year, not wait until Biden turned out to be unelectable and then start screaming about the end of democracy.
It's not very good messaging at its core. You can't say something is an existential crisis, and then spend 4 years doing absolutely nothing about that crisis other than to say "vote for me again so that won't happen this time."
You mean like passing "The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022"? That was literally written to support democracy and prevent another Jan 6.
Obviously you can't write legislation to stop Trump winning democratically while still supporting democracy.
Dems have at least shown they're the party of supporting real democracy.
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/1139951463/electoral-count-ac...
1. Impeachment 2. Congressional Acts 3. Independent action from the Department of Justice 4. Individual states attempted to get him off their ballots for treason
How about you describe what they should have done?
This is a lie.
> I guess now we'll all get to see if the dire warnings were at all founded in reality
So, if he was lying or telling the truth?
> If they were wrong, then they burned a whole bunch of credibility pushing what turned out to be a conspiracy theory.
No they didn't. Republicans run the same claims every election and they win off it.
> the moderate voter can't use that as a razor.
Any informed voter would now Kamala offered more then "this line about democracy ending." Anyone who thinks this was "all she could offer as a reason to vote for her," you are really just saying "I was not informed."
There. All is said. No need for further debate.
Is there a reason why this has been glossed over? I thought that would surely be a red line for many of his supporters.
To me this all feels like a far fetched tv drama became reality. It goes beyond any human understanding.
I didn't vote for Trump but these are the fundamental truths the democrats keep on missing. This is what Americans care about.
When you blather on about the other guy being Hitler instead of presenting real policy that people want, people are just gonna ignore you.
Democrats got their chance the last 4 years and instead of making the lives of U.S. Citizens better, they made it much worse, and shoved social justice issues down their throats that they didn’t want.
Cop on.
This sounds British. Are you American or British?
I think your view is also largely hyperbole. It is a nice vote winning narrative to suggest that democrats did nothing but shove social justice issues down people's throats, but like you, I'm not American and I suspect that is just as much hyperbole as "Trump is literally Hitler".
You're part of the division of hate that you seem like you're raging against, using messaging like that.
My guess is that the worries on democracy have nothing to do with regular Americans getting riled up when their candidate lost (jan 6), and more to do with the entire political machine coming down on Trump after his loss in an attempt to take his wealth and imprison him in politically motivated lawsuits with made up charges.
It does sound harsh, and it is. We (people on HN), tend to talk about both candidates as if it was some equal comparison.
However, this is adamantly not the case. Trump is not like any candidate America has voted for in living memmory. He is SO outside of bounds, that frankly we collectively fail to understand him, and have to substitute some "default republican" candidate in our minds to deal with it.
Even in your comment - "it was a critical mistake to turn up the rhetoric so hot", even you will agree that Trump is incredibly toxic and out there in his comments.
Yet, you will genuinely feel that Harris/dems turned up the rhetoric. Not just this, there are a million places where blame is placed at the feet of Dems, for things that Trump or the GOP has done.
Nothing the dems can do will make a difference, because the Republicans have the superior model. Republicans can focus entirely on psychology, without having to worry about being called out on it, because Trump is simply causing an overflow whenever anyone has to deal with him.
We all just end up "ignoring" whatever new incendiary thing he has done, and instead deal with the office/position of either "candidate" or "president", because those make sense.
The dire warnings are literally founded in documents that are going to be enacted, based on what people are actively building teams for and recruiting.
However, there is no measure of evidence, including action that has happened, that will move the needle. It simply wont, because its not what people care about.
Some group will go to Reddit, to console themselves, the other group will go to Fox and the Consvervative bubble to reassure themselves. They will be given the same info that sells, and then they will learn to ignore everything that causes cognitive dissonance.
The best thing Kamala could have done is to downplay that rhetoric and focus on issues. If she did that, I believe she wouldve won. But you can hardly blame her to go with the grain.
The 13 Keys to the White House model finally failed. I don't think it's because of the subjective keys, but rather the objective keys don't match what people actually believe about the world. Again, Democrats lost the marketing battle somehow.
Given all the buzz around Project 2025, thats certainly not perceptually true _even to democrats_.
If Trump really had less comprehensive policy positions, then why did the media go on for months about this 1000-page policy document?
You cant have your cake and eat it too.
Of course, Trump did distance himself from Project 2025, right? He clearly didn't like sharing the spotlight. How do we get to a situation where a candidate disavows knowledge of their presumptive policy paper, yet all the voters still believe that's his policy? Seems like an even more absurd example having your cake and eating it too.
> It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group, they don’t vote. And I’m explaining that to them. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote any more, I won’t need your vote any more, you can go back to not voting.
I hate Trump as much as anyone, but deliberately misconstruing every word he says is part of what cost Democrats the election. People saw through it.
People don't like being told "here is what was said, here is what was MEANT because you're not educated enough and can't possibly understand" did Harris zero favors.
I added my thoughts on why people would take that statement and infer some other meaning than his literal words, since those words are said as part of a broader context. This says nothing about the people who didn't do so.
So, you starting a comment with "No" but then not addressing any point I made is confusing to me.
We just saw a national rejection of progressive politicians. To the extent she screwed up, it was in having a numpty VP instead of Shapiro and declining to be more specific on policies that would offend the left wing of the base. We’ll probably see a midterm backlash, however, so the message isn’t “everyone tack right.”
The only leftwing policy she adopted was abortion. Otherwise, she ran on being tough on the border, upholding the 2nd amendment, and being an awesome cop. Her platform silently dumped policies like the death penalty.
Another was student loan modifications. This transferred wealth from non-college taxpayers to college graduates.
+ the fact that they had no brand power and marketing. Trump in a garbage truck is great marketing.
The example they gave is Trump in a garbage truck, but that's just one way in which Trump made himself enormously appealing to the non-elite.
The #1 exercise Democratic politicians should do over the next 4 years is to spend hours and hours and hours actually listening to working-class people in flyover country and trying to really understand them. They just don't get it yet.
What has any Democrat done fro me, the poor and suffering?
Give me a break. Obama Pulled a Lucy with Medicare for all and I hate him for it.
A specific example for this particular comment would be ideal, as even their reply doesn't illuminate the value of mentioning Obama despite referring to it and attempting to justify it.
I brought up Obama's actions because it was just the ongoing legacy of neoliberalism that started under Clinton. They thought they would win elections by "going to the middle", and this is what happened.
Obama was also campaigning for Harris.
