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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Voters don’t take campaign platforms at face value, they view them through their experience. People in California aren’t experiencing Democrats actually fixing housing. But they are seeing large employers like Google post stuff like: “Google is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer.” (Google deleted that language from its website recently enough that it still shows up in the Google search results blurb.) And Democrat politicians are supportive of such efforts.

At the end of the day, the Biden administration built way more DEI departments than EV chargers. And Democrats own that.

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> Voters don’t take campaign platforms at face value

Huh. That sounds like validation of my original point that the Democratic Party has been "prioritizing housing, infrastructure and government services supporting people's economic activity of all kinds", so dkjaudyeqooe's suggestion that candidates/officeholders should do that seems ... idempotent at best.

Maybe people should pay attention to what candidates campaign on and the policy they enact instead of going off vibes and trigger phrases.

Certainly that would give candidates and officeholders more electoral incentives to produce policy that serves voters.

Statements on the websites of massive employers aren’t “vibes and trigger phrases.” They are disclosures of employment practices. And the term “affirmative action” directly conveys to whites and asians that, at Google and similar places, they’ll be treated differently than if they were black or hispanic. The majority of voters being white—and employment being a core concern of voters—that makes for an obviously salient issue.

And voters are correct to connect the employment practices they are seeing to Democrat policies. Democrats have interpreted civil rights laws to allow particular practices with respect to black and hispanic applicants that would be deemed illegal if applied to white applicants.

And of course, voters are entitled to weight platform points based on likelihood of achievement. They might put more weight on a “footnote” if they think the candidate will actually make that happen, and less weight on promises they think won’t transpire. Democrats who voted for DEI have gotten what they voted for. But the ones that voted for high speed rail in California have not.

How were they supportive? Specifically

> At the end of the day, the Biden administration built way more DEI departments than EV chargers

How?

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