Comment by whoknowsidont | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whoknowsidont | Hacker News Reader

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>but the truly damned are all the Americans who know and sense better but do not or cannot act properly.

MLK said it best: "the moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice"

And even now you have people that think showing up with clever signs around the downtown parks / public areas on the weekend when all the government offices are closed are somehow going to get their message across. It's not enough. It was never enough. It wasn't enough for Vietnam or Iraq. It's definitely not going to be enough now. Americans are going to have to choose to do some uncomfortable and maybe even risky things to demonstrate our disapproval.

Or we have to admit that for many of us, this is who we actually are as a country. It certainly is a good bit of the voting public. I don't think it's a mistake that in basically one generation we lied to the world about Iraq then elected a fascist twice. And at that point I don't think stern dissent is an effective or even morally correct course of action.

I’ve been in the get-out-the-vote space for 25 years, now. I’ve been politically active against gerrymandering nearly as long. My wife was tooth-and-nails in the redistricting fight (in Texas; Texas!) for ~10 years.

Here’s my hands-on experience: at least half the people you meet are defective, to a scary extent, functionally in terms of empathy. Probably two thirds have serious executive functioning deficits. That means they can neither understand the plight of their fellows; and, even if they could, they could not generalize their own situation into a policy to help everyone in the same situation.

EDIT: most people don’t vote. A disproportionate number that do are both empathetic, and high have high levels of executive functioning skills. The flip side of the coin are activated people who are missing one-or-the-other skills, but are voting out of some other errant ideology. I want to be clear that the distribution of voters is “both sides”: there are disgusting and enlightened voters on both sides of the spectrum. We’re all trapped in the box, together.

I grew up working class in Indiana, and can confirm. My in-laws were reeling after the 2016 election and they just couldn't understand how people could vote for Trump, basically. My answer was "you're polite, highly educated, upper middle class people, most people everywhere are not like you. That doesn't make them bad or less than, but they make bad decisions basically constantly. This is just one in a long stream of them."

I dunno. I think we need to can it with the PCness of “it doesn’t make them bad.”

It does. Constantly making bad decisions makes them bad. What it doesn’t do is make them any less entitled to all of their rights. Something their badness has paved way for robbing others of.

My FIL has been a conservative his whole life and has never voted. He immediately recognized the nazi talking points from Trump. Said Trump was going full Nazi. But it wasn’t enough to get him to register to vote and vote against a nazi

> MLK said it best: "the moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice"

Are you a moderate who has a better plan? I ask that sincerely, if I've given up its not because I prefer peace but because I know a losing battle when I see one. We don't have a charismatic leader like MLK. The democratic party is in shambles. They're afraid of fighting the tariffs and alienating the working class. There is no one in the party who is broadly likeable, who has any chance of bringing the voting public together. Voters on the left still cling to their own personal pet peeves and insist they will never vote for anyone who doesn't specifically address whatever they think is the _real_ problem.

The sad reality is that Trump's policies are still really popular and if people are unhappy they are only unhappy with the execution. You see that in this thread. People see the this news story and see it as an unfortunate side effect of a basically good policy. They think illegal immigration is hurting our economy, they think 'anchor babies' are people taking advantage of a loophole that should be closed.

They think this country suffers because of tariffs and maybe they think Trump got carried away but they still support the idea. They are sick of Ukraine and think it's time we walked away. They think DEI means a black women will be hired over a white man under any circumstances. They think DEI in schools means our kids are being taught that the US is full of horrible backwards racists and sexists who need liberal saviors to make it better. They think that government agencies are overpaid and over bloated and full of people who don't do anything but get a fat paycheck.

These beliefs cut across people of all genders, of all colors, of all ages, of all states and cities. We can't even blame the boomers anymore and insist the younger generations will save us. No one will save us.

When it comes to divisive issues such as DEI, a way to bridge the beliefs of both sides is to not engage with far side of either spectrum but rather deploy something that unite people like the European declaration of human rights. The far left would loose the ability to address past injustices, and the far right would have to agree with the enforcement of equal rights over personal belief, but the general concept has a very broad appeal to both left and right wing voters.

> Are you a moderate who has a better plan?

I wouldn't say I'm a moderate, but I do have a better plan: https://runforsomething.net/

> Are you a moderate who has a better plan?

stop supporting moderate politicians that appeal to no damn person. find someone with charisma like obama. there is no magical moderate voter that the dems keep hoping to appeal to. they already have been the center right party for decades now.

1) Obama was a moderate

2) Moderates do, in fact, have stronger appeal than leftists. It's empirically true. As evidence, see: literally just about every election where a leftist is on the ballot, with the possible exception of AOC who has Obama-tier charisma factor and also not-coincidentally has moderated her image a bit the past few years to the point where the most lefty leftists think she's a sellout.

People like Tester and Manchin overperformed in their deep-red states for a long, long time. People like Collins and Don Bacon on the other side overperform for the same reason.

The point of moderation for a Democrat is not picking up Republican votes, it's picking up votes from the 30% of the country that doesn't identify with either party, most of which are moderates.

Also, the black community is the core of the Democratic coalition, and they are pretty moderate politically, especially on social issues. Latinos are the same and that's part of the reason we've been losing them.

sorry i thought i was clear but yes obama was definitely a moderate but i meant find a progressive (with charisma like obama) that can inspire

> find someone with charisma like obama.

Obama was a moderate politician with massive charisma

correct. i was somewhat careless with my wording but i meant find someone with the massive charisma that obama has and is also a progressive.

> stop supporting moderate politicians that appeal to no damn person

I think you are right but I think half of democratic voters think the party has gone too left ( abortion, gender politics ) while half thinks it has gone too far right. The democratic party is trying to have it both ways and utterly failing, but in their defense I don't think fully embracing either side will be enough for them to win. The problem is largely the voters who absolutely refuse to compromise on their personal hill to die on. Republican voters will unite on anyone as long as they piss of the left.

> find someone with charisma like Obama

That person does not exist, or if they do they are too smart to support the shambling mess that is the democratic party.

I think the party is gambling that Trump makes such a hopeless mess of things that voters will have no choice but vote blue. I'm not sure they will win that gamble.

What did the US democratic party ever do that was considered too left wing? Not said or wishcast, what material thing did they implement that was too left wing on abortion?

Theoretically, abortion in the US used to be extremely liberal (in the original meaning of the word liberal).

Materially? No one wait week 22 for an abortion unless it's an emergency, considering the damage it does.

The percentage of childbirth death plus late stage abortion in the US is barely superior to the one in my country where abortions after weeks 18 needs to be argued by two doctors and a social worker in front of a judge. And that percentage is only superior because US have a very, very high childbirth death for a developed country.

Materially, Usians do less late stage abortion than other developed countries where those are way more restrictive. Because people love to talk about 'theorically' when they talk about other people body and choices, never about what really happens, and that bothers me greatly.

> What did the US democratic party ever do that was considered too left wing?

Jack shit probably but that doesn't mean right-leaning Democrats are going to vote for Bernie Sanders and cross their fingers that none of his proposals get enacted.

"But they never actually managed to accomplish those things they said they'd do that you don't like" is not a very convincing sales pitch.

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