The Democrats are now the part of war and corporations and I was just done with it all.
So you voted Green, or Libertarian?
Because if it was Trump, I have bad news on all that stuff, including healthcare…
That is a very good point
Is it conceivable that Republicans will be any better?
The hold big business has on the mechanisms of state in your country, that is the problem IMO
Yes, there's still work to be done, but the real inflamers of the nation are the mainstream media. Luckily they're slowly going away, and uniting figures like Musk, Rogan, etc are taking their place.
Also, he overwhelmingly wins with hispanic men (55-45). He is walking away with hispanics overall in many swing states. Black men are now 25% in his favor. Basically every single minority margin has shifted towards president trump (Including women). At this rate he will succesfully unite the country in a few more years as the remaining stragglers come over to see common sense.
Such a uniter, that South African emerald mine owner.
I'm glad the great uniters of Musk and Rogan can take the reins in delivering high-quality information to our nation. Maybe in a few years, we will all agree on which conspiracy theories we should all believe.
One man's conspiracist is another man's freedom fighters. You can't honestly tell me that mainstream outlets were free of conspiracies the last few years? Remember Russia?
I guess there isn't a problem.
I certainly didn't mention Rogan—I'm aware of his existence, but I've actually never heard him speak nor seen any transcripts of anything he's said. But trying to minimize the flood of absolute obvious shit that comes from right-wing outlets by choosing to point to Rogan specifically is a bit telling.
Anyone and everyone should be called out for lies they manufacture or spread. This includes lies on the left, lest you think I'm granting one side a pass.
Biden (and Harris) have been no more "inclusive" of other political positions than Trump was.
That's all changed since he's spent a considerable amount of time removing anyone who disagrees with him, threatening those who would dare to, installing people who will do what he wants including the judges who have granted him total immunity which he didn't have before. I think we can expect things this time to be very different.
Remember the children in cages?
Remember that a crook will cultivate your trust and lower your defenses before pulling a fast one on you?
> It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group, they don’t vote. And I’m explaining that to them. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote any more, I won’t need your vote any more, you can go back to not voting.
It was stupid phrasing and might have been a Freudian slip, but his explanation also makes sense. "The country is on the brink of {insert terrible fears here}, but we'll fix it up this term and you won't have to worry about it for a while." The man isn't known for his well-thought-out speeches, his entire schtick is speaking off the cuff, and most voters don't hold that against him.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/dona...
What do the people who are voting get?
I'd guess they get a government that via the Supreme court, gerrymandering, voter suppression, cowed media, doesn't represent their democratic interests.
Which is a bad thing.
There's abortion votes that passed the other day at state levels that will not be put into practice because Republicans don't want to.
What are some other perspectives or predictions regarding how things will go under this current Trump admin; namely foreign policy, global stability, and school system reform?
Does he really intend to do the things he says he will or it just fun rhetoric for the base?
I'd say if it doesn't happen he failed to deliver on an election promise.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-tells-christians-they...
https://apnews.com/general-news-domestic-news-domestic-news-...
I despise Trump, but it's really disheartening to see how the elite doesn't realize that they actually lost the election in part because they lost credibility by fighting dirty. The ends do not justify the means, and the means were deliberate distortions, out of context quotes, and politically-motivated prosecutions.
I held my nose and voted KH because I think Trump actually managed to be even worse, but I can hardly fault other voters for deciding that the Democrats had it coming to them after all the intentional distortions.
If Trump wants to stay in office after this term is finished, all that matters are what the voters think. The supreme court will likely side with him and find an interpretation of the constitution that makes it work. But even if they don't, so what? The court doesn't have an army. Even if they did, if the voters want a king, that is what they will get. The republic is a reflection of our collective will and we can destroy it if we so choose.
> "in four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote."
One can reasonably interpret that as meaning that in the next 4 years, Trump and his party are going to fix the country so much and so well that Christians won't have to go out to vote next time.
I think there are reasons to have arrived at that place (Jan 6th), but this quote is not evidence for it unless wildly misinterpreted.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/dona...
You know, the people who see him as a threat to democracy are not just putting words in his mouth. Maybe they just listen to what he says, and believe him. Is that unreasonable?
How about the innumerable times he claimed the election was rigged despite lacking any evidence to support it? Does denying that free and fair elections exist not count pretty specifically as being a threat to democracy?
I totally get that he has an artful way of making alarming statements over and over, but doing it with just a hint of humor, so that his supporters can claim it was all just a joke. In your view, at what point do we get to take a politician at their word?
Bullshit. I'm as anti-Trump as they come, but I don't let that blind me to reality. What he meant is obvious to anyone who isn't already looking for proof of their preconceived ideas.
I'm not even arguing that he's not a major threat to democracy—I think he is! I disagree that that quote is useful as evidence of that fact, and I disagree with the tactic that the left intentionally adopted of twisting the truth to make a point. People saw through that tactic and it contributed to Trump's victory.
The facts about Trump are scary enough, there was no need to twist his words.
Makes me feel like I'm on crazy pills that this guy was electable after this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_memos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_ph...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempts_to_overturn_the_2020_...
I’m not trying to be flippant, that’s genuinely the answer to your question. Trump is literally being dramatic and funny by putting it like that. And you’re taking the bait and missing the joke.
I know I sound like the enemy and I dislike including this paragraph: But keep in mind, I can’t stand Donald Trump and didn’t vote for him.
Here is the Full quote so everyone can see it. He even explains in the end what he means.
> "And again, Christians: Get out and vote! Just this time. You won't have to do it anymore! Four more years, you know what? It'll be fixed, it'll be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians, I love you Christians, I'm not Christian, I love you, get out, you gotta get and vote. In four years you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not gonna have to vote."
From Snopes:
Which is it?
That's not how language works. There's a whole field of linguistics called pragmatics that is about how context contributes to meaning [0].
You're taking a few seconds of his words, joining them to all of your priors, and interpreting them in that context.
His original listeners were taking his words in the context of the whole speech, joining them to their priors, and interpreting them in that context.
It's entirely expected that your interpretation would be different than theirs given that disconnect, and the most reliable way to interpret meaning is to look at who the audience was and how they would have interpreted it, because the speaker chose their words for that context, not for yours.
> It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group, they don’t vote. And I’m explaining that to them. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote any more, I won’t need your vote any more, you can go back to not voting.
