Sure, but there are no Democratic governors who are trolling red voters purposefully the way DeSantis is trolling Florida Democrats, hence the obnoxiousness factor isn’t there, and the red flight isn’t the same.
The "make Democrats leave swing states and migrate to blue ones" strategy for capturing swing states
AKA: “Stop pointing out when Republican politicians do shitty things, because you give me the sadz.”
Wouldn’t that be the same reason? The economic reasons that they move are because of California politics.
Or…let’s not stop pointing out when politicians do shitty things, even if they’re Democrats.
We all agree with that. Point out both sides doing shitty things. Does anyone disagree with that?
Sure, but there is a distinction to be made there. The taxes aren’t necessarily due to current politics, and the people moving may be perfectly fine with the concept of the tax, but unable to make it work with their current income level. That doesn’t automatically make them Trumpers or MAGA people; just people without enough money to go around.
Economics doesn’t necessarily mean just taxes. If you are a working professional in a large city with a high cost of living, you are probably receiving an income commensurate with the cost of living — but once you are no longer working, it sometimes makes sense to relocate to an area with a lower cost of living.
As someone that recently retired and moved from a deep blue urban area to a light blue city in a light red state, I get annoyed whenever people suggest that I moved because of some sort of discouragement with Democratic policies. Politics was not a factor in my decision to move, aside from a little bit of apprehension about more frequent encounters with conservative cultists and a touch of happiness about being a new Democratic voter in a swing state.
Taxes….meh….I don’t work anymore and I have a modest but well-structured retirement income and a good accountant, so I’m not really paying any anymore, except for property tax, which seems to be about on the same level as the property taxes I was paying in NYC. However, the situations are so different it’s impossible to compare apples to apples……if I go by property value my taxes are higher now, if I go by square footage they’re lower……but either way it’s not a high enough number to figure into my decision making process.
It’s hard to say if it’s intentional, there is a lot of “love it or leave it” type of rhetoric from the far right these days. They certainly are looking to make anyone not affiliated with the right wing feel very uncomfortable.
But, if it is an intentional strategy, as you point out, it’s a poor strategy. Most people can’t afford to move, however, the ones that can move are going to be taking a whole lot of economic output and tax base with them.
See, it’s not about people being exactly like you, I don’t know where you got that from. It’s about being allowed to live your life.
Is it just an inconvenience if the state annuls your marriage because it doesn’t recognize it? Is it just wanting to be around people exactly like you if you want your children to be able to receive medical care without interference from politicians?
There are a whole list of policies that are implemented or are being worked on to be implemented in right wing states that are targeted to directly harm certain people. If you aren’t part of that targeted demographic, then it’s just politics to you. If you are, then it may be a matter of life and death.
Let’s say it’s something that is important to you, rather than just something that is important to the lives of other people. Take guns, for instance. If the state that you live in banned guns, would that prompt you to move? If so, are you just doing so in order to live in a political climate that is exactly like you?
Well, then you limit who can vote! Just jigger the rules so only your supporters can vote, have access to sufficient polls, etc.
Toss out votes from counties that have “irregularities” that just happen to be strongly Democratic.
My point was that for a lot of people, the considerations like where their family lives, if they own a home, and so forth are more important to many of them than what are mere political considerations. Of course that doesn’t encompass everyone, and there are people who have good reason to be concerned and potentially move from some states. But for most, it IS just generalized apprehension about not liking living in a Republican dominated state. And that IS just politics.
My response was specifically to @racer72’s post about people who did move for merely political reasons, and are finding out that it’s not what it was cracked up to be. And I pointed out that sometimes moving for political reasons isn’t necessarily a sensible thing. It can be for some people in some specific situations, but often it’s not for the vast majority of people.
I worked in politics at the local, state and national level, always for the Dems. There didn’t seem to be any strategy to speak of. I’m 99.9% sure it was the same w/ the Repubs. It was about raising money and getting the vote out near election day. The one exception was in Louisiana, where one script for sheriff was pitched to White voters and a different one to Black voters. I quit my company during that time, just wanted no part of that.
W/ national candidates, the same commercials were run for Mississippi as for New Hampshire. There had to be just one message or the other side would nail you for talking out both sides of your mouth. Honestly, people vote from their emotions and gut, not their brain. So you could say whatever, a lot of the support or opposition came from somewhere deep inside.
The first Trump election showed what we already knew. Polls can be drastically wrong. In St Pete, a liberal part of Florida, right before the election tons of Trump supporters came out of nowhere. Holding signs on the side of the road, wearing red caps. We thought, WTF?
