Of course it is. It's a MASSIVE fucking problem, but do you think anyone on the right sees it as such? Not a fucking chance. If the roles were reversed though, and we had Zuckerberg campaigning with Kamala and she won and he was going to be on a phone call with the president of Ukraine before she even takes office!!???!?!?!?!?! HOLY SHIT, the world would fucking implode on itself. I don't want to say it's 100% projection every single time, but fuck me, it certainly feels like it. Dems need some catchy shit like, "Facts don't care about your feelings", but you know, like actually mean.
So you just can’t accept that other people’s ideas are different? I don’t even disagree with you all that much, but what I’m hearing is people who think differently from you are wrong. None of this is full on cut and dry (other than some horrible shit both sides are pushing) so why not be accepting to another viewpoint?
I don't think you're hearing the specific point that is being made. It's not that others can't have differing opinions. It's that the specific and articulated reasons around why many people voted for Trump instead of Harris are actually not reflected in reality. Which is completely consistent with the right wing messaging.
There are plenty of ideas that are different from mine that I have no problem with. I've always thought that musical theater was a bit cringey and insular (lets be honest, the performers want to sing more than anyone wants them to be singing) but there are people who love that shit, and that's fine. I'm happy to have them build their theaters and sell tickets to their shows, and in its own way I find it culturally enriching that people make dumb art that I can't appreciate. The community is stronger for it. But open-mindedness isn't an excuse to do no analysis or judgment at all. Some ideas are so clearly wrong, either factually or morally, that it feels like an exercise in self-flagellation to pretend that they're not, or that they're complicated questions. "Donald Trump gets to do crime, and anyone who tries to hold him accountable should be punished" is a core belief of the Republican party. It's wrong, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect me to spend a ton of time on it, or on those who adhere to it, before I'm comfortable saying it's wrong. "Climate change is a hoax" is also wrong, and again, I'm not obligated to pretend it's not because other voters want it to be true.
I hate to keep harping on this, but I truly feel that bad turnout is giving the illusion of a massive rightward shift. The people who were always going to vote republican did. Republicans have always had reliable turnout. Sure, theres probably some people who moved to the gop for various reasons. Latino voting patterns have for sure shifted right. Democrats failed in turning out voters. Trump is a known commodity. People cannot claim they don't know what he is or how he operates. I don't consider voter apathy to be a Trump endorsement though. But there has been a clear realignment of each party's base and the dems are perceived as elites. Their big social issues don't resonate with people feeling the pressure of higher prices and decreased buying power. GOP framing of the issues like "Kamala Harris is for they/them. Donald Trump is for you." went unanswered.
I was thinking about this and how often it was blasted on the World Series which is a huge event for latinos as well as having been done in NYC for most of the games.
I can't read this word anymore without thinking of the "you think you're better than me?" scene from HIMYM. "Elite" these days just means anyone who is competent at their job. The family physician is an elitist because he tells you not to skip childhood vaccinations because of a blog you read. A journalist making $30k a year is an elitist because they wrote an article saying that no, Haitians aren't eating your pets. A climate sciences post-doc living on ramen is an elitist because she's begging you to support any kind of change to stave off disaster. "Elitist" just means someone who tells conservatives something they don't want to hear.
I assume you’re referring to NAFTA and that was an incredibly bad idea. It effectively destroyed large parts of Michigan and other manufacturing areas. An idiot could see that coming. NAFTA was sold to us under two major premises: that it give American companies whole new markets ( and let’s be open about this, we’re talking about Mexico) and jobs would actually increase as a result. Which anyone who has been even dimly aware of Mexico for the last 70 years would know is ridiculous. NAFTA specifically and free trade in general supposes that jobs and goods can flow both ways. Mexico is so broken governmentally and socially that there is nothing that will turn them into a thriving market. Do we trade with Mexico? Of course we do. But that trade hasn’t even come close to making up for the jobs lost and communities destroyed. And the Mexican standard of living certainly hasn’t opened up markets for our companies like trade with China or Europe did.
Oh, I agree. One of the issues I think the dems failed to contend with is inflation. When people are complaining about inflation, they aren't talking about the economic calculation and the percentage. They are talking about rising costs of things. The dems countered by saying that inflation is the lowest its been in years. While this is technically true, its not what people mean. This is more of a reflection on our poor education as a whole. But its also a failure to connect with people who are complaining about 1 bag of groceries costing a hundred bucks when it used to be 2-3 bags. Interest rates aren't controlled by the president, but our uneducated electorate doesn't know that. Tell them they are wrong and they act like you're being condescending. When Trump was pres, interest rates were at zero because of covid. Now they are high because of "Bidenomics". How do you counter that?
Inflation isn't going down, the rate of inflation increase is going down. Inflation this cycle was driven by a few things: Dramatic and quick increase of the money supply by the Fed, which is why they are trying to decrease the supply currently. Rapid changes in consumer spending. We went from buying goods and services, to just buying goods (TVs, computers, etc.) during Covid, to overcompensating and buying services (vacations, restaurants, etc.) when the lockdowns were lifted. These changes on a sector or macroeconomic scale take 18-24 months to settle with supply, and that's if it doesn't change again in the interim. Normally you would dramatically increase rates to make borrowing more expensive, but not if you need to basically jump start a second massive industrial boom because of foreign supply chain crash. Failure to do that would probably make things far more expensive in the long-term than they do now. If you need an idea of what that would look like if we didn't, just look at how Europe will be doing in the next few years. Demographics. The Boomers removed their capital from the market when they retired and therefore there is less credit to be extended at lower rates. Some of that is due to bad policy, but most of it is not. Frankly, the Fed probably should do very little and let it play out. Now good luck getting any of that into a political platform for the public to digest. Sexy stuff.
NAFTA was the first one that damaged US manufacturing. The 1999 trade deal with China was the death blow.
This entire post completely encapsulates the point I'm trying to make, especially the last sentence. Democrats need to do these things behind the scenes and come out and just say wild shit. Instead of saying, "I'm going to give people $25,000 as a downpayment for a house." the message has to be Oprah style, "YOU GET A HOUSE! AND YOU GET A HOUSE. EVERYONE WHO WANTS ONE, WE'RE GETTING YOU A HOUSE!!"
The argument for free trade is really greater efficiency, and therefore lower prices; everything else is just marketing. And while "I don't like the employment effects of free trade, and I'm willing to accept higher prices in order to reverse them" is, in itself, a cogent argument, it's not one that anyone was making. This was an election when a good chunk of the voting populace was screaming about prices being too high, despite an economy with low unemployment and real wage growth. The prices-for-factories tradeoff is the exact opposite of what they appear to have been clamoring for.
An elitist is not a rancher or country singer who own four mansions and a gulfstream. Just because their pick-up trucks cost $200 grand, that doesn’t mean that they like books— like an elitist.
At the end of the day, I just hope no one says “your body, my choice” to my wife or any other woman in my life. I fear the consequences of my actions. I really hope it just online edgelord shit.
Deep down inside you know it's not and that we're headed for some legit fucked up Gilead from Handmaid's Tale shit.