Basically "the country is screwed up right now because ${reasons}, if you get out and vote I'll fix it for you for good and you can go back to not voting again". It's more or less the same line that politicians say every election to try to motivate the less-likely-voters in their base, just said in Trump's classic meandering way and with explicit permission to vote only this once if you want.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/dona...
But you kinda skipped past what I was asking. How and what do those voters think he was going to fix for good? And do they perceive themselves as being politically inactive except for just this once?
It sounds like you're just giving him a pass because hey, all politicians lie to get people to vote. At that point, why do we even care what a politician says, whether we agree with them or not?
It does not even matter than there was no rigging, no illegals voting, no shenanigans. The truth has never been an effective counter to rhetoric, I get that. But it's an entirely plausible explanation for what a supporter would think.
But after yesterday, maybe we will all agree together than the elections are rigged? ;-). You guys can't put that genie back in the bottle. Everyone thinks it's totally cool until the other side uses it right back.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/19/trum...
he has vowed to be dictator on day one
https://apnews.com/article/trump-hannity-dictator-authoritar...
On February 27th-the Reichstag in Berlin was set on fire. 4 weeks before, Hitler was appointed to chancellor. Hitler placed an urgency regulation to ban all political activities. He destroyed democracy in one month. Trump can now do it one day.
he is definitely signaling something, whether it will come true or not is another question.
It's not guaranteed, no, and I sincerely doubt we are going to see Trump literally cancel elections, but it's a very reasonable assumption that they are going to do what they've said they'll do and tried to do: install judges that will swing things their ways, suppress voters who don't support them, punish anyone who opposes them, inspire and promote political violence against anyone who opposes them, and gerrymander as much as possible. That's enough to functionally end US democracy if they do it well.
That's not some wild prediction or unlikely outcome, it's the logical continuation of their previous actions. Someone attempting something they tried before isn't unexpected. He actively tried to subvert democracy and the public have rewarded him, why would he not?
That's the key observation.
Here is evidence he told the protestors to be peaceful: https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1346912780700577792
He never said "Storm the Capitol!!" or anything like that.
The logical path here is for red states to cancel elections and appoint electors to send in January 2029. The feds cannot do it themselves, but they do not need to.
The elections clause of the constitution does not apply to presidential elections, and all the constitution says about that is that the states may choose how to appoint electors, as long as it all happens on the same day.
All due respect, I'm curious as to what these signs actually are for Trump. Everything I've seen and heard has been horrifyingly taken out of context -- "dictator on day one" and "you won't need to vote in four years" and "he'll prosecute his political enemies", or exaggerated past the point of recognition, like "he tried to steal an election" or "he wants to put journalists in jail".
Under the Biden administration, we have seen actual criminal charges against Trump. Not theoretical, not threats, not innuendo, but actual criminal charges for trivial administrative offenses. We have seen extensive media collaboration with the administration (and the opposition when Trump was in office) in an attempt to distort Trump's words to portray him as being dangerous.
I do not agree that the US, under Harris or Trump, is at any risk of becoming an authoritarian nation. The "signs" here from both sides are all imaginary trivial things and political rhetoric. But if the watchword is "any signs" then I've got to say that I don't see how you can vote for anyone but Trump.
My forlorn hope is that people who think that Trump represents a threat of authoritarian backsliding can, in four years, revisit their assumptions and realize that the markers they have chosen to represent that threat are all wrong. They're just incorrect. Update your priors.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/19/trum...
he has vowed to be dictator on day one
https://apnews.com/article/trump-hannity-dictator-authoritar...
On February 27th-the Reichstag in Berlin was set on fire. 4 weeks before, Hitler was appointed to chancellor. Hitler placed an urgency regulation to ban all political activities. He destroyed democracy in one month. Trump can now do it one day.
he is definitely signaling something, whether it will come true or not is another question.
You will have your banana elections for your banana Republic all right.
I agree, however, most people separate one from the other sparingly.
People complain about people not hating Trump on this board. Ostensibly forgetting that some people here are very rich.
[1] https://www.fool.com/retirement/2024/05/27/heres-how-many-mi...
That's just my personal opinion and prediction. I hope I'm wrong but in any case it makes no sense to discuss it now. We'll have to wait 2 years or so and see.
It's just too easy to pretend it is not your fault if your society, the one that you are building with your neighbours, ended up giving you bad choices.
Now that the man made a choice, what do you think will happen next time? This election just demonstrated that lying and using fear and hatred is working very well. Do you think that someone "normal" will invest in this knowing they will lose for sure?
Daniel Boorstin observed the Kennedy administration and predicted in 1963 that it was just a matter of time before TV stars would dominate conventional politics.
Plus he is spineless, lying, rapist.. well, sure it is a kind of a charisma. One fitting for some video game villain.
I do remember that debate with Kamala were Trump came across as unhinged with that "eating cats and dogs" thing but I think one reason why he might have won was revealed in Harris's waffling around the issue of climate change where her answer was "drill baby drill", pandering to the Pennsylvania market.
People who want to see climate action are discouraged by this but people who want "drill baby drill" don't believe she in sincere and think that she is pandering. So talking that way she just loses people she doesn't win them.
When you observe a system like that it’s reasonable to ask if you can improve the system. Imagine this was a football game and not politics. It would be reasonable to talk about how we can make the football league more interesting.
It’s the man’s fault because We Live in a Society? Maybe you ought to evoke the Butterfly Effect as well, it’s all connected. The butterfly in Africa is probably also complicit in this Trump win.
The Donor Class decided that this was the two options you had. I hope that I don’t have to explain that the Democrats and Republicans are not grassroots, democratic institutions.
Trump is the candidate of the reactionary petite bourgeoisie.[1] These are not part of the Donor Class but they have enough power to, when times are “bad” for the lamestream candidates, elbow in their candidate.
[1] The mainstream media likes to say that he is the “working class candidate” without any seeming basis in reality
After a quick lookup, it seems like roughly 10% of Americans own a small business. (I'm assuming a relatively large portion is a side-hustle.) I don't know that I would say they have enough power (by themselves) to select a candidate.
Where’s your refutation? “I don’t know that I would say”… okay.
You think 10% is too small? What percentage of the country is the Donor Class?
My refutation about the “donor class” stems from the fact that Trump raised relatively little money compared to his rivals in 2016 yet still won. If the donor class wielded all the power, that couldn’t happen. “Big money” actively supported his opponents in the primaries. I don’t know the stats for this year, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if a similar dynamic happened.
I already told you to google it.
