Exactly what I think.
Good point. Or- we can call them names. I think that is not a wise position to take. Educate, not castigate.
We seem to have two positions here-
A- The issue of trans athletes in girls sports is a difficult and divisive one. Instead of passing laws, we should leave it up to the local groups.
B- Every one in A is a transphobe bigot!!!
I stongly disagree with B, and somewhat disagree with A.
Hyperbole and excluded middle. Again.
I hold a middle position. So what Middle do you think is there? And dont tell me my point B is Hyperbole-
If the Republican planks in Nebraska were tax cuts and cutting off vital medical care to Jews and not letting them use public bathrooms or hold certain jobs, would voting Republican in Nebraska be a bigoted thing to do?
Seems like a yes to me. I think someone who voted for a party with that platform would have to be pretty bigoted.
If they even know that’s the platform. “This is not what I voted for” keeps ringing in my ears.
…
But one thing that the debates here in SDMB have helped me with, is to remind myself that yes, there’s real people out there not that different from me, for whom what to me seems like an edge case, or fringe position, or “moral panic of the season” we can ride out, instead looks and smells and walks and quacks like a very real wedge to introduce momentum towards a truly existential threat. Doesn’t mean I can’t still have an opinion that a particular thing could be better addressed differently but I must respect and acknowledge how they live it.
I think a lot about a union training I went to, and the x-y axis approach to politics.
Map your building, they said. Figure out, best you can, where everyone in your school stands on the issues that are important. That’s your X axis: folks closer to you are on the left, folks with terrible positions are on the right.
Now figure out how influential people are. People with a lot of trust and influence are high on the Y axis, and those with little trust or influence are lower.
The goal is to move people toward one of two corners: the upper-left, for similar beliefs and high influence; and the lower-right, for different beliefs and low influence. You might take a persuadable person and try to nudge them closer to your beliefs (focusing on the high-influence folks first). You might take someone with similar beliefs and help them build their influence. You might take someone with different beliefs and high influence and try to remove their influence.
The goal here is to remove judgment and purity from the equation. You’re not evaluating people on whether they’re good or bad: you’re making a strategic plan to win.
In this scenario, I’m absolutely going to think of the Nebraska voter as voting for bigoted reasons. But I’m also not going to care much about why they’re voting. Is this someone who can be nudged toward my beliefs? If so, I’ll try to figure out what actions will nudge. Is this someone who can’t be nudged? If not, I’ll try to figure out what will best remove their influence.
Thanks! You said what I was trying to say better than I did.
Sounds like a great technique that can be applied in a lot of situation, not just politics. Thanks
I think one aspect is that you’re not necessarily considering people who are toward the center or on the right as the enemy, you’re just assessing where they are and how you can deal with them.
A lot of people around here are viewing this hypothetical small-town rural housewife as the enemy because she doesn’t agree with them right now. It’s a very binary way of looking at it, and one that I feel is more than likely counterproductive in terms of actually swaying her to actually change her mind, or even just clarify her thoughts on the subject.
Yeah–most of the time I don’t see any advantage in judging people’s morality. I’ll do it for deciding who I want to be friends with, and I might get pissed off and judge someone as a big old orange fascist just as a total hypothetical, but most of the time it’s not worth the effort. If I’m trying to accomplish something, taking a colder view is, IMO, helpful.
It’s also why I think that almost every MAGA person who has become reluctant or unsure should be welcomed. They did a lot of harm in the past, and I wish they hadn’t–but if I want them to stop doing harm going forward, swallowing my pride and welcoming them to the light side seems most effective to me.
Other thing I think about a lot? Clicker training. If you want a dog to do a trick, you don’t just reward the dog when it does the trick: you reward the dog every time it gets closer to doing the trick than it was before. This isn’t a model I much discuss with the political opposition, but I try to keep it in mind. It makes swallowing my bile a little more palatable.
And they’re not going anywhere. The only way to win this fight is in the hearts and minds of the population as a whole; the two parties are likely to go back and forth over time like they always do. (assuming the GOP doesn’t manage to permanently subvert the entire process. )
So we’ve got to figure out how to co-exist, and work on swaying them to our point of view, at least in a macro sense.
The issue I have, and continue to point out, is that a lot of this rhetoric is prioritizing that person.
The mistake is in assuming that, if we can just fight that person’s ignorance, they will vote Democratic. She likely does not even consider the trans issue to be all that important to how she votes. She is far more likely to be either a diehard Republican or someone who cares more about the “kitchen table” issues that directly affect her.
The way forward is not to keep compromising on trans issues, but to champion them, while also championing the things that matter to these people.
And the ones who will be pushed away by standing up for trans people? They weren’t gettable anyway. They aren’t the rural housewife with some misunderstandings.
The voter as a resource to be mined and exploited, rather than convinced or influenced? Yes that’s cold, but I have to admit, I see value in that.
I wouldn’t call it exploiting or mining, just being very intentional about who and how you go about trying to convince people and/or enhance/mitigate their influence.
I mean, if you’re in charge of fund raising for some non-profit, you don’t tailor your messages to the hoi polloi; you aim a lot of it at whoever gives you the most money as a group. Hell, little kids get this- they aim their Xmas gift messaging at the parent/grandparent/aunt/uncle who is most likely to get them the gifts they want.
Outstanding perspective, one that acknowledges the realpolitik approach needed to, you know, actually win elections.
Can someone post the videos of all of these crazy liberals and trans people screaming at Nebraskans that they’re bigots? Especially Democratic operatives – any evidence that high level Democrats are telling people they’re bigots? Because that seems like a strawman to me.
Now, sure, on this Board, which is obviously hugely influential, we don’t hesitate to call bigots bigots, so maybe that’s why the Democrats need to change course. It’s all our fault!
Here is newly released DNC post-mortem from the 2024 election.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5889120-dnc-2024-presidential-election-autopsy-report-release/
I googled- quite a few sites calling Frank a transphobe, and even more calling Newsom a transphobe. Ignoring what they actually did, and concentrating on one single (IMHO non-bigoted)) comment. Newsom trolled that idiot Kirk, and later clarified in that the issue is divisive and difficult- and making it clear he did NOT agree with Kirk. Frank was on his deathbed.
He was being interviewed by Jake Tapper for CNN on his deathbed. I don’t know why you’d think that the sad circumstance means his statements are above criticism. AFAICT there’s no reason to think he wasn’t in control of his faculties at the time.
There is a separate thread about that. Here is a link to a CNN story containing the actual text of the postmortem, with margin notes added by the DNC to point out how bad it sucks.
The Hill link you provided is IMO sanewashing this report. It contains many gross inaccuracies and reads to me very much as though it were written by ChatGTP.