I had been riding through neighborhoods for weeks and only a tiny fraction of them were for Trump, and those were in the upscale neighborhoods. The next day, all these people were high fiving themselves in the grocery stores. They looked just like us!, and many of them were young. Trump lost in St Pete, but the county St Pete was in went for Trump. The way things are now post-Trump, I’m not sure I want to deal w/ any of politics anymore. It’s too hateful, too dishonest, too ugly.
The polls weren’t off by a lot in 2016 - that’s largely a myth. Nate Silver’s polling aggregate model had Trump as about a one in three chance to win.
But it’s not just wanting to live around people who are exactly like you.
I live in a red and getting redder state, and I have no plans to move. I hope that my continued vote will eventually help to turn things around, and I have a lot invested here and would be a whole lot of work to start over.
But I have no reason to personally fear the right wing policies. I think they are bad for the state and its people, but there is little they are doing to interfere with my daily life.
OTOH, a good friend of mine did leave the state, because he didn’t want to raise his children in a red state for both cultural and political reasons. And he’s a white (mostly) straight male.
For anyone who is not a white straight male, things are a bit different. The policies being proposed and implemented are specifically intended to harm or interfere with them. Sure, by definition they are a minority, so, as you say, the harm to them doesn’t effect the majority of people. And even if they are being targeted by the right wing government, that doesn’t mean that they can afford to move.
You responded to @racer72’s post, but it seemed a more general statement than talking only about that specific couple. We have no idea why they moved, I’m not even sure if it was because Western Washington was too red or not red enough.
And like my friend, it’s not just about our lives, some have their children’s lives to consider as well. People are leaving Texas not because they are trans, but because their child is, and Texas is doing its best to make that illegal. If you have a kid, you don’t know if they will be gay or trans, you don’t know if your daughter will need an abortion, so it would be best to move to a state where these are options and they won’t be persecuted or prosecuted for it.
I’m sure that if a blue state banned guns, there would be a massive flight of conservatives to red states, and it would be silly to say that it’s just over politics.
I think we may actually be agreeing with each other, or at least not at odds.
I get that if you’re in the crosshairs for some specific policies that the Republicans are trying/considering implementing that you may want to move. People with trans kids, disabled kids, who are disabled, trans, gay, whatever. I totally understand why they wouldn’t feel comfortable and might want to move. That’s NOT politics, that’s self preservation.
But for people who aren’t in that category, (you and me, and a large chunk of the population), moving because of political considerations like your good friend did, may come with costs that they didn’t foresee, like @racer72’s friends found out. The grass is not always greener, you know. For most people, moving for “cultural and political reasons” is a huge amount of disruption, as well as potentially distancing themselves from their friends and family, and is something that IMO, is a bit silly to do for merely political climate reasons.
And FWIW, I would argue that doing all that for the sake of owning guns is also a bit extreme and silly, and more so than the other examples, because it’s not an existential threat.
I’m not sure where you got that information. The polls that we used, not the public polls, were way off. Everyone I talked to thought Trump would be thumped. It’s not legal to vote on elections in the US, but is in a lot of places. Ireland, The UK, etc were offering crazy odds on a Trump win.
When I said we had no strategy, we sorta had one, but they were just guide lines. We focused on saturating the airwaves w/ commercials. In speaking events, the candidates would always go off script anyway. It was they who decided what the message would be. We could only offer our choices but it carried no weight.
^ This is a concern of mine, and I am neither male nor, under some definitions, White (other people, though, do consider me White). I really did absorb the history lesson that even if you’re not in the group currently targeted your group could be next.
Sure, I can “pass” as White, I can pretend to be a lot of things, but living a lie is corrosive. Right now I live in a somewhat Blue part of a Red state, next to a Blue city in a Blue state. It’s not uncomfortable at present. But when I retire I have plans to move for BOTH economic and political reasons.
Moving is hard, though, especially when you’re middle age and finding a new job may not be so easy as it once was. If my income isn’t dependent on my physical location then I’m more free to relocate.
I paid attention to 538 almost every day leading up to the 2016 election and I don’t remember ever seeing Trump’s odds to win in their projections as less than about 30%. It always looked likely that Clinton would win, but never overwhelming. My constant anxiety at the time is my proof.
And since I’m not personally at risk, I prefer to stay and “fight the good fight” with my vote.
Eh, he seems to like it quite a bit. I’ve visited, and if it were convenient for me, I’d move out there just for the weather and scenery.
But do you agree that there would be a lot of conservatives who do so, and even more who threaten to do so? I hear a whole lot of one issue voters on the subject, who don’t care about any policies at all other than guns and will vote for Republicans, no matter their disagreements with other policies, as long as any Democrat even thinks about any sort of gun control measure. And while I agree that it is silly, I can’t imagine that sort of person continuing to live in a state that has banned guns.