> My refutation about the “donor class” stems from the fact that Trump raised relatively little money compared to his rivals in 2016 yet still won. If the donor class wielded all the power, that couldn’t happen.
?
We’ve been over this. They don’t wield all the power.
You didn't, but you did take the weak position of saying your definition is "whatever" is defined elsewhere. I tried to be generous and expand it to a larger group than you suggested because I don't think the size of the "petite bourgeoisie" is large enough to define an election. You seemed to balk at that definition, so we're left back with an unsubstantiated argument that sole proprietors and artisans select the candidates but you didn't explain why such a small group would be able to wield that amount of power.
>They don’t wield all the power.
Nobody is claiming they wield all the power. I do think they have more influence than the "petite bourgeoisie", but also that it's more complicated than whomever gets the most money wins. You also seem to think influence only means votes.
My refutation statement was related to the OP that said the donor class determines the candidates, which is the original point. You seemed determined to shoehorn Marxism into the discussion. Unfortunately, your claim doesn't seem to hold water, unless you redefine the terminology you’re using.
Counterpoint: R's perceive (sometimes not incorrectly) that lying is a "both sides" thing, and it's indisputable that the D's ran largely on fear/hatred this time (which clearly did not get the D voterbase out where it counted).
Lying is a politician thing. Anyone who thinks that any one politician or political party has a monopoly on lying is deluding themselves. Trump lies through his teeth, Biden lies through his teeth, Obama did, Bush did, Clinton did, etc. Honest politicians simply do not exist.
And to be clear I think we should absolutely criticize our politicians for it. What I object to is this framing like only one particular politician is a liar. Bullshit, they all are liars to the same degree.
There are plenty of theories of what happened. For example, Harris did target the center and the not-convinced-by-Trump republicans a lot, which is probably what alienated her voter base more than saying something that was already said during Biden election and did not alienate them.
I really doubt you can seriously pretend that the Democrats would have done better without their share of lying. Maybe yes, but maybe no, and concluding one of the two is just as valid as the any other conclusion. One may can even argue that they did not lie enough, as the lies on the Republican side did helped them a lot (unless we consider that republican voters are intrinsically more morally bankrupted than the democrat ones, and that republican voters like lies while democrat voters don't).
As for the fear/hatred, it's a funny thing. If you put one liar and one honest person in the same room, one will say "the other one is the liar" and the other one will say ... "the other one is the liar". It's funny that if you put someone who want to use fear and hatred for their own profit and someone who don't, the first one will say "if you vote for my opponent, it will be very dangerous because their are pushing for fear and hatred" and the second one will say the same.
All I heard from anyone left leaning (on this site or otherwise) in the last year is that we have to stop Trump because he's going to literally destroy democracy. That, too, is using fear and hatred. Don't act like only one political faction does it. We are trapped in a vortex of shit where both sides are using fear and hatred, and we need to criticize everyone for it.
You are making it even clearer to demonstrate that all is reduced to framing "you are either democrat or republican".
The man is entirely responsible for this situation he finds himself in unfortunately. Also, if the man selected feces the first time round, and suffered for it, then maybe the deadly poisonous bark is the only other logical choice, if only to stop the torture?
EDIT: MY guess is Biden is smarter than he lets on, and secretly supports Trump / hates the dems for what they did to him. I wouldn't be surprised if that comment was purposeful. It seemed a bit contrived.
Did Jill Biden wear a red dress to the polls on accident? Do we credit the idea that she, the First Lady, didn't look in the mirror and think about the political implications of primary colors in the USA?
It is a peculiar lack of votes, isn't it?
What it seems to have done is convinced a subset of Kamala voters that they didn’t need to go and stand in a 2 hour queue to vote because it was already won, which of course now we know to be very untrue.
People assume that the bot armies are only pumping out pro-Trump propaganda. However, they only need to convince the Dems not to vote.
That's still historically high
It's not really "what America wants". You are drastically overestimating how democratic the US system is if you think the fact that a very narrow majority picked one of the preselected candidates means that candidate has any kind of broad popular mandate.
It's probably what a double-digit percentage of Americans want, but certainly not the majority, and only barely the majority preferred it over the other extremely unpopular candidate.
And all-in-all, that's fair play. The GOP and DNC are private entities and they get to choose who they put forward as a candidate in the manner they choose. Voting in presidential primaries is fairly recent. The DNC picked Harris, as is their right.
I held my nose as I voted for Biden in the primary, but I don't even recall anybody else being on the ballot. I was elated that he stepped down and endorsed his VP.
Admittedly, it sets a scary precedent, I certainly won't disagree. But setting the implications aside, was it really the wrong choice? Did Biden really fare better than Harris in the general? I certainly don't think he would have. I think Trump's margin of victory would have been even higher against Biden.
Probably not, but does it matter? Biden was also not chosen in anything resembling a democratic way. US political primaries are not democratic.
The general population being presented a choice between two options that were selected by two ultra-partisan entrenched entities is not democracy.
To have a system somewhat resembling democracy you would have to either (1) open primaries to everyone regardless of party registration with no control by partisan organizations over who gets nominated or supported (which would mostly defeat the point of having political parties at all) or (2) have a more proportional system where it is meaningfully possible to create new political parties that gain a nonzero share of representation.
Primaries where party members vote seems very much more democratic, than having the party elite decide in some meeting.
It only seems that way to you because it's practically impossible for there to be more than two parties with significant representation. If anyone could start a party and gain support, you would have enough parties to choose from that it's much more likely you'd find one who matches your beliefs, regardless of how they choose their candidates.
An important thing to keep in mind in American politics is the massive amount of voter suppression. Not voting doesn't inherently mean you were lazy or apathetic. It may well mean your vote was suppressed by any of a hundred tactics. Closing polling places in blue regions, requiring in-person voting on-the-day, restricting early voting, restricting vote by mail, failing at sending people ballots, spuriously dropping voter registrations...
Exactly three states don't offer early voting to all voters [1] and none of those three were battleground states.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-early-voting-mail-ballot-st...
It does not explain however why almost all the swing states aligned with Trump this time.
I've voted Dem all my life (since 1988), and while my preferred candidate has won several of those races, my actual VOTE never helped them because I voted in Mississippi (88), Alabama (92), and Texas (96 & thereafter) -- all of which have been GOP strongholds for a long, long time. (Texas, for example, hasn't gone for the Democrats since Carter v. Ford in 1976.)
It's easy to imagine that a feeling of despair about the efficacy of one's vote would drive someone to stay home.
