It’s also the strategy the nation choice after the Civil War. And we saw how that turned out. Military bases named after Confederate traitors. Jim Crow. Entire generations dedicated to the Lost Cause.
Or even when we were drafting the Constitution. And leading to the 3/5th compromise, the Missouri compromise, Dred Scott, and finally the Civil War itself (which they blamed on the very people who had been compromising with them for a century).
And it’s led by almost the same exact group of people and their descendants. We’ve been treating them with kindness and respect and compromise since before the US was even an independent nation and hoping they reciprocate. Instead, they spit in our faces each time, and, like Charlie Brown and the football, we hope beyond hope that the next time, they’ll actually behave like decent human beings.
Having been reminded of Mary Trump’s ‘Mashed Potato Story’, I used Sora to make a couple of images of Trump as Mr. Potato Head. Now I’m trying to make the toy made up as Trump, but I’m not explaining it right. It keeps putting Trump’s face on it. What I want is a photorealistic image of the actual toy, with plastic accessories to make the actual toy look like trump.
Sure, why not? But who is discussing persuasion here? I’m talking about people who have stepped off the Trump train. I’m talking about peeling off the least committed people who voted for Trump, who very well may have voted against him in 2020. These people exist. Here’s a picture of them, from a Bloomberg article this week:
The decline in support among younger Trump voters is a fact. The stuff about manospheres is one of many explanations. I included it in the image to exemplify dubious explanations for confirmed facts.
Back to the topic. Imagine meeting John Newton in 1756, former slave trader, who would later write Amazing Grace in 1772. Some might say, “Fuck you John, go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.” I say it’s better to encourage someone who has taken the first meaningful step, larger than a baby step, of their own accord.
I say it is better to encourage people to fight slavery, after they have shown inclinations to do the same. It’s a controversial view, but I’m sticking to it.
Just as soon as the subject of this little tangent comes out in favor of trans rights, immigrant rights, the right to healthcare, or a whole host of other things Trump was and is unambiguously against, you might have a point. As it stands, what she has said is:
I completely regret my vote for Trump. He is playing games with our lives. What happened to less government? Why are the rich getting any tax breaks and we are paying more? Why are the companies involved in lawsuits against regular people being dropped? Why are we sidestepping the Constitution? I didn’t vote for all of this.
Because what the fuck else did she vote for? This isn’t a slaver who has come out against slavery, this is a slaver who is upset the Confederate government in Richmond is encroaching on states’ rights (as the confederacy historically did).
She’s a classic LEFP voter. There is no sign that she feels bad about voting to let the leopard loose on all those marginalized communities. She’s just upset the leopard is now eating her face.
That’s a shitty electoral strategy. Pure purity politics, pure virtue signaling.
You go to where the votes are. Trump grasps this: he will lie with abandon during election time. If fascism is a threat (it is), progressives need to take 2026 seriously, which means welcoming into the tent people that they disagree with. This isn’t politics 101, this is the sort of conceptualization taught in Kindergarten.
My claim was - wait for it - people change their mind. I don’t think that’s a particular stretch from the graph.
Agreed, whenever you show a relationship between 2 variables, there are typically a lot of possible causes and a lot of confounding factors. But that just says that statistics need to be interpreted judiciously, like any other piece of evidence.
That’s a graph of people who voted for Trump in 2024, by the way. Losing 25% of your support among them isn’t especially promising. Nor does it provide guarantees for Democrats. Trump’s trendline approval is 46%. He’s not popular. But his support has not collapsed.
You’re right. People really responded to Kamala Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney and her refusal to even acknowledge the concerns of some in her party over Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
That’s why she’s President today and this thread is a victory lap about how the fascists have all come around now that they see what a great job she’s doing running the country.
And thank gif for that, right? Can you imagine how completely fucked we’d all be if the Orange Man won again?
/s
But seriously, I don’t think you know what purity politics even is. This isn’t infighting between democrats who eat meat and democrats who think eating meet is immoral.
This is a woman who voted for Trump despite (maybe even because of) his homophobia, transphobia, racism, xenophobia, misogyny (the irony!) and so on, and is only upset now because…
the rich getting any tax breaks and we are paying more? Why are the companies involved in lawsuits against regular people being dropped? Why are we sidestepping the Constitution? I didn’t vote for all of this.
Again, not your metaphorical slaver who has come to recognize the immorality of slavery, but a fascist who is upset fascism isn’t benefiting her the way she thought it would.
Which is the attitude that got the Republicans taken over by fascists, and would do the same to the Democrats. And did, historically; the far right in the US takes over whichever party they are aligned with. It used to be the Democrats, now it’s the Republicans, and if they somehow switched again they’d just turn the Democrats back into their puppets.
You don’t fight fascism by inviting them in to take over.
Because of a sad reality that without their votes (once Dixiecrats, now MAGAs) it’s much harder to get majorities in Congress or the EC, as that clade is at least cohesive in voting with the understanding their continued existence itself depends on it.
Not even a proper fascist, just a “me, me, me,” voter, so if she could find someone who would do exactly the same things BUT with the only difference of benefitting HER and her kind and protecting them from harm, she would vote for him.
The democrats’ failure has been one of populism (or a lack thereof). Trying to attract conservatives by pedaling more of the same neoliberal economic policies while also watering down their position on civil rights so as to appear “less extreme” (thereby implicitly legitimizing the fascists’ position that civil rights for all is somehow an “extreme” position).
What I would prefer to see the Democratic Party do ahead of 2026 is tap into the populist desire for economic policies that favor workers over the wealthy… and do that without coming to meet disaffected Trump voters on social policy. Because fuck them.
You mean the “it’s the economy, stupid” approach that got Clinton into office? Sure, I could see that working. Keep hammering away at the economic inequality.
I would like gauze on his right ear (like I used in previous ones), but first I tried adding ‘tiny hands’ to the description, thinking that it would just put smaller hands on the image it had made, and came up with something completely different. So I think that’s as good as it can get.
Yeah; appealing to people’s self interest is a good tactic, and in this case even a moral and honest one. It’s just that the Democrats don’t want to, between their cowardice and being beholden to the wealthy class themselves.
That, and decades of not even trying to actually stand for anything has really atrophied their ability and willingness to do so.
Note that the poll the story reports on was conducted six months ago at the very beginning of Trump’s term, from February 3-16, 2025.
(Which is not to say that he hadn’t already done a bunch of terrible things at that point, like pardoning the mob of January 6th protesters and rioters that tried to overturn the 2020 election and announincing the shutdown of USAID.)
Anyway, this was before most of the tariff madness, eviscerating the federal workforce, and targeting all immigrants (not just violent criminals). Granted, most Republicans likely support all of these actions, but the consequences are only now to be felt—which is the whole point of this thread.
ETA: Which I now see you addressed in your follow-up post reporting on trends from February up through August.
Per the summary in your second link:
I have no words for these Republican supporters of Trump’s policies, despite many of these policies being a complete reversal and repudiation of the traditional planks of the GOP. I guess it remains to be seen if they realize what the consequences of this support will be.
