I wonder how much Cook dithered over that cheerful-looking exclamation mark | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much Cook dithered over that cheerful-looking exclamation mark

daringfireball.net

31 pointsLeoPanthera31 comments

Isn't it typical to refer to former presidents by the term President X, even once they leave office?

I thought so too, and as much as I appreciate Gruber (and I very much do) I think he is off base on this complaint.

I was frustrated earlier this week, watching UK coverage of the election, as US guests continually referred to an ex-PM of ours as "the Prime Minister". Whatever conventions the US has about ex-presidents, they do NOT apply to ex-PMs!

I'm afraid the Democratic party will learn absolutely nothing from this resounding defeat at the ballot box. Nothing at all...

Resounding defeat? They lost by 2% in a year when every incumbent in a Western democracy has lost, and lost by a lot more than 2%.

By that measure the Democrats did surprisingly well.

The stunning defeat was not isolated to just presidential politics (although that was a complete shutout by the numbers) - the entire country has been resoundingly swept by Republicans. There are only a handful of places that performed on-average or better for Democrats than previous campaigns - and there are many places that set historic-firsts by driving so hard into deep red.

You can break it down by location, culture, ethnicity, etc. Any way you want - and Republicans took massive gains at Democrat's expense.

It's really hard to call this anything other than a resounding defeat.

5-10% gains are not massive gains. They're small gains that look massive because so many districts are evenly balanced.

Ask the Tories in the UK what massive gains look like.

In an ideal world, what would you have them learn?

Gaslighting the population isn't a road to victory. People have eyes and see reality just fine on their own.

Dial down identity politics. Most people are put off by it, especially when taken to the extreme as has-been the past few years.

It's ok to disagree and/or hate policies of the opposition - but it's not ok to label opposition every *ist word you can think of. This pushes people away.

Stop trying to be "Kingmakers". Harris was anointed by the party's elite class and everyone was told to get in line. People don't respond to that well either.

Lastly - run an actually decent candidate FFS. Literally zero people wanted Harris as the candidate - but Democrats had no other choice but to vote for her in the election. This caused Democrats to suppress their own electorate. Coupled with rhetoric such as "we're saving democracy" etc (see gaslighting above), and the results speak for themselves.

#3 has never seemed to harm the conservative parties at the polls. Mudslinging is an American tradition

As for #2, I don’t think democratic candidates are flirting with identity politics nearly as much as the loud voices of the left are or the loud voices of the right claim they are

I think your final statement touches on another larger issue within the Democratic Party - it's been pulled much closer to the extreme-left than most of it's constituents are actually comfortable with. This pull is because of these extremely loud voices - amplified by nearly all of the media. Democrats of a decade ago have found themselves nearly party-less.

The Democratic Party being called left is wrong. Calling them extreme-left is laughable. They are chasing Republicans right and throwing out a few scraps to the left. That stopped working this election.

They need to drop the silly identity politics and focus on winning back the working class, but they won't because they're compromised by corporate interests.

> I don’t think democratic candidates are flirting with identity politics...

Unfortunately Harris is saddled with that after being chosen by Biden because of her identity, as he admitted:

"I promised you [black leaders] a number of things. But very specifically, I said ... that I was going to pick a Black woman to be Vice President of the United States of America."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...

> It's ok to disagree and/or hate policies of the opposition - but it's not ok to label opposition every *ist word you can think of. This pushes people away.

But "Enemy of the People" is okay, I guess?

> Dial down identity politics.

The Republicans just spent like a billion dollars on anti-transgender ads. Identity politics clearly was a winning strategy.

They fought fire with fire and won. If the Democrats dropped identity politics that approach wouldn't work

If identity politics was a losing plan then it wouldn’t have worked. Clearly it works, just the Republicans are willing to spend more money on it.

I don't really understand how you can look at the massive failure this election and say that with a straight face. Identity politics is a goddamn failure. If the Democrats dropped that shit and focused on actually helping out the working class, Republicans couldn't mirror identity politics back at them. It only worked for Republicans because the Democrats chose a horseshit strategy in the first place.