That's true, but I don't think Democrats had a feeling of despair before the results came in. It seems like most Democrats are shocked that the election turned out this way.
Personally, I realized last week that I had no reliable way to know what to expect. There was ample data to support predicting any outcome.
Blue voters in states that are absolutely going Blue may also stay home.
The electoral college - and the Senate - were intended to explicitly put power in the hands of the states, as equals, without regard for population. The House of Representatives was intended to be the counterbalancing voice of the People.
I can totally understand disagreeing with the concept, but to say it's stupid tells me you likely don't understand its purpose and how it fits into the overall system.
US States are not meaningful cultural units -- people in Philadelphia are much more like people in NYC than either are like those of the rural hinterlands of their respective states.
> The US is a federal system. It serves the interests of the states, not the People.
Indeed, and that's a bad system that makes no sense in 2024. Disliking it doesn't mean one doesn't understand how it came to be this way.
(Tangentially related aside: plenty of federal systems have much fairer systems for election to federal office than the US does. For example Germany.)
Maybe it's my lack of sleep from staying until until 7am watching election news, but I honestly can't see how this is applicable. My comment was explicit about why the system was set up that way.
> US States are not meaningful cultural units
I very strongly disagree.
The next time you meet a Texan, ask them if they think they are "meaningfully" culturally distinct from Californians.
Texas is a cherry-picked example of one of the states with the strongest specific identities. Most states are not like this.
Ask someone from Phoenix to explain how they are meaningfully different from someone from Denver and they will struggle.
Texas is the one that comes to mind as the strongest, but it's far from unique in that regard. Louisiana pops to mind next. Other examples of states with very strong cultural identities off the top of my head: Oregon, Utah, Tennessee, Florida, West Virginia, Michigan, Maine, Vermont, New York, Illinois... you get the idea.
I'd say about the half the states have a strong, unique identity. The remainder are similar to their neighbors but the farther you travel the more apparent the differences.
Well, yes. The differentiation is both dumb and well-reasoned, depending on your ethics.
However at least germany and austria have meaningfully distinct languages or dialects and many centuries more to marinade in their differences. Texan and californian aren't distinct enough to produce nationalities that are clearly distinct (aside from arbitrary pride!) and they regularly swap populations sufficient enough to provide cultural osmosis that keeps the two cultures tied together.
Having lived in both places I can confidently say "not as much as either party would like to think". There are far, far, far more similarities than differences, especially because the population of either place doesn't tend to interact with their natural environment. Both simply have strong sense of nationalistic pride (however dumb this is).
The U.N. doesn't directly elect the general secretary.
Not saying it's great, but maybe it's not too dissimilar from some other systems?
It’s not how most of the actually well-run parliamentary systems work, because those have elements of proportional representation.
If DJT ends up with a final popular vote advantage, though, it'll be the first time that a Republican has taken the Oval Office AND the popular vote since 1988.
2016 had the DNC force a terrible candidate down our throats because the establishment was more concerned in measuring offices in the West Wing that listening to voters. It was a spectacular failure and we got Trump as a result. The DNC did their utmost to ensure people didn't get a voice in the process.
2020 was unique for many reasons. Many, including me, said choosing Biden was a bad idea. He was even then so old that the DNC was giving up the incumbents advantage in 2024, partly driven by Biden alluding to him not wanting to run for re-election. Did the people choose Biden? Well, not really. Jim Clyburn did [1].
People didn't choose Biden's "bearhug strategy". Biden, against all the cries not to, decided to seek re-election despite showing signs of cognitive decline a year ago. So there was no real primary process, no chance for the people to have a voice. The people also didn't choose for the DNC to burn to the ground young voter support (eg college protest response), the Arab-American vote (ie Gaza) or the Latino vote (with an immigration policy to the right of Ronald Reagan).
If the DNC had listened to the voters, Bernie Sanders would've handily beat Donald Trump in 2016 and we wouldn't be here.
Yet...
If I lived in a swing state, I would probably vote.
That's not "America" for two reasons: "the majority of the population who were eligible to vote, and actually decided to vote" is not the same thing as "Americans", and choosing which option you prefer in a binary choice (where you have no influence on the two options) does not mean you like the choice you made.
The fact is America would be happy with no one. But we got who America wanted -- even if its not who I wanted.
Because they're not. It's virtually impossible to start a meaningful new party in the US due to the FPTP system, so you are stuck with whoever the two legacy parties decide to nominate according to their own rules.
Compare Germany: nine parties represented in the federal parliament, a proportional system ensuring that getting 50%+1 of the vote doesn't mean you get 100% of the power, and relative ease of splitting and fusing parties making it so that previously unrepresented political views can easily gain representation (e.g. the socially conservative Russophilic left-wing party "BSW" recently splitting from the standard left-wing party).
> Who else beats Trump?
Most people selected out of the telephone directory at random could have beaten Trump. No, this probably doesn't include Pete Buttigieg.
> The fact is America would be happy with no one. But we got who America wanted
These two sentences contradict each other.
I just see no appetite for a 3rd party, much less nine in the US. It was amazing how people would complain that Harris provided no details about her plans, when 15 minutes on her website provided more detail than most people would care for (although certainly not at the level of detail any wonk would want). Do you think people are really going investigate nine candidates?
> Most people selected out of the telephone directory at random could have beaten Trump. No, this probably doesn't include Pete Buttigieg.
Given that every Republican can't seem to beat him there must be some odd bias in the phone books you have.
> These two sentences contradict each other.
They don't. We got who we wanted -- we just aren't happy with it. And wouldn't be happy with anyone. No contradiction.
* CDU - center-right, active everywhere except Bavaria
* CSU - permanent ally of CDU, active only in Bavaria
* SDP - center-left
* Greens - center, ecology
* FDP - pro-business, what Europeans call "liberal" and Americans would call something like "fiscally conservative" or "moderate libertarian"
* AfD - right-wing populist, socially conservative, anti-immigration (closest analogue to Trump)
* die Linke - Left (originally evolved from the totalitarian ruling party in East Germany, has since become much more moderate and accepted democracy)
* BSW - Left on economic issues, conservative on social/cultural issues
* SSW - Tiny regional party, irrelevant at the national level
The current governing coalition is SPD - Greens - FDP although there are severe tensions between them currently and they will probably break up soon.
