I’m largely with chapachula on this one. Maybe my biggest disappointment in The Dope is the meme that every Republican is evil, racist, and/or stupid. This is just not true. I know a number of Trump voters for which none of those apply (although a few are low-information). Some of them give their time and money in ways that would make any liberal proud.
I disagree strongly with these people and it’s hard for me to fathom how any of them can claim Trump has been doing a good job but that doesn’t make them evil.
Just had the sheer pleasure of passing one of those Trump caravans, slowed on the I-10/1604 intersection, while honking my horn with my right hand, my left holding my outstretched middle finger up as high as I could make it.
My impression as well. Sure, there are many good folk at the top, but I wager very few are irreplaceable. Anyone who works in a large organization - how much of the top would you have to lop off before folk below could not step up, and before things wouldn’t continue to roll along pretty much undisturbed?
Nothing new here. I recall being baffled by middle class blue collar support for W’s administration which seemed to have few goals other than making life worse for them.
Geez, @JohnT I’d have been afraid of one of them shooting off my hand. Just 'cause it’s Sunday don’t mean they left the firepower at home. Especially now that it’s deer season.
I-10 & 1604 – so this wasn’t the trump train that’s been clogging up I-35 in New Braunfels every weekend?
You’d have to go down to director level (GS15) to really handicap most government departments or offices. The biggest issue with large government agencies (aside from rampant mediocrity) is that far too many people are afraid to make a decision because they don’t want to be responsible (be blamed) for a bad outcome. It’s about consensus building and decision making by committee to spread the risk/blame/CYA. This is in contrast to large commercial industries in which senior leadership is much more risk tolerant and success is driven by being decisive and being seen as an innovator. Still plenty of CYA in the corporate world, but success carries a much larger reward.
I think there will come a point in which Trump’s interests conflicts with the interests of Republicans, and they will ultimately protect their interests first while paying lip service to Trump. If they invalidate the election, they also invalidate their own elections, and they know it. Just like if the SCOTUS gives Trump and the GOP free rein to throw out election norms, they’re potentially signing the death warrant for judicial independence, and I’m guessing at least two of the conservative justices know that (not sure about Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, or Coney Barret, but I think Gorsuch and Roberts ‘get it’.
72.5M voted for Trump. Almost 10M more than last time. We can stop asking the question; we have our answer, with the following caveat – MAGATS have consolidated their bigotry. They will deny every single accusation of bigotry, except one: anti-lib.
Evil may be too strong a word but willfully ignorant, negligent, and neglectful come to mind.
These people have every tool available to them to make good decisions and they purposely choose to ignore all of that. There is no secret being kept here. There is no need for a graduate degree to understand this stuff. A 5th grader should be able to grasp it all. But they don’t and let real harm come to pass. Evident harm.
Why do the Democrats have to pivot away from the people who keep giving them a majority of the votes, but Republicans don’t have to pivot away from the people who keep giving them a minority of the votes?
Watching RW Media will give you the impression that Trump is doing very well, and that the Dems are inept cartoon villains trying to do him in. As far as I can tell, being misinformed is the only way to support Trump without being evil, stupid, ignorant, or an empty single-issue voter.
…because over time, the divide will become so extreme that anti-democratic behavior, including violence, will be the result, and it’s possible that election majorities won’t matter.
It is rural America against urban America; industrial America versus digital America; homogenous America versus diverse America. These are fissures that are going to be continually exploited, and in increasingly disruptive ways. There at least has to be a meaningful overture to deal with people who perceive being left behind or otherwise displaced in these communities.
For how long have liberals been trying to reach across the aisle only to have conservatives run in the other direction? 25 years at least…maybe more.
How many column inches have been devoted to honestly debunking conservative Gish Gallop bullshit?
There has been no shortage of effort on the part of liberals to educate and encourage conservatives on issues without any rancor. Conservatives seem immune to it.
If you keep doing the same thing and not succeeding it is time to do something different. It’s past time to call a spade a spade.
Lots of Democratic voters are equally low-information. For many voters, their political party of choice is a reflex more than anything else.
In Canada, we have a limited number of banking options - there are a few boutique online choices but basically you’ve got Bank of Montreal, CIBC, Scotiabank, TD/Canada Trust, National Bank and whatever credit union is in your area. All run commercials and ads in every media nonstop promising you they have the best banking products, but every study anyone has ever done has shown that once a person chooses a bank they are likely to stick with it their entire lives, and the thing likeliest to make them choose a bank is that their parents used it. Bank choice is, for most people, a reflexive position they invest no time or study on, and yet surely choosing your BANK could have a big impact on your life, right?
I’m not saying nobody looks into this stuff but a huge percentage of people don’t. It’s like that for elections. Many people really do change their minds, but many will vote D or R (or in Canada, L or C or NDP) over and over, without really thinking about it. It’s at least the Keyes Number.
If I only ever listened to Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me either
That was about confirmation bias, facilitated by market segmentation, the profit imperative, and the journalistic perspective that Fox takes in pursuit of those pecuniary objectives.
But if Obama were to consider that statement today, I suspect he’d say something more like …
[NB: my words, not his]
“If I only ever listened to Fox News, I’d think that all Democrats were Socialists, Communists, and Marxists who hate America and pine for its destruction, and that the vast majority of their Congress Critters and their President (and his family) and Vice-President should be jailed.”
We’ve traded in low information for demagoguery, and the willful dissemination and consumption of objectively false, horribly corrosive propaganda.
I agree with those who argue that we need to bridge the divide.
I agree with those who argue that continuing to demonize and denigrate Trump’s followers, wholesale, isn’t productive.
But I agree most with those who point out that we are miles away from a common set of facts from which to begin a reasonable discussion.
There are some things that liberals won’t be able to reach across the aisle on. I’m going to go back to a comment I’ve made before, which is that liberals are occasionally going to have to pull votes from people whom they don’t necessarily like or relate to. As Howard Dean once put it, the Democrats will need to occasionally reach out to the guy with the confederate flag on his pickup truck. They may not like that guy, and the SJWs will hate the Dems for doing it, but they’re going to have to find a way to keep a fragile alliance together on economic issues first.
I think a lot of the issue with Dems is that they need to at least look comfortable visiting some of these small 98% towns where people are missing some teeth. Just visit there and look comfortable doing it, and look comfortable speaking directly to these people. Bill Clinton did it. Shit, Barack Obama actually pulled it off and I’m sure he probably heard people heckling him with the n-word in the crowd. Hillary Clinton, OTOH, is an example of someone who did not look comfortable doing what I’ve described. She stayed in cities.
But to answer RickJay’s question about why Dems have to bend over backwards to appease red state voters while Republicans don’t have to appease urban voters, it’s for the simple fact that the Republican base, while smaller, is easier to keep together. It’s a coalition based on white Christian nationalism, and it’s the largest single group out there. The Dems, conversely, have a larger potential reach but they a more fragile coalition. It’s easier to break apart.
But we are not talking about disagreement on whether green beans are better with dinner than broccoli.
It would be one thing to argue over the best means to fight climate change but instead we argue whether it even exists.
It would be one thing to argue how to best deal with a pandemic but instead we argue whether it even exists.
It’s worse than disagreement. Conservatives are actively demonizing people on the other side (liberals) and advocating violence. And it is not just some fringe whackos. These people are highly placed in the government.
Yet you would have liberals somehow be nice and appease them or be nice or just listen to them.
I think we can see that ship has sailed. It failed completely.