> Identity politics is a goddamn failure.

> It only worked for Republicans

It’s a goddamn failure except for the fact that it worked. Okay. Definitely the definition of “horseshit strategy” is one where the side that pushes it hardest wins.

And the idea that it was a Republican strategy only in response to the Democrats is a joke—identity politics has been the cornerstone of Republican strategy my entire life. Complaining about black people, gay people, trans people, metrosexuals, childless cat ladies. Anyone they think they can get others to hate. It’s clear that it works for them, but don’t expect anyone to believe you when you pretend it’s not what they do.

Exactly. Those ads were highly effective because they prey upon people's prejudices -- unfortunately the more inhumane ones. The human mind is primarily a pattern-finder and prejudices are hard to unlearn once you learn them.

You know how many male latinos swung over to Trump the moment they saw that ad the 4th time? There was no escape from that. You can replay Jan 6th & 'they're eating the dogs' 10 times and it won't matter.

People swung over to Trump because they're sick of this shit and want change. He's offering change, bad though it may be. Neoliberalism was strongly repudiated this election, and now the Democrats have to actually swing left if they want to win again. Saying "you just think things are bad, but look at line go up" stopped working

Harris wasn't the most natural candidate perhaps and couldn't compare to a past president (and Apprentice show media celebrity) in terms of familiarity to voters, but what alternative candidate would you propose in her place?

Honestly, yes the defeat in retrospect was to be expected (to everyone but the pollsters maybe?) but Harris was no lightweight and it was reasonable to expect she could compete with a damaged (hey, the U.S. now has a felon president!) opponent who she defeated at the first & only debate. Had the election been held in August she'd probably have won, but give those trans-phobic tv ads time to sink in and male latinos would rather vote for the felon-man who had the presidential experience, and find a way to make his eggs a bit cheaper, along with the rest of inflation. Supposedly.

Harris was up against a lot of negativity and she wasn't well defined enough to find defense against it all. Trump, on the other hand, actively provided a defense against all the cases against him -- since fighting is all he has really. Even if he was losing and the defenses flawed -- even convicts in prison find women to wed them. Those prison brides share much of what we see in (some of the less practical) Trump voters.

You have a problem with “saving democracy“? Republicans were running on Save America.

The Republican party — and I cannot stress this enough — made a hateful rapist, felon, and Hitler-praising insurrectionist their president. There has to be a baseline of decency in society. This level of degeneracy simply cannot be shrugged off with a smile and a handshake.

That they should just say some brainless things, which people would like to hear, over and over again until they believe it. That they will magically "fix it" Preferrably at a slow monotonous tone. And that they should throw in between some racism, climate change and fraud downplaying. Fear enhancing is also a very good thing to take away from last events.

Maybe the democrats could put forward a Russian candidate to appeal to the "Better a Russian than a Democrat" crowd.

Failing that, at least talk about the people eating your pets.

The more likely outcome is that they will learn the wrong things...

> I wonder whether the latter four knowingly made the error of addressing former president and president-elect Trump as “President Trump”.

While he's correct here in a strict sense, in practice, it's common to address former presidents in that manner

https://emilypost.com/advice/addressing-a-former-president-o...

See the part about informal settings

I would say that this informal tradition has an implicit "emeritus" attached to it. That is, you're recognizing them as retired presidents who have passed on the torch. Donald Trump has done neither, and he is being recognized in these contexted not as president emeritus, but as soon-to-be-president. So naturally people would find this way of referring to him somewhat odd.

So... is nobody going to bring up the long-standing interpersonal relationship between Trump and Cook? Did we think something changed all of the sudden in this election?

Crazy how people actually expect Apple to be as liberal as their marketing suggests. But then again, people also believe Apple is as secure and green and repair-friendly as their ads suggest.

Long standing relationship? Trump didn’t even know his name and referred to him as Tim Apple.

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