I think it's relatively easy for most people to understand at this level of detail, and if the US had a working democratic system where getting X% of the vote roughly translates to getting X% of the influence and power, we probably would have at least the following:
* "Trump party" - Right-wing populist, skeptical or openly hostile to democratic norms
* anti-Trump right - Bush, etc.
* Centrist mainstream liberals - Biden, etc.
* Left-wing - Bernie, AOC, etc. Possibly split into two parties, one that cares more about economic issues and one that cares more about progressive social issues.
* Maybe some random minor parties like "Texas independence party" or similar.
In such a system I really doubt that the "Trump party" would get more than 30% of the vote.
So I think it's unfair to say that "Americans wanted Trump" when under a fairer political system he would not come close to a majority.
> Given that every Republican can't seem to beat him there must be some odd bias in the phone books you have.
No Republican has ever run against Trump in a fair democratic election. They ran against him in the partisan Republican primary, whose voters do not come close to reflecting "Americans" in general. I very strongly suspect that e.g. Nikki Haley could have beaten Trump in a head-to-head nationwide general election.
Primaries have low turnout: Most elections are between two unpopular candidates who are chosen from vocal political minorities.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Republican_Party_presiden..., there were ~22 million voters in the Republican presidential primary, ~17 million voted for Trump. (~17 million voted in the democratic primary)
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia..., there were ~139 million voters in the main election.
So roughly 12% of voters got Trump to be the candidate. What if the other 72% showed up to the primaries and got different candidates?
If true, this is not really a democratic country and should stop lecturing the world about democracy.
COVID response seems like the biggest mistake, but that was a never before seen global pandemic, and it isn't clear to me that anyone else in office could have handled it differently.
it's a very fucking slippery slope and everyone is too concerned with "but muh gas prices!" to think critically about the macro situation.
I think every little life saved is an absolute victory, and many people (as demonstrated) share my sentiment.
Abortion is not a religious issue, it is an ethical issue. Some religious people are fine with abortion, some atheists oppose it.
> If you disagree with abortion that is fine, but your opinion/stance should not be projected on everyone else in the country. The problem with this situation is religious folks are so brainwashed they can't even comprehend a situation where "live and let live" is possible, because you all think that your way is right and everyone else is wrong.
This argument is a completely unworkable argument and I have no idea why people think it will hold water. Abortion opponents believe that abortion is literal murder. You can't simply go "it's fine if you don't want to murder, but you shouldn't stop other people from murdering". I understand you disagree with the idea that abortion is murder, but you need to take that idea on directly rather than trying to paper it over and say "you need to live and let live".
Says you. I see nothing ethically wrong with abortion.
Virtually every species of animal is known to kill their own young from time to time. Why should humans be held to a different standard? The earth is already overpopulated as-is.
Every person I have interacted with in nearly half a century who has expressed support for the criminalization of all or most abortions believes in the existence of souls and believes that human fetuses have souls and that it's the presence of a soul that is the basis for personhood and a right to life. Please direct me to a real person who supports the criminalization of all or most abortions and who does not believe in souls because I want them to explain to me why an unintelligent human fetus that lacks a fully formed central nervous system and any activity in its cerebral cortex has personhood and a right to life while a pig does not.
By the way, it's funny how people who say that opposition to abortion has nothing to do with religion are always religious:
Wow. Talk about projection. Roe, a case where the woman involved later admitted to lying about being raped, that case, the repeal of that case moves the opinion/stance back to the states, where it should be.
> they can't even comprehend a situation where "live and let live" is possible
Funny someone in the "I NEED TO KILL MY BABY" crowd would write something like this. You people really have zero self awareness.
If you really do believe this you are an outlier, and 99% of the population do not agree with you and would not want you setting any policy.
Am I missing something?
- Forcibly separating children from parents, with no plan to reunite them. There are still children missing, who were spirited off $deity-knows-where. If criminals do it, we call it kidnapping and people-trafficking, but this was official government policy
- Let's focus on those kids, who were locked up in prisons, had any medication they were on confiscated, and we're not just talking teenagers here, some of those kids were under 5.
- The conditions they were held in would make a grown man weep, held in iron cages, kids defecating and vomiting in the heat. Staff wouldn't help small children, it was left to other children to try and keep the infants well.
- Routine use of pyschotropic drugs to act as "chemical straitjackets" on older children, so they would be usefully docile while being caged like animals
- Sexual assault on these unresisting, drugged children. That's rape. Of children - usually girls but not always. Under government supervision.
Personally I don't support the rape of children, but more than half the voting public seem to be "just fine" with it.
They're not just saying they're "just fine" with it. They are enthusiastically voting for it.
We have to come to terms with the fact that very clear, consistent campaign themes of cruelty and selfishness won over a majority of voters. Deep, country-wide introspection is needed.
It's the only way it all makes sense. I don't think that all those voters who vote for Trump and Putin and Erdogan and all the other autocrats think they'll have a better life. But they know that all those other people are going to suffer, and it makes them feel a bit better.
The most dangerous man (or woman) is someone who thinks they have nothing to lose.
People feel dispair, and therefore they vote for people who will make others suffer.
... But in the conventional sense of increasing state autonomy, no. :p
Until then, it's a state's rights issue.
Alas, if/when the Republican party gathers enough power to finally pass a federal abortion ban (or an indirect Fugitive Pregnancy Act) that "principle" will vanish into the memory-hole with all the rest. The minority who sincerely held the belief will be sidelined, again.
Another manifestation would be if state personnel and courts get conscripted into enforcing federal immigration policies.
There's literally dozens of people who worked for Trump during his previous administration that have come out against him since then.
Personally, when I read about the alternate elector scheme and the attempt to prevent Pence from certifying the 2020 election, that was sufficient to convince me that Trump poses a real risk.
[1] https://time.com/6972022/donald-trump-transcript-2024-electi...
Trump fired national security officials in charge of handling pandemics. Trump repeatedly claimed that covid was not a problem, and that it wouldn't come to the US, and then that it would disappear by April, and then easter, and so forth. He fought the CDC, NIAID. As we know now, he also sent test machines to Putin for his personal use while they were in short supply in the United States.
This pandemic was rightfully and widely compared to the 1920 pandemic, as well as the SARS scare in the 00s. We are very, very lucky that the SARS scare got a lot of the legwork done in advance on the RNA vaccines.
It's hard to imagine any United States candidate handling it worse.
Attempted disassembly of EPA and FDA in attempts to raise employment in exchange for consumer safety.
Sale of federal lands that were preserves for future generations.
Picking a Supreme Court based on politics rather than law.
Preferring Totalitarian regimes when it came to diplomacy and snubbing our allies.
Trying to use the FBI as his personal attack dogs.
At least off the top of my head. Last term his goal was to undo a hundred years of progress as a constitutional progress.
This term? I have no clue what his goals are. I just hope he lives because the VP Vance appears to support that project 2025.
As someone who is part of the non-USA world, I'm fine with it.
> He says on a US made phone and computer
All phones and ~all computers are made in China.
> using a currency tightly correlated to the US dollar
Many currencies in the world are strong and independent of the US dollar.
> in a country which imports most of its services from the US
[citation needed]. What sort of services? I’ve never heard of offshoring to the US, but I have heard of offshoring to places like India.
> speaking English out of necessity not just courtesy
Well, those guys from England surely have done a lot of conquering.
My computers are running Windows, sure, but my most used software would be Firefox, built by people from all over the world. Second place would probably belong to JetBrains Rider, made by a company headquartered in Czechia.
5/12
Promoting hatred & violence, justifying fraud as being normal, neglecting environmental damage for our children to solve, has won.
if the federal government wasn't so large but rather a looser organization such as the EU, then each state would be a sovereign entity and the presidency wouldn't matter so much. then you would have 50 or more choices (50x2=100)
It just feels better to live here for many reasons (safety, culture, nature, walkability, quality of restaurants and clubs and overall you don’t see many poor people around). Europe has economic issues but the quality of life is very high most of the time.
There are wait time problems in US too but maybe not as common.
If you have health insurance it's not going to bankrupt you.
I know plenty of people without a job and are poor in the US... guess what? They get free healthcare. They don't pay a penny. You can even give birth and not pay a penny out of pocket if you are on Medical.
The US has a large population on free healthcare. California actually has quite a large "socialist" state. Lots of things are free or near free for people people. Similar to Canada or Europe. No one talks about it though.
Make below 40k or whatever the threshold is and you get Medical in California. It's basically free healthcare.
And if you have a job.. well then you have health insurance, and you won't go bankrupt because of it. And you get much better quality healthcare than in Canada.
I'm making well over six figures a year (and not in the Bay Area, for reference) in my 30s and have top quality healthcare supplied by my job. The last time I talked to a doctor, I had to schedule an appointment six months out just for a routine examination and blood work. The labs I reached out to for getting sleep studies done (which, for reference, I would've needed to pay out of pocket entirely) said they'd need similarly as long.
Can you convince me that our healthcare system is not broken? Ostensibly the person in your argument that is supposed to benefit the most from it?
The conclusion of that experiment was that half of the country would gladly go to war to force the other half to stay as one country. I don't think that has changed. Especially given that the primary political divisions aren't between state lines; They are rural and urban divisions.
So, I'm right and the other party is wrong? No questions asked.
A more useful thing would be: WHY did people vote for Trump? They are surely intentional as you observe. What gave them this intention? Was it DEI? Did they like Trump's hair?
I share exhibit A: a BBC interview with an "undecided voter". Excerpt:
"I have no freaking clue man. It's so hard. When I voted for Trump, it came down to who would I trust with my kid alone and it wasn't [President Joe] Biden.
I'm still undecided.
All of my family is voting for Kamala and my friends are voting for Trump.
I'm going to vote for one of them. I've got no idea which one.
I'm still super-duper undecided. I think I'm leaning toward Kamala over Trump, if I think about who I would trust alone in a room with my daughter.
I'm going to make up my mind when I go into the ballot booth."
I share this, not to lampoon this human being, but to correct any misconceptions that human voters always have a rational model of who to vote for, and why.
Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from some other reality.
They come from American parents, American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses, American universities, and they’re elected by American citizens.
This is the best we can do, folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces. Garbage in…garbage out.
If you have selfish, ignorant citizens…if you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re gunna get selfish, ignorant leaders. And term limits ain’t gunna do ya any good. You’re just gunna wind up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans [leaders].
So, maybe…maybe…maybe it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here. Like…the public. Yeah, the public sucks! That’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: “The public sucks! Fuck hope! Fuck hope!”
- George CarlinThe man was basically finished politically when he left office and not very far from actually ending up in jail. Most were pretty sure of that.
So what happened?
Not only did that not come to pass, he's the next U.S. president now. Out of all the detractors, who is still laughing now?
- Forced vaccine mandates that have workers fired from their jobs if they do not comply even though it was obvious at the time that getting a covid vaccine does not prevent the spread of the virus(9/2021).
- Huge payouts to illegal immigrants on the order of $450k per family(11/2021)
- Homelessness at record high (12% increase from 2022 to 2023).
- Botched rollout from Afghanistan that humiliated the US and led to 13 US service members deaths and lasting shame for the country on the world stage. (8/2021)
- Housing affordability hits record low in 2023 - 98.2 (only 15% of homes for sale are affordable to the average household. (2023)
- Biden shocks the nation and viewers and says behind a blood red facade that republicans are a threat to democracy (9/2022)
- Colorado and a few other Dem states try to get Trump taken off the ballot in what is deemed a affront to any reasonable democracy and is swatted down 9-0 by a united supreme court (12/2023)
- Legal warfare with anyone who disagrees with the sitting administration see Eric Adams Dem NYC mayor who complains about immigrants "will destroy NYC"(9/2023) and then the FBI then launches a full scale investigation into his administration(9/2024). Also see a myriad of accusations against Trump by Alvin Bragg who when running for office is running on the platform of "getting Trump"(12/2021). This is stuff that is typically seen in a totalitarian regime and it has shocked Americans from both political spectrums.
We saw firsthand what a Trump presidency was like. He wasn’t Hitler, despite what many in the political establishment would like you to believe. We saw firsthand what a Harris vice presidency was like, and for most Americans, it did not inspire confidence in a Harris presidency. More broadly, the Democratic Party has become weirdly fixated on policies that are more in tune with Reddit than with the average American, and that’s a losing strategy.
I've had a great 4 years, economically speaking, and I'm worried about the future a lot right now just in case Trump actually gets the competence to go along with his rhetoric. Hopefully he will be just as ineffectual as he was in his last term.
Trump is just...he says a lot of bad stuff, but he doesn't seem to be in Hitler's realm of competence. My beef with Trump is his simple non-understanding of economics, wanting to tariff everyone and expecting that they won't tariff us back, and wanting to juice interest rates by politicizing the fed, and then claiming that this will somehow reduce inflation, rather than cause it to explode. Trump, in that regard, is more Gustav Stresemann than Hitler.
This is something that I don't understand coming from the Trump camp. Concerns about Trump are dismissed as unsubstantiated despite the fact fact that Mike Pence, Mike Esper, John Kelly, and Mark Milley have all called Trump a threat to US democracy. These are people who held positions of power in his first admin and they warned us that the second one would be worse. Maybe you could reasonably dismiss the opinion of one, but all four? When does the weight of the evidence tip the scales?
I think what's going on is that trump supporters don't quite take him literally on the details of what he says.
Now, as to whether Trump will or won't do more damage in this term, that really depends on whether this time the people around him will stop him or whether he will choose people who will be more loyal.
That's the problem. Lots of people who don't have any say in this are going to get hurt. Ukraine first. Possibly the Baltics next? And then there are things like climate change: Trump's going to "drill baby, drill" and basically defund anything to do with climate change.
It doesn't represent what 'America' wants. Elections are dispute resolution mechanisms so people can move forward and get something done, but the dispute remains the same today as it did on Monday.
On the other hand, do you think the world deserves that doctors like Jay Bhattacharya was blacklisted for simply raising questions about how school lockdowns might affect the nation's children.
I'm not so sure.
Strong-arming "The Good Ones" until they play along. Once that happens, the fight is won.
They want to undermine it All and make it irreversible. Utterly.
The USA is the economic and military hegemon and by a large margin too.
Without Thiel - there is no Vance.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
This, right here, has been the focal point of Dem supporters everywhere - doubling down on the name-calling.
I seriously doubt that more than half the voters are homophobic, misogynistic fascists, but calling them that only stops them from engaging, it doesn't magically cause them to rethink their position and switch their vote.
When it is the people governing them, that's a perfectly rational decision - why would someone who views me with contempt govern me fairly?
Conclusion: You cannot arrogantly call someone a drooling fucktard. But you can call someone garbage non-arrogantly while also being a convicted felon.
The MAGA snowflakes prefer the felon, their soft skin can't seem to withstand arrogance.
It should’ve been disqualifying when president publicly mocks and physically parodies disabled journalist instead of answering god damn questions.
Taking high road didn’t help in 2016, wouldn’t have helped now.
But this trend is obviously not only in USA. Some political groups and their voters don’t care what is said, and other political group must upstand the highest moral standards.
There are a few groups not there, and those won Trump the election, and Democrats has name called those groups. If Democrats didn't demonize those people then maybe Trump would have lost.
Who trump hasn’t insulted? billionaires[0] and saudis?
[0] though even Bezos is an exception.
Did Trump insult white men? You see Democrats say white men are the problem all the time, I never see Trump or his supporters say that.
Be serious. You might for some reason think that this is their underlying message, but they don't say this. They even chose an old white man as their nominee, for goodness' sake.
It is true that Americans are pretty proud of winning WWII, and label that as defeating fascism… but it is plainly obvious that this current political movement aims to implement exactly what we were fighting to prevent back then. I think this is the main reason it is seen as an insult- people that language implies betrayal of what a lot of Americans died fighting for.
I do not think you know what this word means.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42059721.)
2026 will be the USA's 250th anniversary, we'll put men on the moon for the first time in 50+ years, and we'll land a rocket on Mars. The Supreme Court is secured for decades, immigration reform will now be swift and bipartisan, and we're moving manufacturing back to the US, including 4nm chip manufacturing with TSMC, avoiding escalation with China on that front.
We are truly living in the best possible timeline, I'm literally so pumped and excited for the future of our country and world, and I'm ready to start building for the future!!!
I'm looking forward to how much more manufacturing across different industries that this admin brings back to the States, too!
I agree American manufacturing is important. I don't see how the Republicans voting records align with it.
Since 2005, the US has decreased carbon output by 17%, and China has increased by 93%. They emit 124% more Co2 annually than the US does.
American manufacturing is not the issue when it comes to carbon emissions, China is.
> 2026 will be the USA's 250th anniversary, we'll put men on the moon for the first time in 50+ years
lmao this is exactly everything that's wrong, we keep looking back at the real golden age and want to do things that are now meaningless to celebrate random anniversary numbers, just "because". Putting a man on the moon today won't have a fraction of the glitter it had back then, not even 1%
Look at the future, not the past
Of course, in a general sense, the GOP is the Democratic party on a time delay.
There are deep problems that partisan politics cannot fix, but perhaps it is time to begin taking third parties seriously and break away from the two-headed uniparty monopoly. Ranked-choice voting is one way to help this happen, but of course, the uniparty won't hear it.
If you disagree what are the examples?
If you're worried about a 'monopoly' on Call of Duty, then I guess it's great. Otherwise I sincerely don't understand why the tech community would be supporting the FTC policies of the past 4 years.
edit: acknowledging that I was wrong about this.
And it wouldn't have been flagged out of existence, see this post from 4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967
No 'pipe leaks'. No videos of counters covering up windows. No sudden last minute rule changes. It was... unremarkable and normal.
I think this is going to go down like the Kennedy - Nixon election where the allegations of fraud seemed made up at the time, but a few decades later, after we've calmed down about the candidates, we will uncover the truth. Whether it was enough to shift the 2020 election ... who knows, but the truth has the habit of coming out eventually.
I mean 20 million people sat at home? Really? That's an insane amount.
Other explanations could include things along the lines of unemployed people/people at home (COVID) having more time to get into politics. Or, this election cycle burning them out, or Gaza, or all of the above and more.
I was thinking more along the lines of, for me to believe the claims.
No prosecution would have been necessary outside the court of public opinion. I mean if there is fraud, prosecute it no matter who did it. But Trump hired an investigator for the news cycle, and the guy found nothing.
Mail-in voting favoring democrats is well known, and is why the Republican party vilifies it and and anything that may be biased toward Democrat votes.
But 4 years later? It's like making decisions when you're hungry versus the memory of hunger...
If the results remain roughly where they are now, then that is one important positive outcome.. and I would say exactly the same if the election had gone the other way.d
If it had been as close, or closer than last time, then who becomes presient is nearly random, as WP once wrote, and an enormous amount of drama would ensue. Which it might still do depending how tight the swing states are.
As it looks now it will be a solid win.
Another curious thing on both parties, when they lose they always ask "why did the other side win?" instead of trying to understand why their candidate lost.
And the pendulum keeps swinging.